Metareview - S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

I picked it up, but I read that it has major problems with Vista, so I cracked open the other two games I got yesterday first:

Cooking Mama: Why do I always think Wii games are going to have more to them than making funny motions for a few seconds at a time.

Earth Defense Force: They forgot to actually make a game. This is terrible, anything you can think of to be wrong with a game is magnified X10 in this game. Horrible...it only even has 6 achievments but all involve beating the game so I probably wont achieve anything.

I'm gonna try to check out STALKER tonight, hopefully it will run for a few minutes before it crashes.

Picking up Silent Hunter 4 today as well.

I had the chance to get a press copy of the game, alas, my specs would have stopped me playing it though. Should have got a copy anyway, free stuff is always good. =)

Piked up a copy of it at EB yesterday. While I haven't got all that far yet it seems like a really good game.

Should have read the side of the box for STALKER. As far as I know it doesn't mention Vista on it.

http://www.fileplanet.com/promotions/stalker/sys_reqs.html

I'm gonna try it out today.

Waiting for my new video card, then I'll give this game a shot.

STALKER is great, but I think it's a bit too hard (at least where I'm at... at the beginning lol).

I keep running out of medikits, and the damned bandits wtf pwn me every turn I take.

I might have to make the trek back to the trader, and pick up a plethora of medikits and get those bastards back.

All in all, 90/100 seems like a great rating. I have noticed a few bugs already. Which will be patched up soon I'm sure (alot of text misspellings, like encyclopaedia... what is that??)

STALKER is amazing. That's all I can say here.

From what I've heard most of the low scores are bug related, which is quite annoying seeing how long it's been in development. It's a pity it didn't come out on time. Pre-Oblivion, it would have blown everyone's socks off. Still, I'm going to pop down to Woolworth's tomorrow to bag a copy.

This game so far is quite worth the wait, the graphics might predate it a tad, but I doubt it, it makes it more fun for those of use with older PC's.

Game play sounds amazing, as I have only played it for a mer 20mins, I will hold off on a full review till later.

For people that have a good system but not high end. I'd recommend this app,

http://www.theorica.net/gamexp.htm

excerpt-
"Game XP is intended to optimize the performance of your computer for gaming needs. It tweaks and modifies various XP settings (cache settings, CPU priority etc.) and optionally disables or stops several Windows services that are usually not needed. The program does not require any installation, and does not need to be running at all times. Game XP extends your operating system's capabilities and makes Windows faster and comfortable for maximum gaming experience."

encyclopaedia = british english.

Ah I didn't know that it was like that in British... it's funny though, the option at the bottom says: "Encyclopedia" and then when you click on it, the drop down menu says: "Encyclopaedia".

Weird.

Ugh, another FPS.

It works on Vista.

Not just a PFS Ritz. It's not nearly as linear as other FPS's. In fact, it seems close to the Deus Ex scale... and if you "ugh" at that game, then you deserve to be castrated.

Ugh, another uninformed comment.

Picked up my copy yesterday and played for roughly 5 hours last night. I agree the game is pretty challenging at first, but that was mainly because I was taking it on like other FPS's (ala run and gun). Once I learned to pace myself and be a little bit more tacticle, the game became more managable. Also doing a lot of quicksaves is a life saver :-P

As a whole the game can be pretty overwhelming, huge maps with a LOT of side quests to keep you busy for a long time. As mentioned before i played for a number of hours last night and i don't think i even scratched the surface on whats to come yet. Anywho, its a great game and I cant wait to get home and play some more :)

@Grim

What's the quicksave button? I tried all the F5-F8 buttons.

:) please?

Oh and the random radiation spots are pretty cool. Man... 20 mins left till I go home and give that game some more of my life.

Quicksave is f6 and quickload is f7. Unless you somehow unbound those keys, thats what they are defaulted to and what i was using like crazy lol.

Thanks sir, I'll give it a shot. Maybe I was overlooking them?

Leaving in 3 minutes... w00t!

I tried playing this game for about an hour before getting disgusted with it... it runs at a terrible framerate for a highend system and has numerous flaws, and really isnt that impressive graphics wise. One instance i was supposed to go find this guy about some artifact or another in a warehouse. get to the warehouse and no ones there. i wander around the building and all of a sudden people appear in the building and people are shooting at then from no where(also coming out of thin air) and not a fan of constantly having to keep a character in a game "fed". thank god i didnt pay for this.

It runs great in 1600X1200 with all the settings maxed out on my machine. I haven't had that much time to play it yet though So I can't comment on the game, but I can say the presentation so far has been terrific.

Oh and it tends to crash when I'm monkeying around in the menu system on Vista.

Here's a couple nice bugs:

Quicksave/Quickload does not work: This applies if the name you have as registered to the computer has a space in it. For example, my default user (the one I registered at the beginning of the install) is "Miles Foreman." STALKER cannot read spaces in save games, and quicksaves are labelled as "John Smith Quicksave" or something to that effect. When you go to quickload it will not work because it's trying to load "John" because it truncates the rest of the file. Awesome.

If you don't want to create a new user just to quicksave, fix for that supposedly is to edit your user preference file and add "bind_console save mysave kf10" and "bind_console load mysave kf11" to the file. There are topics on this at both the STALKER forums and Gamespot/GameFAQs. You can change "mysave" to whatever you want, I think. As long as there are no spaces in it.

Bleed Artifacts don't work properly: Artifacts that are supposed to lessen the amount of bleed time do the opposite: they increase it. On the other hand, the ones that are supposed to increase bleed time actually decrease it. This is a nice little exploit since you can equip the artifacts that are supposed to help radiation but increase your bleed time but you actually get an speed increase to your bleed recovery this way.

Warning: You can break quests very easily in this game. I ended up restarting and doing things "properly" the second time around. If you don't complete untimed quests correctly they never leave your journal and you will continue to get quest markers and such pointing in erroneous directions.

The game STALKER is very well made. The world is dark, depressing and elaborately designed.
Unfortunately, the player will never make any progress in this game that stacks all odds against. Good luck, player. If you can somehow miraculously survive the constant gang killing against you by every other living creature in this world, the radiation to which I can find no defense will suck your life completely while hordes of wild dogs tear at you and bullets hit your body from every direction.
FORGET STALKER.