Gaaaaaah .....Call of Pripyat gets a 7 on the 'ol bit-tech-o-meter while Sims3 gets a 9. I can see where this is going. Still looking forward to the game...and the Lost Alpha mod...might even check out Metro 2033- unless it's been overhauled by Elton John so as to make the game more enjoyable for the brpwn/green colourblind impaired.
The annoyance with blowouts is perfectly natural, because the are annoying. The problem is that the game has a kind of yes/no view on whether a hiding place works, rather than working on a more organic system that works out if you're in cover and then it works. I found it a bit of a pain that some areas just didn't offer protection when they were clearly pretty heavy duty cover. Regarding criticism of the game being tough to learn, it is worth bearing in mind that most modern games, some very good ones included such as Brutal Legend and Batman Arkham Asylum, are designed to be picked up, played, mastered and completed within a weekend (or if you've got the time, a day). Both those examples I named were new games with new systems, new moves, and yet each you could master in an evening and then chuck in the bin. The fact that Call of Pripyat is not the most intuitive of games is therefore pretty fair criticism. The one difference with Stalker games though is that because they are RPGs (albeit without levelling up or elves) there has to be some sort of extension to the learning curve, otherwise the game would just be a one note affair. The player himself learning and getting to grips with the Stalker game is the levelling up process and you can see that in how old hands play the game compared to newbies. The new player loots everything, he spends his money easily, and he wonders after a few hours why he's broke and always tired as he lumps a giant sack of medkits, weapons, spare weapons, vodka and ammo with him, but he learns, and soon like us folks who've sunk a few weeks into the Zone he's carrying a little more than rifle, a sidearm, a can of Tourist's Delight and an ear for the roar of a bloodsucker. To some types of player that's grand, to many others it's a frustrating pain in the balls if they just want to cut loose and shoot stuff. A reviewers job is to recommend a game as worth buying or not and I think it's fair enough to have reservations about recommending any Stalker game because they are such an odd experience.
STALKER games have the great appeal of being balls to the wall difficult from the get go. Even on the easiest difficulty you are handed with a guy who has severe hemophilia coupled with a weak back and bad stamina and unsteady hands. Once you do get over those problems(which can either be done the hard way, or just modded out of the game) you gotta deal with the AI. However as Hovis has said(quite well to be honest) the learning curve and knowing how the game works is the main appeal aside from the glaring difficulty issues. I do understand the score which is quite fair since the game isn't exactly a pick up and go type of sort. With that said, half the reason the STALKER games are so well liked is that it appeals to those who have the determination to rough it in the Zone so to speak. And have a deep love for using band-aids.
*cough cough* Modern Warfare 2 review *cough* Anyway I loved the original Stalker especially with the Complete mod on but it lacks the technical stability to really be a play all night for me infact I had to give up half way through due to all the AI turning on me for no reason what so ever. As such I will wait till this has been patched and modded heavily well that I already preordered Metro 2033 off steam that looks much more polished and overall seems to have a more cohesive story line. I just hope the rumours of a Stalker 2 on Cry engine 3 are true imagine what GSC would be capable of without having to code an engine aswell as write a game although ******** AI aiming etc will probably still remain,
For some reason LURK causes a fatal crash as soon as I run the game on this PC have no idea why so Complete is all I have been able to see.
Soooo I'm playing this atm and I've gotta say BT nailed the review and rating (even though I'm loving this game). In my opinion it's exactly the same as CS but with slight improvements and obviously a new path to take. Can't really say I'm a fan of Stalker basically due to the fact that I've never even played the first one. Perhaps I should, perhaps I shouldn't ( I just don't want to roll back to graphics that aren't as good as CS) I love brackets! If any stalker fan highly recommends that I get the first one then I will. Atm I haven't encountered any bugs so it's no where near as bad as CS and once again it kinda just throws you into the game... in fact, I'm just gonna repeat BT so I'm gonna shut it. Once again, great review and I highly recommend this for any fan.
With the orignal STALKER you can install Complete 2009. The thing about STALKER though is the difficulty curve. Once you get past that, the game is awesome.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. SoC with Complete Mod 2009 is awesome. Many of the textures from CS have been included - bump-mapped walls, wet surfaces etc, but it runs great and has free-play once you have completed it.
I loved both SoC and CoP. Really the only thing I didn't like about the game is that there wasn't enough content. When I got to the end(sidequests included) all I wanted was more! Hopefully some mods/dlc(free please) will come out adding much more content.
What absolute ****. CoP got played for an hour then deleted. The first game was very good, the second was certainly entertaining but this, this is just crap without direction. I don't enjoy running marathons for the sake of running around like a headless chicken. I'd go play an MMO if I wanted to do that. Bleh.
The review was I suppose ok. I am very biased because I love this set of games. Call of Pripyat gives you about 30 hours of gaming and it requires an amount of effort to get into. But surely that is what gaming is all about? I think that comments such as "The inventory is a bit awkward" are somewhat negative, if you were for example a soldier in the field in real life and you wanted to get a first aid kit out of your back pack, you can't just press a button, the same goes for swapping ammo, taking drugs etc. A lot of games rattle on about how "True to life" they are but in my opinion Stalker is way ahead of the game. In all honesty I have never had any of the Stalker titles crash on me, there are the odd NPC stuck in a door or something similar but when you consider the size of the company producing these titles I feel they have done an amazing job. I do wonder if the crashing of computers is down to problems with said computers? I have like many people fallen for the hype and bought MW2, I suppose it was pretty in a way but hardly realistic, I finished it in about five hours and thought, well that's that then. I do not play co-op or multi player and will probably never play the game again. Not once in MW2 was I frightened, not once did I sit at the keyboard "In a sweat" as happened to the reviewer of Pripyat. Again the comments regarding the emissions catching you out because you did not know what they were, we could suggest to GSC games that they copy MW2 and have huge golden arrows pointing the way, that would be good, we could also have "Items of interest" glow with a golden light in case we miss them. Now I am sure that there are millions of people out there who love MW2 it leaves me cold, but we are all different in our tastes. I also think that GSC have done an excellent job in progressing the game and moving things on, the graphics in Pripyat are second to none, I have to give in on the voice overs, the first time a bandit said "Hidey ho" followed by "Speak up buddy" in two totally different voices did make me stumble a little, but so did the Scottish accent of Hamish (So that we would know he was a Scot) In MW2 and when all is said and done these are very minor matters. Last bit of praise for Stalker, what other game except maybe half life 2 has attracted such a huge modding community? Yes it is flawed, as are all games but I think those of you who struggled with the first ones should have another look with an open mind, you will need one to finish it. My thanks and congratulations to all involved in the making of these fantastic games. P6TD Deluxe, Core 7i-920 Clocked to 3.8 ghz, 6GB corsair dominator 1600 mhz, 2 x BFG Nvidia 260 maxcores, 2 x Samsung Spinpoint 1 TB, Thermalright ultra 120, Galaxy enermax 85 PSU, windows 7 64bit pro. All in a big box.
Not played CoP yet. It was £10 on steam during the sale if you owned one of the other two. Clear Sky (thanks to its rep) was only £4.99, so I bought that, getting the pair for £15. I really only got CS because it saved £5 over buying the boxed game, I wasn't expecting to play it. As it happens, I've played about 35 hours in CS now, and I think it's great. The faction mechanics are a bit duff, true, but the basic "join a faction and fight enemies" works perfectly - just you'll never actually kill them all. In a way I prefer that to the way most games are designed these days. Oblivion drove me up the wall because after a few hours in any faction you joined you became the leader, which gave you no benefits but meant there was nothing left to do. In CS, the factions add a load of depth and feel to the main plot; you always feel like there's something bigger going on around you in everything you do, which adds to the atmosphere. Anyway back to CoP, I too would like to see a comparison of the games to see what DX11 has really added, and if it's worth the performance hit/buying a new card etc.
