Stalker - Shadow of Chernobyl

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I picked this game up in the budget bin and was surprised. Yes it is a shooter, but whit a lot of RPG icing.

It has quests and stores, not just one single path to follow.
You can roam about like Oblivion. You can just walk around do the odd jobs and forget about the main quest for a while.

Lots of different weapons whit stats and they cannot be used endlessly. Guns degrade forcing to buy or find new.

It is not to difficult for not hardcore shooterplayers. The a/i is fair. You have an inventory, weight restrictions, map, questbook, and compass. You can talk to neutrals and friendlies and have to eat once and a while.

No leveling up, no character parameters. It has respawning behind your back, and lots of dogs aka cliffracers. Quite a few patches, and still some quests and up broken, but that is not a problem.

If it was whit elves and swords developers could call it an RPG. Worthy for us non hardcore shooterplayers to pick up when we have an anti fantasy fase.

 

Few things about stalker that I liked:
-The fraction wars. I just like that for some reasion.
-The re playability. some people complain about how you do the same thing over and over but it's really a lot of fun to see how you can approach different areas.
-The Stealth. The game has a very good, yet underused stealth system. Lot of fun to play with.
-The environment. Very atmospheric
-The scope for the AK...


And that bugged me:
-How every single bandit seems to have a stash (I mean, come on )
-How the armor did not degrade until about 3 patches in
-How the guns jam. I know it's realistic, but it killed me so me times.
-How incredibly difficult it is to become part of the fractions.

Overall, A fun game. I'll be getting Clear Sky soon.

 

I liked the free roaming and the way STALKER brings across that post-apocalyptical feeling. I also loved to sneak around on my own, making my way through hostile territory and trying to find that vantage point from which you can take them down in relativele safety. And of course taking pot shots with a rifle with scope from that position. In that respect it's really too bad that you get the gauss rifle so late in the game that you'll only have use for it if you go for the long ending.

Then there's the moments in the game that give off a decidedly creepy feel, which adds significantly to the sensation that you should proceed carefully because you're all alone in very hostile territory, being stalked by unknown creatures. The very first time actually coming face to face with a Bloodsucker managed to convey this feeling very well. Or meeting a Poltergeist for the first time, was really creepy, as I had things thrown to my head all the time, but couldn't figure out for the first quarter of an hour or so where the hell it was coming from.

The inventory system I was a bit ambivalent about. It severly limits how much junk you can carry around, which adds to the realism and the feeling that your character is an actual person with limited place to stow stuff and limited weight capacity to lug around all this. It's much different than the normal FPS games, in which the protagonist can carry around an assault rifle, rocket launcher, shotgun and sniper with enough ammo to let him fire said weapons non-stop for at least a minute, which always leaves the big question: "Where does he keep all this sh!t?".

In STALKER on the other hand, you've got enough weight capacity to lug around a single piece of armor, an assault rifle and a pistol, some ammo (but not too much) and several miscellaneous items such as medkits and artifacts. You could take a shotgun with you for short range combat, but don't be expecting to take any loot with you to sell later if you do, which means that you'll have less money to go around. (I'd still do it anyway, as you usually don't need a lot of money if you just scavenge for your equipment).

While this inventory management adds to the realism, it does not appeal to my inner pack rat, which has been cultivated in countless RPGs to take along as much loot as you can. Well, in the end I ended up modding the game so I could carry more stuff with me, so I could try out more guns and wouldn't run out of ammo so quickly, but the idea of this kind of inventory management is still very well suited to the game STALKER is.

I didn't particularly care for the weapon degradation, though. Or at least I didn't care for the fact that you can do nothing about it. If I happen to find a really nice weapon with some interesting attachments to it already, I'd like to keep it and use it from then on. Unfortunately, after a while it will have degraded until it becomes unusable. I'd like to think that the Stalker I'm controlling would have at least as much knowlegde of weapons to know how to take one apart and clean it once in a while, which should stop most of the degradation, or at least slow it so that the gun can last me a lot longer.

The worst thing about STALKER, though, was the way the quest would just constantly respawn time and again. I literally couldn't go through the Garbage once without getting the request to aid some stalkers in their fight against the constantly respawning bandits. And if you just let them be your reputation will take a hit, too.

The garbage area sucked in that respect anyway. For instance, take the first group of stalkers you meet there which request your help (the ones in the car graveyard). I helped them out, beat off the bandits and then I talked to the leader of that group for my reward, and while we're talking, he gets shot in the head by some freshly spawned bandits on the other side of the junkyard. Didn't I just help them to prevent something like this from happening? So much for any feeling of satisfaction from helping these guys.

And the constantly reappearing quests persist with everyone who gives you quests. Sure, the main storyline quests never reappear, but when they ask you to do odd jobs for them they can ask you to do the same thing 10 times in a row without batting an eye.

With a more thought out quest system and the ability to repair weapons, this could've been the best game released last year. I understand that Clear Skies is adding weapon repairs to the game, but general consensus seems to be that it's too hard and generally not as good as the original, so I'll hold out on purchasing that one.

 

I disliked the bandits there, however you dont have to save the stalkes more then once. sure they die if you leave them but thats not a huge problem.

If you want huge problems I got one for you. When mercs or soliders wander into the city with "The Bar" (Cant remember the name). You CAN NOT kill them without Duty guards firing on you for breaching their rules. However they can (and often do) shot you and everyone else in the area.
Now if that's not a bug I don't know what is.

 

Never encountered that one bug, though that does sound troublesome. Do the bandits enter from the same side as where the blind mutts run around? Can't say I remember ever seeing any bandits spawn anywhere else in that area.

Another thing I sort of like about the game is how easy it is to get out of bounds. Sure it's not realistic or anything, but every once in a while I can have a lot of fun just running around where I'm really not supposed to be running around.

As an aside, check out this review of Clear Sky by Yahtzee. It's been a while since I've seen something so hilarious