zool
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2009
- Messages
- 897
Yes, I put e.v.e.r.y. f.u.c.k.i.n.g d.o.t.s in the title because the game deserves it. I haven't felt such immershun for a long long time. Probably since I last played Fallout a few years ago.
I bought the game two years ago and played for a couple of hours, enjoying the atmosphere but ultimately uninstalling it because it ran like shitl on my crappy rig. Recently, I bought myself a new one with good specs and decided to reinstall S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl to test it with all graphic sliders at a maximum.
I don't regret it.
The game is fucking beautiful and immensely enjoyable in terms of atmosphere and art design. Sure, the gameplay is kinda broken and the incentive to LARP is strong. But hear my account from last night in the Zone, between Agroprom and the Garbage...
Just a moment ago, I came back from a trip which started the day before when I found Strelok's cache hidden in the tunnels underneath the abandoned Agroprom factory. I stayed in the safe cache and slept until it was dark enough outside. I then emerged from the tunnels under a beautiful sky full of stars: I was inside the military base, not far from Agroprom. My mission was to steal the briefcase as Sidorovich had instructed me, and to bring it to the barkeeper in the Bar area.
Silently emerging from the ground, I used the shadows to avoid patrols and got into the deserted main building in the dead of night. Using my silenced AKS-74U, I got rid of the two soldiers guarding the third floor and took the briefcase. I also had recovered earlier a message from the body of a dead stalker saying that he had hidden some of his possessions in one of the buildings in the base. So instead of going straight back to the tunnel and getting out of the heavily-guarded base, I crept into the nearby building where the stash was supposed to be. Unfortunately, as soon as I set foot inside, I noticed three soldiers sleeping on mattresses on the floor, snoring heavily. At the same time, the alarm sounded, waking up the three soldiers notten feets from me (not sure if it was because I entered the building or if someone found the bodies of the two guards I had killed earlier). Needless to say, after a one-second freeze, I ran back to the underground entrance as fast as I could under a hail of bullets coming from the awaken guards and from the guard towers.
After walking for five minutes in the tunnels, I found myself face to face with a group of five bandits who had probably arrived while I was sleeping in Strelok's cache. I disposed of them and got out near Agroprom in the silent darkness.In the distance, I spotted a flashlight: a lone stalker was slowly walking on the edge of a hill. As I was watching him with my binoculars, he got sucked by an anomaly, found himself hanging up five feets over the ground before the anomaly tore him apart. After witnessing this gruesome event, I proceeded to loot a few stalker hidden stashes in the area, including one right under an electrical pylon where a group of four wild boars had decided to stay. I had to wait five minutes before they finally got away, during which I heard some brief gunfire coming from the east over the hill.
It started to rain and I decided to go back to the Garbage area where I would surely find some place dry where I could sleep, maybe even in the company of some fellow stalkers. I would have slept at the Agroprom factory but it had been occupied the day before by a group of heavily-armed soldiers. On the way to the Garbage, I saw from afar a lone Ukrainian soldier patrolling on the road with a headlamp. Next to him was a rusty abandoned truck, lying empty on the side of the road. From the cover of darkness, I put a bullet in his head. A second soldier emerged from behind the truck and was granted the same merciful death. Once the two-man patrol was dead, I looted their corpse and also found the body of a dead bandit lying in the middle of the road: he had probably been shot by the two soldiers before I arrived (most likely, that was the brief shooting I heard while I was waiting for the mutated boars to move away from the electrical pylon).
When I got to the Garbage, I avoided the bandits patroling near the train station and headed toward the carpark, an area full of abandoned vehicles where stalkers where often found. As I got near, I heard loud gunfire coming from there. Crouched between two piles of highly-radioactive waste, I pulled my binoculars. Despite the darkness and the heavy rain, I could see in the dimly lit carpark a small group of stalkers being attacked by a much larger group of bandits. Before I could intervene, all the stalkers were dead and the bandits took possession of the carpark.
Dismayed, I headed toward the main building in the area, where I had fought earlier alongside a stalker named Seryi and his friends against bandits. Seryi had been killed along with his fellow stalkers, but I had managed to dispose of the bandits. I was hoping that other stalkers would have assembled there for the night. Unfortunately, the vast ruined building (quite reminiscent of a WWII Stalingrad factory) was empty and lifeless, with the dead bodies of Seryii and all the others still lying there in the dark.
At that point, the wind brought to my ears the sound of harmonica. I got out of the building and found nearby a group of three rookie stalkers, one of them playing harmonica, assembled around a fire in a ruined bus stop. At long last, a friendly human presence! I spent the rest of the night there, rolled in my sleeping bag next to the roaring fire.
When I woke up at dawn after a short night, the rain had stopped. I said goodbye to my friends and started the long walk toward the Cordon, where I had to meet Sidorovich to collect a bounty for a task I had done for him the day before. Glancing at the purple sky in the very early morning with blankets of fog and anomalies all around me, I passed by the carpark. All was calm and through the lenses of my binoculars, I could see absolutely no life there. I decided to check it out. There were a good dozen of bodies, stalkers and bandits, laying around the carpark: one of them was bizarrely put atop a still fuming brasero. Evidently, during the night, a group had slaughtered the bandits which I had seen earlier taking over the carpark, and then left. With the sun finally rising over the lifeless carpark, I decided I would stop playing there and write down a report for you folks.
Note: On top of the game patched to 1.0005, I added the STALKER Complete 2009 1.4.4 mod to get even more of a boner on graphix and to fix the most annoying bugs and design faults. The mod is VERY well done and as far as I can tell doesn't change anything of the original atmosphere, but only improves it by using higher-res textures, reworked sky, etc... plus a ton of fixes, AI improvements, better English localization, sleeping bag and so on. It's not as much as a different game than when playing with AMK or OL, but it simply makes the original game way better. Also needed is the Realistic Weapons add-on 0.7 made expressely for Complete by the same guy - with it installed, you won't have to unload a full clip of AK-74 on a bandit before he finally hits the ground.
I bought the game two years ago and played for a couple of hours, enjoying the atmosphere but ultimately uninstalling it because it ran like shitl on my crappy rig. Recently, I bought myself a new one with good specs and decided to reinstall S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl to test it with all graphic sliders at a maximum.
I don't regret it.
The game is fucking beautiful and immensely enjoyable in terms of atmosphere and art design. Sure, the gameplay is kinda broken and the incentive to LARP is strong. But hear my account from last night in the Zone, between Agroprom and the Garbage...
Just a moment ago, I came back from a trip which started the day before when I found Strelok's cache hidden in the tunnels underneath the abandoned Agroprom factory. I stayed in the safe cache and slept until it was dark enough outside. I then emerged from the tunnels under a beautiful sky full of stars: I was inside the military base, not far from Agroprom. My mission was to steal the briefcase as Sidorovich had instructed me, and to bring it to the barkeeper in the Bar area.
Silently emerging from the ground, I used the shadows to avoid patrols and got into the deserted main building in the dead of night. Using my silenced AKS-74U, I got rid of the two soldiers guarding the third floor and took the briefcase. I also had recovered earlier a message from the body of a dead stalker saying that he had hidden some of his possessions in one of the buildings in the base. So instead of going straight back to the tunnel and getting out of the heavily-guarded base, I crept into the nearby building where the stash was supposed to be. Unfortunately, as soon as I set foot inside, I noticed three soldiers sleeping on mattresses on the floor, snoring heavily. At the same time, the alarm sounded, waking up the three soldiers notten feets from me (not sure if it was because I entered the building or if someone found the bodies of the two guards I had killed earlier). Needless to say, after a one-second freeze, I ran back to the underground entrance as fast as I could under a hail of bullets coming from the awaken guards and from the guard towers.
After walking for five minutes in the tunnels, I found myself face to face with a group of five bandits who had probably arrived while I was sleeping in Strelok's cache. I disposed of them and got out near Agroprom in the silent darkness.In the distance, I spotted a flashlight: a lone stalker was slowly walking on the edge of a hill. As I was watching him with my binoculars, he got sucked by an anomaly, found himself hanging up five feets over the ground before the anomaly tore him apart. After witnessing this gruesome event, I proceeded to loot a few stalker hidden stashes in the area, including one right under an electrical pylon where a group of four wild boars had decided to stay. I had to wait five minutes before they finally got away, during which I heard some brief gunfire coming from the east over the hill.
It started to rain and I decided to go back to the Garbage area where I would surely find some place dry where I could sleep, maybe even in the company of some fellow stalkers. I would have slept at the Agroprom factory but it had been occupied the day before by a group of heavily-armed soldiers. On the way to the Garbage, I saw from afar a lone Ukrainian soldier patrolling on the road with a headlamp. Next to him was a rusty abandoned truck, lying empty on the side of the road. From the cover of darkness, I put a bullet in his head. A second soldier emerged from behind the truck and was granted the same merciful death. Once the two-man patrol was dead, I looted their corpse and also found the body of a dead bandit lying in the middle of the road: he had probably been shot by the two soldiers before I arrived (most likely, that was the brief shooting I heard while I was waiting for the mutated boars to move away from the electrical pylon).
When I got to the Garbage, I avoided the bandits patroling near the train station and headed toward the carpark, an area full of abandoned vehicles where stalkers where often found. As I got near, I heard loud gunfire coming from there. Crouched between two piles of highly-radioactive waste, I pulled my binoculars. Despite the darkness and the heavy rain, I could see in the dimly lit carpark a small group of stalkers being attacked by a much larger group of bandits. Before I could intervene, all the stalkers were dead and the bandits took possession of the carpark.
Dismayed, I headed toward the main building in the area, where I had fought earlier alongside a stalker named Seryi and his friends against bandits. Seryi had been killed along with his fellow stalkers, but I had managed to dispose of the bandits. I was hoping that other stalkers would have assembled there for the night. Unfortunately, the vast ruined building (quite reminiscent of a WWII Stalingrad factory) was empty and lifeless, with the dead bodies of Seryii and all the others still lying there in the dark.
At that point, the wind brought to my ears the sound of harmonica. I got out of the building and found nearby a group of three rookie stalkers, one of them playing harmonica, assembled around a fire in a ruined bus stop. At long last, a friendly human presence! I spent the rest of the night there, rolled in my sleeping bag next to the roaring fire.
When I woke up at dawn after a short night, the rain had stopped. I said goodbye to my friends and started the long walk toward the Cordon, where I had to meet Sidorovich to collect a bounty for a task I had done for him the day before. Glancing at the purple sky in the very early morning with blankets of fog and anomalies all around me, I passed by the carpark. All was calm and through the lenses of my binoculars, I could see absolutely no life there. I decided to check it out. There were a good dozen of bodies, stalkers and bandits, laying around the carpark: one of them was bizarrely put atop a still fuming brasero. Evidently, during the night, a group had slaughtered the bandits which I had seen earlier taking over the carpark, and then left. With the sun finally rising over the lifeless carpark, I decided I would stop playing there and write down a report for you folks.
Note: On top of the game patched to 1.0005, I added the STALKER Complete 2009 1.4.4 mod to get even more of a boner on graphix and to fix the most annoying bugs and design faults. The mod is VERY well done and as far as I can tell doesn't change anything of the original atmosphere, but only improves it by using higher-res textures, reworked sky, etc... plus a ton of fixes, AI improvements, better English localization, sleeping bag and so on. It's not as much as a different game than when playing with AMK or OL, but it simply makes the original game way better. Also needed is the Realistic Weapons add-on 0.7 made expressely for Complete by the same guy - with it installed, you won't have to unload a full clip of AK-74 on a bandit before he finally hits the ground.
