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S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl Review (continued)
More User Submitted S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl Reviews
Date: 2008-02-08
Video Games As Art
I seldom give anything a perfect score in a review, and I should definitely qualify my rating here by making a few statements about the performance and the bug issues in Stalker.
This game is a hog. It doesn't have Crysis quality graphics, but it still wants a near Crysis-worthy machine to play smoothly. I played it, the first three times, on a computer that did not nearly approximate the requirements it actually needed, but despite the terrible performance, I was utterly enthralled.
It also has more bugs than any game I have ever played. I was very fortunate and did not experience nearly as many bugs as some, and most of what I encountered did not stop or ruin the game. I have heard people complain many times that they couldn't finish the game at all because of various bugs, and I believe that can be the case sometimes. There are now several patches and many issues have been fixed, but its still got troubles.
All of that said though, I still think this is among the most amazing video games experiences I have ever seen, if not the most amazing. I have never played a game with this much intensity, this much atmosphere, or this much imagination. The concept is a breath of fresh air in a very tired genre, and the execution of the idea is incredible.
While it is clearly a shooter, Stalker manages to be the very experience I have been looking for in an RPG for years. It lacks many of the elements I associate with that genre of gaming, but it makes up for them by simply feeling like a genuine experience. If Stalker appeals to you at all, it is almost certain to suck you in and make you feel like you are "there" in the Zone.
It is a huge, sprawling game with a mysterious story, and the play is very non-linear. For the most part, you can spend as much time exploring and surviving in the Zone as you like, and the dangerous "treasure hunt" that is life as a Stalker can be very appealing. Its the kind of game that has places in it that you want to revisit and look deeper into, and its also the kind of game where you can do exactly that.
Few games have ever given me as many scares and surprises either. When I finished playing Stalker the first time, I immediately started again, and the second and third times were all unique. The A-life system that gives the Zone its personality is not perfect, but it tends to be very aggressive and quite random, which means that the Zone is never the same twice.
Stalker introduced me to the original Russian sci-fi novel, "Roadside Picnic" upon which it is based, and the book is fantastic and highly artistic too. So is Andrei Tarkovsky's movie, also entitled Stalker, based on the same novel. And if you like good atmospheric ambient music, Robert Rich and B. Lustmord's tribute album, "Stalker," is also quite good.
This just seems to be a fantastic and ever expanding concept. If you are willing to take the rist that the bugs won't ruin it for you, if your computer can run it, and if you like to be challenged by a game that defies the conventions, then this is worth investigating.
And later this year, GSC is going to release a prequal, Clear Sky, which promises to be just as amazing!
Date: 2008-02-02
Steamed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. stinks
Is it just me, or are the only companies these days producing bugless high quality titles Nintendo and Valve? I'm a hardcore gamer having beaten hundreds of games and played many more and my favorite genre has to be first person shooters (my favorite being Half-Life 2). I didn't initially purchase this title because I had heard about the buggy gameplay and seen the developer's less than impressive repertoire of games. However, even that couldn't stop my thirst for blood one weekend and I purchased S.T.A.L.K.E.R. off of Steam. This review pertains to v 1.0005 of Steamed S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
The game finally finishes installing and I finally begin to run around in the expansive world, but something is wrong. My head hurts and the room is spinning. Game options are extremely sparse in this title, and easily, the worst offender is the inability to turn off head-bobbing. I realize the developer's intentions to create a lifelike environment, but people don't make themselves dizzy when they walk. Even after playing for many hours, I still experienced discomfort at the constant motion. This is the only game I have ever played that made me uncomfortable in its entirety. Luckily, Motion sensitive customers who purchased a boxed version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. can download a patch that allegedly fixes this ridiculous feature. Steamed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has a different file structure and renders the mod useless. In a nut shell, it really sucks.
A problem with trying to make a game very lifelike is that when anything "un-lifelike" happens, it breaks all believability in the game's world. Such a problem is weapon damage, it's broken. I have run up to human enemies with a sawed-off double barrel shotgun and put two slugs in their face, only to my utter disgust to have them shake it off and kill me while I stand there reloading. Enemies also shoot through walls occasionally resulting in ludicrous deaths.
After playing the game for a couple of hours and doing some sidequests, I notice that there are really only three sidequests in the entire game that you can do again and again (side quests respawn in this title). The three are: Kill an enemy camp, bring me an item, or kill this guy. Okay, so coming off Oblivion, this felt ridiculous. Every once in a while a different quest will come up, but rarely. And then you only have one in-game 24 hour period to finish the quest or you fail it (this need not apply for main quests), this equates to around 2 real world hours. This can be very frustrating, because you cannot stock up on side quests and finish them while you explore. Going out of your way becomes very unfun when the rewards are lackluster. Eventually I decided to not do any side quests at all because they made you run around the map with a time limit and then gave you poor rewards for your effort. Even then, a lot of the quests are buggy, rendering completion impossible. One such example is a quest where you have to find a man his missing gun. I followed the PDA to the spot and spent 15 minutes looking for it. This was not the only quest to feature glorified goose chases, many of the "find the item" quests prematurely end this way.
The PDA system is buggy as well. In some points of the game, it won't show where you are on the map, and fails to recognize which message logs you have read. The PDA also expects you to perform extensive research on story developments since little is explained vocally (NPCs talk little and you have to physically read conversations). If you want to understand the gist of the plot expect to a lot of reading. This is disappointing because a game should be fun, and I found the much of the reading/conversations to be stale and more akin to a high school textbook. You can also find PDAs on people that mark locations of "stashes" on your map. However, upon going out of your way again to find a stash, a bug might keep it hidden (I experienced this many times) or there is nothing of real value. So looking for stashes is basically pointless and disappointing.
Graphics issues are constant, with random frame-rate jerks being constant throughout the entire game. I'll pass through an area with butter smooth visuals and then pass through the same area later (conditions are the same) and my screen will begin having seizures. This is very annoying when you have to transverse entire maps to get to an objective only to have a relatively short trip become long and tedious. Enemies also clip through the walls often after violent deaths at the hands of grenades. Sometimes they get stuck behind the wall and experience extremely noisy seizures. This is often funny, but again is an ugly unaddressed bug. However, even then, the worst thing a game can do is freeze or crash in the middle of a session with no recovery. The worst of which is a freeze that requires hard-rebooting your computer (restarting via cutting off the power). Of about the ten times the game crashed/froze on me in the 20 hours it took me to complete, half required hard-reboots. This IS NOT good for your system and angered me greatly. However, I'm stubborn when it comes to playing through a buggy game and I tolerated (though barely) the constant crashes till I had finished the game and could finally uninstall it.
Despite its mass of shortcomings, the game can be very fun and scary at times. Combat can be exhilarating and searching through dark corridors with only a flashlight while mutants and zombies growl in the dark is nothing short of spine-tingling goodness. The AI is very smart (although it can be very dumb as well). The story can be interesting at times and the cut scenes are some of the better ones I've seen in a game from a filmmaking perspective. Not to mention the "best" ending of the seven possible ending was particularly satisfying.
The bottom line is that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. along with the X-Ray engine, need another year of solid work. The crashes are inexcusable when compared to other robust engines like Doom 3 and Source. Why GSC Game World had to develop an in-house engine instead of licensing one is beyond me. Since its creation, this title has been racked by delays and development issues resulting in much of the game's content to be left out like vehicular transportation and more mutants. This content is accessible through mods but is reoccurring proof of the shortcuts taken to finally release this beast after around 6 grueling years. But 6 years or not, if I could describe this game in one word, it would be "unfinished"; it needed 7 years of work. While it is fun and sometimes great (combat can be exhilarating at times), the uninspired quests, mass of bugs, and horde of other issues make this game a pass. The irony is that GSC Game World is already working on a prequel and Xbox 360 port when they haven't even fixed the first one! Who knows, maybe they'll get it right in the next one. Regardless I probably won't be entering the Zone again, I advise gamers to do the same and try System Shock 2, Half-Life 2 or Oblivion instead. Those who heed my warning and decide to tread into the Zone anyway should remain wary, for there are more dangerous things in this game than hideous mutants.
Date: 2008-01-21
In an era of excellent shooters, it's good not great...if it works at all.
Broad, open-ended gameplay in pretty cool realistic environments. The exact opposite of shooters like Call of Duty which very tightly channel you through specific environments, it's almost MMO-like in scale. Really wanted to like this one, but it's a mess. Needs another 6-10 months of QA and bug fixes to get it working properly. Support is minimal at best, so if it doesn't run on your particular configuration (my quadcore with 8800gts and gigaram is no slouch) then you're going to have to live with graphics glitches that make it almost unplayable and crashes that don't just dump you to desktop but lock your machine requiring hard restart. It's been almost a year after release now, and these unacceptable problems persist despite patches being released. Oh, and patches appear to render your save games unusable, so patch before playing.
Date: 2008-01-09
Bleak. Radiation, devastation, isolation, degradation, exploitation, mass mutation.
I dont know why people have had problems running this game. I bought the game, installed the latest patch of course (1.004), and run the game just fine (1024x768, low graphics settings, max view distance) on a 2.4 ghz dell, 1gbRAM, with a lowly PCI GEFORCE 6200!! No crashes ever! Anyway, on to the review..
I've been an FPS junkie since Wolfenstein 3D. Not since System Shock 2 has an FPS had me this addicted. Anyone looking forward to Fallout III should pray that it turns out this good. It is a genuine open-ended FPS with RP elements, real-world weapons (although w/slightly changed names, they are easily identifiable), challenging AI, realistic physics, HL2-like graphics quality, and an overall immersive atmosphere that makes you feel as if you were really wandering through the bleak wasteland of the forbidden zone surrounding the Chernobyl reactor. (A real place, the zone)..I remember a dark night during a thunderstorm, happening upon a lone figure under a bridge, huddled by a campfire..the sad song he played on his guitar was cut short by my bullets..for he had on his back the first AK i had seen in the game..I remember the twinge of guilt i felt..but thus is life in the zone.
Date: 2007-12-29
A very good game and a solid pick
I have played the halflifes and far cry game and all of the ww2 shooters and just about any and every game worth any salt the last few years and this is as good as any of them. The ever changing weather and in game upgrades are nice and this game gets really spooky in some parts. Depending on the level of difficulty you choose it can be very difficult to play and complete. Is a little buggy in a few spots and the russian speaking AI can get irritating but these are minor gripes as there is a lot involved in playing this game and many hours spent finishing it with decent replayability. It is a large environment both above and below ground with many enemies and wild mutated animals out to get you and the radiation combined with the ever changing freaky weather just add to the whole setting you will be immersed in. Is a top 10 in my book and is a very refreshing change from the norm. A great buy and a lot of game. I wish all games released were this packed with so much good stuff.
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