I can get being put off by the fight, which are very enjoyable once aclimated to but still are so different than the usual shooter it can be a cold shower.

But the interface ? Really ? I mean, it’s not perfect, sure (especially in first two), but it’s not like you’re spending an awful lot of time with it. It certainly is less than 1% of your play time.

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yeni videolar

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Good, and certainly unique, but it didn’t do enough to make itself feel consistently fun and surprising (I know, the setting didn’t really allow it, nor was it supposed to), but it was an “I’m glad I played that” rather than an “I desperately love this game.”

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Oh yes, those dogs… How I hate them. Though watching a three-way battle between some loners, some bandits, and a pack of dogs was very entertaining. It’s really hard to tell sometimes what is scripted and what is not in Stalker.

One of my favorite things I think is how there is no “XP”. You do side things and the missions because you want to, not because you need that last bit of XP. You pull up your map and notice a stash nearby, and you just go for it, not knowing if it’ll have some bandages and food or mint condition armor. The game feels so real, especially if you have mods to make it more difficult. This is the first game I’ve ever really planned out each excursion for, the first game where I get really into the atmosphere and experience. And now I’m going back in to make the run to Lake Yantar.

I already have my next playthrough planned. Just going to see what happens if I don’t do what everyone tells me to do. Every time I’ve played I’ve done basically what you’re ‘supposed’ to do… For example, that scientist being attacked by mercs can just fend for himself, I think.

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That’s a really good point, I actually reloaded that (Half-Life) scene because I couldn’t understand how I can force her to solo two of those things (I was hiding in a way that made it so she had to fight – what can I say, I like my ammo), it was.. kind of disappointing that she’s useless and can’t fight for shit rather abruptly. Hell, until I went about finding out (read: fucking her over) I didn’t even know she COULD die – she has retarded amounts of health.

(In Stalker) Whenever I find an NPC I was amused with dead, I pretty much rampage about the area killing anything that may have done it.

I’m also a little surprised no-one has mentioned the A-Life of the Dogs in stalker. They can be found, quite often, pulling corpses off of roads — and if you approach and there’s a group of them, they’ll attack. If it’s one dog, it’ll run away. I’ve never seen another game that didn’t either have suicidal-rush A.I., or never-move-from-behind-cover A.I.

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(Minor Spoiler)
I was out scoping out a building full of bandits, looking for a better way in than the one the game hands you on a silver platter, and noticed a yellow dot (neutral NPC) in a building across the street along with a cluster of dead bodies. It just so happens to be a big storm outside and right as I go inside the building lightning flashes. Heart rate definitely jumped there. I find the pile of bodies with one guy wounded but alive, and then the roar of a bloodsucker behind me. Thank god for the plentiful NATO ammo, because I wasted a ton. I saved the guy too, so I felt good afterwards.

In the same section I found a really cool thing that just doesn’t seem to be present in other games. Borov’s office is chock-full of locked lockers, cabinets, drawers etc. I get pissed at finding every thing locked, and so I shoot a drawer thing. It swings open, so of course I proceed to shoot out all the locks. Was very satisfying to pop open some guys desk with his own pistol.

I saw A-Life in action more than once too, though I think it was in a mod so some of the stock game’s restrictions may have been lifted. I go up to the collapsed bridge (military held) to find some private rushing at me crazy as hell guns blazing, rather than the cool sergeant asking for a bribe. I pop him in the head and walk past to find everyone else in the little roadblock, along with a good ten bandits dead.

I disagree with whoever said characters die too easily. Finding my old Cordon buddy Wolf headfirst in a fire pissed me off, I ended up killing everyone there the first time I found him I think. And the times I’ve seen Nimble die were frustrating. Once killed by his hostage-takers, another time to soldiers, etc…. I felt bad about leaving “The Dutyer” behind in Borov’s warehouse, but one look at the number on the compass that told me there were still a dozen bandits in there and I ran for it (and this is after I promised him I’d get him out, talking through a cell window)… That the characters *can* die, that they are no better than you, said a lot to me. Whereas watching Alyx get taken out by a lone hunter when I’ve seen her survive thousands of combine AR rounds, zombie swipes, etc…. It just seems too fake compared to how easily characters in Stalker fall.

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Also, it saddened me when NPC’s i’d met repeatedly turned up a corpse on returning to an area, or finding them dead in a different area (which is most unsettling-these guys actually move areas?) Happily though, there’s a mod that allows you to fix this problem by selling NPC’s better guns and more ammo. Now the bandits are on the retreat, hehehe…

You can find it and other useful mods (artifact balancing, better interface, coloured flashlights, etc. over here:

http://stalker.filefront.com/files/Stalker/Mods/Singleplayer/;3788?sort=rating&order_in=desc&limit=50&descriptions_in=1&summary_in=0#files

enjoy, comrades…

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I hated Oblivion, but not for any … well, it’s part preference, part bad design. To sum before I go on for 20 minutes, the opening (‘training’) level was really the only part of the game I enjoyed. I was fully expecting A.D.O.M. the FPS RPG. Instead, I got a huge world, full of.. best-armour-in-the-game clad bandits (due to the levelling), a levelling system that required you to NOT choose skills you wanted as your primary (try playing with Stealth as a primary skill…), and more nameless guards than actual people in the game. I remember how absolutely barren the world felt. I also remember how indignant I became after putting (literally) 47 arrows into a wolf, which then killed me.

The game just had so many game shattering faults I couldn’t do it. It was the 3rd game I owned I didn’t beat, and the first not due to my computer crashing.

To compare that to Stalker, every NPC in the game can say something interesting. They all feel different — from Vitya Snot (nice name..) to Ilya Kovalek (or Kovalchuk as I call him), there’s at least a pretend difference. And the guards felt like people, not (whatever the Oblivion capital was) Guard Number 37.

The main draw of Stalker, for me, was the ability to, literally, do whatever the fuck I wanted. I was never at any point completely and utterly incapable of trying what i wanted (I could very well fail, but I at least had a go at it.) If I wanted to kill every single human being I ever saw, I could (except possibly the Barman, I can’t recall if I tried.. although I must have, I try to break games). The only real problem I had was the inability to actually join Duty or Freedom (or: SPOILER-YOU’VE-BEEN-WARNED Monolith)/SPOILER.

From what little I’ve gleaned of Clear Sky/Whatever the patch was called, I might be playing Stalker for years. I’m already on my second playthrough, and I wouldn’t even consider beating Half-Life 2 or (for the first time) Oblivion. Neither game had any one part, or any aspect, that made me want to repeat it.

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But the one thing stopping me from going back to it is a lack of an auto-walk button. Seriously, my middle finger feels like it’ll fall off after playing this game for more than 20 minutes.

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