Stalker - The Good, The Bad, & The Ukranian

[Admiral Rimjob POOBUM]

Stalker. I die in a few shots (with armour on) and enemies are... rather accurate. Two shotgun blasts tend to kill me, and when you're fighting five or more bandits, that can be a bit of a problem. I like a challenge, but it's a bit wearying when I have to reload ten times for every combat.

 

[dragonfk]

I've got quite old PC (GF6600, 1Gb Ram, P IV 2,8) and after turning off dynamic lighting(which is a killer) I've got very good framerates.

 

[Balor]

Well, instead of turning dynamic lightning compeltely off, turn off accurate lighting from sun.
Now THAT is a real resource hog. And glitchy, too - sometime framerate drops to single digits for no reason during that mode... but otherwise it runs fine for me.
Waiting for the 'freeplay patch' myself.

 

[Atrokkus]

Stalker. I die in a few shots (with armour on) and enemies are... rather accurate. Two shotgun blasts tend to kill me, and when you're fighting five or more bandits, that can be a bit of a problem. I like a challenge, but it's a bit wearying when I have to reload ten times for every combat.

Just learn to shoot better (it's a bit tricky, and different from other FPSs), and get some high-end rifle (like G36 or Strlok's AKS).

 

[Keender_surprise]

There's some conflicting impressions I'm getting about the game from all of the posts - is it open ended, or very linear and on rails?

 

[Atrokkus]

it's not an RPG. But it sure has diversity -- npcs move from area to area, occupy buildings and fight each other. This makes it a very interesting FPS experience, a good change from the static worlds of other FPS. The story is largely linear but has some branching near the end and you can also change your faction allegiance, thereby changing the play routes.

 

[DarkUnderlord]

There's some conflicting impressions I'm getting about the game from all of the posts - is it open ended, or very linear and on rails?

I'd say linear rather than open ended. Certainly in the sense that you're still doing the same things in the same order on most play throughs. Mind you, you're not restricted to following that order, however if you want to get the decent light jumping ending, you'll need to. As I said though, you can ignore that and simply wander through yourself but in that case, the ending you get isn't really worth it for the hassle.

What'll piss you off though is when you enter an area, you get new quests like "save the Stalkers at the Hangar" and you do and you feel awesome, only then you leave to go through to the next area, clear that out and come back through your previous area again, only to encounter another "save the Stalkers at the Hangar". If you end up going through that area a lot, you end up getting that quest a lot. In the end, I shot all the Stalkers at the Hangar yet next time I came through... I had to save them again. Or rather, I got that quest. In the end, I ignored it.

Ultimately a fun FPS. Story is interesting. Ending falls apart like most games ("lulz, we not haev teh time to finish ending") but worth a few run throughs. I found it more enjoyable than HL2 and Doom 3 (with their plastic worlds). The few NPCs moving from area to area is a nice touch but you too, will stop caring about them as you realise they just respawn if you kill them anyway. And the same bandits respawn in the same spots so while battles might be marginally different, it's still "shooting bandits by the hangar for the fifteenth time" or "go shoot some more guys at the Agropom... again".

Oh and most of the artifacts suck except the ones that give you stamina so that you can always run.

 

[Major_Blackhart]

I like the bullet proof artifacts and the anti-melee artifacts. Plus the anti-rad artifacts are friggin awesome. Get a Seva Suit, a few anti-rad artifacts (I've got maybe 4 -30 rad) and you can basically walk through the garbage with out any fear. Hell, I've already got like 5 night stars, 11 Souls, 8 Urchins, 3 Crystals, one Mama's Beads, and a few other goodies (like goldfish and their equivalent that gives no rads). If you set your belt up right and play somewhat carefully, you can pretty much own a helluva lot.

 

[Grandpa Gamer]

So, not to beat a dead horse or anything, but are people still playing this or was it just a short romp through a post-apoc qorld FPS style quickly forgotten?

I played through it two times. Haven't uninstalled it yet, but I doubt I'll get around to replaying it again. If you enjoyed Half Life 2, you'll like Stalker too. It's a good shooter with great atmosphere and detailed environments. As far as the story goes, I'd say it's just a cut above Deus Ex 2, though.

I've already got like 5 night stars, 11 Souls, 8 Urchins, 3 Crystals, one Mama's Beads, and a few other goodies

 

[User was nabbed fit]

So should I start playing again? By applying the new patches?

Have the new patches brought anything good into the game? I hear your armor new degrades when being shot at... I kinda like it how it was before.

 

[cutterjohn]

Thanks for the responses.

Open endedness: From what I've read in various reviews, usenet, and various fora the game is WAY more open ended than any other FPS that I've heard of. Didn't know about the repetitive quests, which is kind of a let down as you'd expect most of those to be one shot "special" quest deals.

ONLINE: HOW IS IT? ANYONE TRIED IT? (CAPS because I asked way back on the first page and none of you SOBs ever answered one way or another.)

Also, I thought that I saw on usenet that there is a 1.0004 or whatrever past 3 patch out now. Does this fix people's problems enough?

Ending(s): Well, the game was made by Russians(? Ukrainians?) and I suppose that someone should've told them that just because they finished everything up to the ending didn't mean that it was time to break out the Vodka, even though they had spent something like a decade working on it...

I guess that I'll definitely pick this up, when I see it at a decent price again.

 

[Tinkies]

ONLINE: HOW IS IT? ANYONE TRIED IT?

I used to play online, but it was pretty standard FPS fare. There are three modes; deathmatch, team deathmatch, and capture the flag (oops, I mean anomaly). One thing that stood out was that when you kill people, you receive money, which can be used to buy your weapons. Also, you can unlock better, and more expensive, weapons by raising your rank, which is accomplished by *gasp* killing people. However, even with all the pretty weapons to be had, almost every match I played eventually became a sniper fest by the end, because almost everyone camps. Oh, yeah, and you die really fast. Like, with one assault rifle burst. Even if you somehow survived said burst, the whole bleeding system from single player is still there, meaning you move really fucking slow, and there is no way to get out of it unless someone kills you, since your health doesn't regenerate. It's really annoying.

It was really buggy when I played, though. A lot of people had a tendency to lag, some to the point where they would win because nobody could hit them. In one weird match, people started turning invisible. In another, I crashed a server when firing a rocket launcher. Also, the Factory level was broken, because people would spawn under the level and could never escape. However, this was with the 1.01 patch; I have no clue how it is under 1.03. Still, it really wasn't all that great. It was just something to do at 2 in the morning.

 

[D]

IMO, STALKER becomes a hell ofa lot more fun when you play it with mods.

Case in point - I took the weapon characteristics data from FDFMOD for OFP (the most insanely realistic wargame with the most insanely realistic mod on top of it) and converted the values to STALKER for the weapons, then changed the NPCs' settings to make them more 'lifelike'.

The result is pretty awesome - albeit not something you'd want to play the whole game through, given the difficulty brought in by doing this.

Anyways, sagerSTALK is a good collection of mods if anyones' looking for one. If anyone wants it, I can also upload a weapons data mod that doubles the accuracy of every gun in the game, increases the damage of all guns a small degree, and allows you to use any attachment on (almost) any gun.

 

[User was nabbed fit]

IMO, STALKER becomes a hell ofa lot more fun when you play it with mods.

Case in point - I took the weapon characteristics data from FDFMOD for OFP (the most insanely realistic wargame with the most insanely realistic mod on top of it) and converted the values to STALKER for the weapons, then changed the NPCs' settings to make them more 'lifelike'.

The result is pretty awesome - albeit not something you'd want to play the whole game through, given the difficulty brought in by doing this.

Anyways, sagerSTALK is a good collection of mods if anyones' looking for one. If anyone wants it, I can also upload a weapons data mod that doubles the accuracy of every gun in the game, increases the damage of all guns a small degree, and allows you to use any attachment on (almost) any gun.

I wouldn't mind your first mod dealing with OFP's weapons characteristics, considering my affinity for that game.

 

[D]

I'll see if I've got it saved still on my main comp. STALKER's game files are stored as simple text files, so it's a simple enough affair of just changing a few numbers to get them to where you want them.

Speaking of which, I might actually see if I can get the FDF sounds as well; that'd make it pretty interesting.

EDIT: damn, I can't find it. I'll see if I can get the values again and make a new one.
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[Dmitron]

I wouldn't mind your first mod dealing with OFP's weapons characteristics, considering my affinity for that game.

Made the move to ArmA yet, VO?

 

[Major_Blackhart]

Hey, does anyone know if a date is set yet for the latest Stalker patch, the Singleplayer SDK, and Free Mode? I can't read russian, so I don't know if anything has been announced.

 

[The_Nameless_Prick]

Stalker's not too bad. What is too bad is that my computer can't run it very well. What's with all the Ruskies?

 

[cutterjohn]

I wouldn't mind your first mod dealing with OFP's weapons characteristics, considering my affinity for that game.

Made the move to ArmA yet, VO?

I just stumbled across this the other day, and even though it sounded like it's been out for quite some time, I finally see where some local retailers appear to have new retail boxed copies in stores now @ $39.99. (Saw it while browsing through what Target officially has on the web, as Circuitshitty and Worst Buy are living up to their affected names ATM, and Compuseless has rolled over and just about died(but they deserve it as they never decided what they wanted to be when they grew up).)

So anyone have this one? MP any good? (note the trend?)

(I originally heard about them from Operation Flashpoint, but never got around to getting it, and figure that it'd be kind of pointless now as I doubt that anyone plays online any longer, or enough to bother with.)

 

[Tinkies]

Hey, does anyone know if a date is set yet for the latest Stalker patch, the Singleplayer SDK, and Free Mode? I can't read russian, so I don't know if anything has been announced.

The new patch is in testing, and should be out sometime before E3. Freeplay will be in the patch after that.

 

[Dmitron]

I wouldn't mind your first mod dealing with OFP's weapons characteristics, considering my affinity for that game.

Made the move to ArmA yet, VO?

I just stumbled across this the other day, and even though it sounded like it's been out for quite some time, I finally see where some local retailers appear to have new retail boxed copies in stores now @ $39.99. (Saw it while browsing through what Target officially has on the web, as Circuitshitty and Worst Buy are living up to their affected names ATM, and Compuseless has rolled over and just about died(but they deserve it as they never decided what they wanted to be when they grew up).)

So anyone have this one? MP any good? (note the trend?)

(I originally heard about them from Operation Flashpoint, but never got around to getting it, and figure that it'd be kind of pointless now as I doubt that anyone plays online any longer, or enough to bother with.)

Depends how much of a OFP "obsessive" you are. It's an upgraded version of Flashpoint. Needs a good machine, graphics have been improved. The game was released in a very buggy condition 7 months ago (the American version released a few weeks is patched out-of-the-box, but also requires a 500mb downloaded update). MP and SP is now quite decent, though I still suffer the occasional CTD. Play feels about the same as OFP. Modding community is currently awaiting the release of the tools (expected to start this month - though quite a few decent mods have already been released.

I loved OFP, so I like this "upgrade", but as a standalone game for a new player..it'll probably be a disappointment. ArmA's single player campaign is tepid.

The focus on "graphix" over realistic gameplay has somewhat affected ArmA, many of the upgraded\new features are graphical in nature. I was hoping for more gameplay enhancements.