S.T.A.L.K.E.R. reviewed in PC Zone

Scored 85%

Overall they very much liked the game.

Their bullet points:
Graphics - Stunning graphical tricks and effects.
Sound - Excellent throughout.

+ Awesome setting
+ Great action, brilliant high-end weapons
+ Artificial Life fun to be around
+ Genuinely does new stuff.

- Awkward side missions
- Crap script, story-telling and characters.

There you go then.

My interpretation of the review was as a FPS shooter it is great, it is the sort of RPG elements and storyline/scripting that are a bit weaker - but not bad - just weak.

Some suspicions that things have been pulled from the game - maybe to get it finished.

Name one game that isn't a victim of the deadline!

I personally thought the only strong point of the game was the
AI. Yeah the visuals are pretty, but I had FUN playing against
the AI.

That's where games need to go these days, I'm tellin you all!

Sounds like DOOM3 to me... "been there, done that", why would I want to do it again? Although I'll admit that the nature does look cool and it might be nice to wander around the forest and stuff - much better than plastic mars base.

When did (or should I say, how did) you play against the AI?

I've played a Beta of it but there was no AI in there - not that I could find.

Duke Nukem Forever?

mario 64 got delayed by over a year in order for features to be finished. Didn't really do the N64 much good though as they hold off the console release for it.

Still, 3 weeks to go then we can all play S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

I'm sure patches will follow. I always get quite excited by patches.

This is due in 2 days!

Another review here:

http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/action/stalker/review.html?mode=gsreview

Contains links to other reviews:
http://uk.gamespot.com/pc/action/stalker/review.html?mode=web

The excitement is building.

It's getting overall great scores, looks like a pickup to me, and hopefully I will enjoy it as it appears to be inline with the love-it-or-hate-it gem of a game, Deus Ex.

My *gut feeling* is that this game won't live up to the hype - I think the publisher / developer mayhem throughout it's project lifecycle has killed what could have once been a classic. I have a feeling it won't be in the same league as Deus Ex - hardly anything can touch that for pure gameplay.

'This first-person survival game is at times amazing and engrossing and on par with such classics as Deus Ex and System Shock.'

Well, that's Gamespot's take...

I just hope the outdoor sections are as large as I vision them in my head though, too many FPS games these days shove you through narrow linear shoot-out sections with no room to just explore the surrounding locations as you please, and it appears STALKER just may fit the bill for me regarding this.

Hope it doesn't take too long before I see it in stores, been waiting for this title for quite awhile since I saw it back at....E3'03 I believe?

WTH? Was I on drugs when I wrote that response up top? I've
never played STALKER.

Maybe I was thinking of F.E.A.R.? I don't have Alzheimers,
but I must at least have halfzheimers, geez.

If that's all they have to offer I think I'll pass. I have a crappy soundcard and my graphics card probably isn't up to spec.

I heard that its a slideshow with a 6600 unless you turn dymanic lighting and shadows off, even in 800x600

Wonder if I can play it in stereo 3d with my Z800 HMD...

This is out T O M O R R O W

I shall be buying it.

Note: rumour has it that it uses StarForce.

Here is a new video - looks like it was made by someone with an illegal full version: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1WNtzUMV544

Possibly this one too:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XtHKWeJ5bno

Gamespot video review:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fk9OUdtlIA0


Tomorrow we will shall all buy sweeties and play this game into the early hours.

Already have it. No starforce either :|

Is it any good - what's it like? Has it lived up to expectation?

Someone here has got to agree that I'm a fool.

ok yer a fewl. :)

Incredible excitement is about to hit this thread - stay tuned for a further (imminent) update.

It is out T O D A Y !

It is now technically Friday 23rd in the UK.

Well, I just returned - I bought it in Virgin for exactly £24.00 - thats two games I have saved big money on in Virgin.

In the UK Virgin always seem to undercut everyone else by at least a fiver.

Installing it now - no calls - no emails and no PS3s thank you.

I've not played it yet - I decided to defrag my gaming disk with PerfectDisk - the thing is still de-fragging.

I'm kind of itching to play this.

PC Format have just awarded this game with 93%!

Everyone is talking about how graphically nice the game is - especially the lighting. The dynamic lighting actually gives scenes noticeable depth.

Plus, I reckon this game might be easy to cheat at - I had trouble cheating with Test Drive Unlimited. I think S.T.A.L.K.E.R. will be easy to jig about with - all those stats and cash values and stuff. Atari put protection in TDU which I'm not happy about.

If it chuggs at 1fps or less with medium settings you may have to quit to windows and restart the game 3-4 times before it will run correctly. I noticed this seems to be a problem for some people.

I've been sitting here staring at the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. manual for nearly 2 hours.

Anyway - just defragged - installing now.

Personally, I think it was a smart move to take time to degrag.

I'm so excited.

Defrag? Meh - life's too short. :P

Jesus christ!!!

Forget the recommended stats on the outside of the game box - forget those figures. Have a look at the readme that comes with the game:



Surely that is the highest ever requirements for a computer game so far in history?

^^ wow.. x2800... where to buy that? XD

I have been playing the game now for a couple of hours. It's very confusing to say at least.

What i like:
The surroundings really feel alive. Stray dogs are roaming the landscape and attack you when you come to near, humans do their biz, trees and grass waving in the wind and not to forget the landscape with it's deadly anomalies.
The AI is deadly. It's survival for the fittest.

So far i dont like:
It's way too hard. Even on lower settings.
Only after some searching on the forum i found a config file which gave me a good performance/eye candy ratio.
The mission systems is utterly broken or i am too stupid to understand it. It think the former. Main story missions fail without a reason, or are very unclear.
The game world is not as big as they want you to believe. It's cut in zones and to travel between zones you have to pass choke points, which are littered with baddies, which means you get good friends with your last savegame because you die (a lot).

Still, it's a good game with bucketloads of atmosphere and immersion. I think i have to find out how it's mend to be played before i really can enjoy the game.

I've got Intel 6600, 2GB RAM and Geforce 8800GTX and Im playing this game with all settings maxed out with great framerates.

I think its a tad to hard with the difficulty sneaking up to people, they see me from a mile away :p but its fun fighting against them, as they're not just standing around, they make an effort to hide after fireing at you.

So far, my gathering obsession isn't doing me much good though :p constantly overloaded.

I love it so far - I like the RPG elements - it's sort of Oblivion in a modern day environment.

I've already cheated my cash to a billion - I can buy everything I want.

I tried cheating with other things such as bullets, but the normal methods fail - the developers have obviously done something sneaky. However, I am happy being a billionaire - I can buy all I need.

This is a game I'd play again when I buy my new system - just to see it in its full glory. In fact, it might encourage me buy a new system prior to updating to Crysis.

So far - I like it. I'm playing it on the easiest setting so I'm not getting too much hassle from monsters and stuff.

This game has won two points from me so far...

1) Cheap ($38 CDN, when most new PC games I see are $49/54)

2) DVD (why is it most high-requirement games assume people don't have DVD-ROM drives on their rigs, and instead make them install the game via 5 CDs?)


Will play it after as I got an event in my MMORPH to attend to..

I found out that by setting the machineguns to single instead of automatic( 9,0 keys ) my killing rate improved a lot. Single shots are much more accurate than bursts.

@Puki
How you get the infinite money?

There's a trainer which offers money, near-invulnerability, infinite ammo, infinite stamina and a couple other things. I won't link to it since trainers are often found on dodgy sites but if you can't find it, holler and I'll email it to you. It's only 300kb or so.

Oooh, I haven't got the trainer - I'll take a look for it.

I hacked the value myself, but found some values were harder to fix - rather than ponce about like a PS3 at a sailor's convention, I'll search out some cheats.

Now, puki, you aren't going to come back some time later to post how bored you've become
with the game because you cheated right away, like you did with oblivion, are you?

Finally got around to playing this, first impressions not so bad.

Runs so-so on my GF6800 GT here, 1024x768, med settings, med lighting, runs around 30fps in most situations, although the controls feel clunky, but I'm unsure whether the FPS is to blame, or just the controls themselves on that, regardless, they're functional.

My main pet peeve at the moment is the inventory system, is anyone elses mouse moving extremely slow in it? I also find myself having to click once or twice.....or thrice, just to hit the damn "Use/Drop" button on some items also.

Rain also buggered up on my system, but I'm assuming a patch will be out soon that relieves me of that issue.

Interested to pursue forward in the game, but I need a dang patch, hard on my eyes with the rain effect being screwed up on my PC.
(basically, the rain keeps flickering a large stretched alpha'd poly at random angles on my screen a few times per second overtop of the game graphics)

I gotta say though, the game's got one damn big play-field. Looks like this'll be a good length FPS/RPG. Rare in this day and age to find an FPS with some actual NPC interaction.

I got it now too. Really enjoy playing it. Have the same rain problem but not all the time. Seems to take a good 30 minutes or so before the rain screws up here.

It's kind of like mixing Operation Flashpoint with Oblivion :)

THink it's my favourite FPS since Riddick. It doesn't have the fancy physics of HL2 but for me at least, its about 60% better. Probably because HL is too linear and the controls and feel of HL are very generic. Stalker seems a lot more realistic.

I don't have the same issues with menu's work fine here and my system has only a AGP 6600GT. Have to run in 800x600 but with almost everything turned up except no AA or antroscopic.

With the missions in your PDA everything gets scheduled so theres a kind of timeframe. YOu can wander off and do your own thing and still keep time, but you can fail tasks if you turn up too late.

Thats ok, kind of realistic if you have ever been involved with the army, running cross country and keeping to scheduled times are vital. So its all good stuff.

I like the graphics, only the characters are not as good as the surroundings.

The graphics are so-so regarding outdoors, it seems developers never want to do something special with their terrains as they all use the boring grid-based LoD mesh.......then hide that by putting a crapload of foilage to block yer view.

The lighting effects really save the day though for the most part, I was surprised to see that even broken walls of a building will project shadows inside the buildings and onto other objects from outside.

Wish there was an easier way to kill the dogs, it shouldn't take 3-5 bullet with the beginning-pistol to take them down. ;/
(I just try to outrun them and end up with 5-7 dogs on my rear in the end)

actually that is one thing that needs tweaking, the weapon damage. When you shoot something in the head it should be pretty quick to take down.

I'm not a big fan of heightmap grid terrains either, but it looks better than most in this game.

The landscape kinda looks what you can expect from that region though - grassy plains with the occational hill.

Dogs are easy, I use shotgun on em :p Take one down and the others run away from you for a while.

I had the rain-poly-mess happen, but I just saved and restarted the game and it was ok again.

hold on,am i missing something,youve had the game for less than 4 hours (by looking at your posts),and youve cheated already?

i really dont understand that basically,because it throws the whole idea of it being a game out of the window,and turns it to some sort of digital interactive dvd type affair.

oh well,as long as your enjoying yourself i suppose :-]

Could you guys post some high-res screenshots?

Actually, from what I can tell, money isn't an issue - the whole point of the game seems to be scavaging from the dead.

Still, it's nice to have a billion tucked away - just in case.


The only challenge I want to meet is to play this game on a new system with every setting cranked up to FULL. It's the lighting effects that really show this game off - I must, must, must play this game in all it's glory.

pocket change,surely ;-]

Ask and ye shall receive...

*clicky*
*clicky*
*clicky*
*clicky*


Looks better in motion though, mainly due to the ever-changing lighting effects.
(11-15FPS with max settings used there)

That guitar-guy in pic2 caught me off guard, was wandering the little area there, started hearing some acoustic music, thought it was just some ambient music, then it started getting louder as I moved about, and then I noticed the guitar in the guy's hands. Shame they don't speak English, was wondering what he said to his buds around the fire after he finished playing.

Some people have been translating stuff:

http://www.gsc-game.com/index.php?t=community&s=forums&s_game_type=xr&lang=en

Beware of the Garbage zone - whatever it is called - the Bandit Stalker groups respawn into the level.

The Garbage area is the area to the north of the first level (where the Soviet army checkpoint is). The whole level is a warzone between Stalker clans and Bandit Stalkers. Problem is, the Bandit ones keep respawning and I can see no way of saving the friendly Stalkers.

So, when in that zone I recommend you just do the missions as quickly as possible as it is likely a mission-giving Stalker is going to get wasted at some point.

Creation. God even finished 14% ahead of plan. He gave everyone a paid holiday.

I´ve spent the last four or five hours playing STALKER, and it basically still looks like a boring FPS version of FALLOUT to me. Didn´t they originally advertise an all dynamic, AI-driven 30 square km game world? Something that was worth waiting for?

What I see now is a dull RPG where you basically play the old "ask A for a mission, go to B, do something for C, collect item D, go back to A for a reward and a new mission" game. And, as always, you only have a pistol where your enemies outnumber you and have LOTS of AK-47s. Great. In FARCRY or RETURN TO CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN, that was fun. Here, I just have again that feeling of extreme disappointment (worse than it was with Half-Life 2). I'm probably just getting too old for that shit or maybe I have already played too many of those games in my life. Instead of putting all the efforts into fancy graphics engines, they should better invest in the game itself and make it FUN to play.

Those were great First Person Shooters and real milestones:
Doom (simply addictive, desctructive fun :-)
Half-Life (still BY FAR the best FPS game until today)
Unreal Tournament (fast and fun - this game got me to like Deathmatch)
Return To Castle Wolfenstein (great atmosphere, well done, and just FUN to play)
Unreal Tournament 2004 (the ultimate network game)
Far Cry (great level design and the last "Big Thing" in the genre)


FEAR -- could have been a tick better story-wise, but basically was well done.


Those were more or less disappointing "in-betweens":
Unreal (nice graphics, but too buggy and too difficult)
The Quake Series (what happened to Doom????)
Doom 3 (awesome sound engine and horror atmosphere, but the game itself...?)
Half-Life 2 (nice NPCs, nice graphics, but the "story"...?)
STALKER (I'm still trying to find the fun part of the game, maybe it is hidden somehwere)

Anyway, it all doesn't really matter. As long as Neil Manke is working on a new THEY HUNGER game, there is still hope for the genre. And maybe CRYSIS will be a worty successor to FARCRY as well.

H&K: god to billions of years to get the world to its present state so thats one hell of a slippage in my book ;)

Nope, definatly went gold with 14% of the development cycle time still left ;)
The "billions of years" is stable running time. Or Background story, depending

Thanks Genexi!

So is this game isn't in english?

/me yawns at the screenshots

Winni, looks like you like more arcade FPS shooters. I don't like any of the FPS in your list, thought they were all generic and kind of dull except FEAR, and you missed the best one, Riddick. I put stalker pretty high up on the list.

Only other ones I really liked in the past were operation flashpoint and Hidden and dangerous series.

I guess these games are more tactical, where you like the more simple point and shoot FPS, with simple combat mechanisms.

Just thought of another I liked, Brothers in Arms was pretty cool.

It's in English, just 90% of the locales I've seen have Russian (I believe) voice-overs, given the location of the event the game is based upon....

Wish they had english-subtitles for them at least, I mean, your guy can apparently speak with them (since interaction is text-based), so why does he rely on the guy controlling his every action to understand it for him. ;/


'eh, like I said, looks better in motion, the game has more going for it that builds up the immersion factor other than graphics.

Evak, that's interesting - I never played any of the games that you mention.

When I want to play an RPG, then I play a real RPG, not an FPS. But the last ones that I played were FALLOUT and BALDUR´S GATE. I gave THE TEMPLE OF ELEMENTAL EVIL a shot, and did not like it at all. Anyway, RPGs are not my favourites anyway. I rather play CIVILIZATION and the like.

I finally entered level 3 in STALKER last night, and I am still not overly excited. You know, in an area like "the zone", I would not expect a road block and bandit patrol every 100 meters and so many people around. And all that role playing crap just does not belong into that game. I am somehow convinced that they built it in because they simply could not deliver on their dynamic world promise and had to ship.

When you remember the old STALKER homepage and what they wrote there about their game, you just wonder whatever happened to "when a STALKER is too far away from you, he cannot hear you, when you signal that you want to approach him". Geez, I cannot even hail another Stalker, not mention that I cannot "really" talk to him. "Anything new?", "Got work for me?" and "See you" are the only options.

And what about "other STALKERS might be on the same mission you are on"? Or "an animal's decision whether to attack you or not is based on its level of fear, hunger and whether you are wounded". What we got instead is a pack of mutated dogs that are placed in front of a tunnel in order to attack you -- ALWAYS.

We also have a battle between a horde of STALKERS and the military in level three. Where do all these folks come from? The zone seems to be more crowded than Chicago O'Hare airport.

But if it already is so bloody crowded, where are the "Chernobyl tourists" that one would also expect there? All those people are russian/ukrainian. And this is 2012-something, where the borders are open. If there really was something valuable in that zone, then you would also expect american, asian or west european raiding parties. And journalists. And you what also see female characters.

By the way, why does everybody in this game have cigarettes except for the player?

But what really annoys me is that poor RPG shit in it. I don't give a crap who this Strelok (?) guy is, and I am already fed up with the "person A sends me to person B to person C to person D to still learn nothing new about it" shit. And I am also tired of the fences everywhere and other obstacles you cannot pass. What happened to the promise of "30 square kilometers of dynamic world" in which you were supposed to roam around freely?

Anyway, I have waited too long for that game to drop it now and will put in a few more hours to see how -- IF -- it develops. I don't really expect that anymore, though.

Well, stable is certainly a matter of opinion.

Because as opposed to traversing a nuclear wasteland and random gunfire - smoking is bad for your health.

Some 60 or so posts, and no one's mentioned multiplayer, did anyone actualy buy the damn thing? :P

No, definatly stable, GOD has never had to ALT CTRL & DEL. Mind you he did have to do a clean insatall, and had to wipe nearly everthing (He did save a couple of templates of everyting tho). However that wasnt his fault, it was because on the original instal a virus/worm had gotten in, and currupted a couple of higher systems.

I suppose your talking about the problem with the firewall that he tried to instal? True the virus checker did kill it, but it was OK cos a deep backup existed, and it was able to re-install itself within three working days.

Its a very short game. I went through all the main quests in a couple of hours only to find out i missed a quest where i was supposed to get something for the final part, i had to settle for the stupid "i want to be rich" ending cuz i had over 100000 in cash on me at the time :(

So i started the game again, am gonna play it proper this time around. Every damn stupid subquest!

Dont get me wrong, i like the game. It realy grew on me over time (lots of bugs but WAY more atmosphere).

Yeh, I have slowed down - I could see after doing a couple of quests that the game is moving you on rails towards the final goal - so I have broken off and am just wandering about. What I am finding is quests create themselves as you adventure. I'm just going to free-roam - just wander about here and there - sticking my nose into every nook and cranny and do all the sub quests and not worry too much about the main quest.

I've heard the sub-quests can time themselves out - so if you take on too many at the same time, you may end up failing some of them. I've also heard that some of the quests that time out can be restarted by talking with the person who set the quest.

Just left the first underground level and must admit the game's finally getting at me. Those bloodsuckers and that other thing down there were... what I like in a game. Especially with those nice shadows and sounds. :-)

Anyone else noticed that artifacts with the "bleeding" attribute, have that attribute reversed?

i had 2 artifacts with -300% total, and i kept bleeding to death in just a few seconds. So i switched to the opposite ones, and now i almost never bleed!

This GOD was quite abit of a story teller, now only if he had got better programmers.

BTW Circuit City is selling it for $30 at the moment:
http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/S-T-A-L-K-E-R-Shadow-of-Chernobyl-PC/sem/rpsm/oid/174688/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do

Hard to say no to that (even with the talk of bugs, bad voice overs, etc.)

Emergency - Patch released.

I repeat - patch released.

http://www.stalker-game.com

EDIT:
From the 2 selections in the above link choose 'Developer site':
http://www.stalker-game.com/en/

EDIT:
Make sure you download the right one - don't rush in all excited and just grab the first one.

Oh - further emergency!

You will lose your saved games!

Personally, this game is so new that I don't mind starting all over again - I just will now know what I am doing.

I like how it tells you about save incompatibility *after* the patch is applied...


Update notes make no mention (from what I skimmed through) about fixing that rain weather anomaly I've experienced twice through my limited playthrough so far, least I didn't lose much data applying it.
(long as I don't lost my save data again next time a patch comes out -.-)

I've ordered this.

Anything I should know before I start playing? (besides installing the patch)

I've heard the difficulty is 'high' - can I change this? Does it have long load times for quicksaves?

Loading times for Quicksaves are brief, about....6 seconds I recall? Although I got 2gb of ram here, but it beats the crap out of the extremely long initial load, which hits the 1min mark here.

Difficulty can be lowered, there's 4 altogether, I'm just playing at the standard 2nd level.
(forget the name of it since like other FPS, they use non-traditional naming schemes >.>, I'll just call it "Normal" difficulty)

It's hard if you just rush about normal FPS-like. This game has a sort of 'stealthy' requirement about it. However, it is not over-stealthy.

The stealth element does work though - I've sat in a bush before whilst enemies on patrol walk towards me and then I've blasted them at close range with a shot gun.

Invest in a silenced pistol early on.

Don't take on loads of additional missions at one time - ie a source might offer you 3 missions - don't agree all 3 there and then. The reason for this is some missions time-out - there is nothing in the manual regarding this, but sometimes if you take too long to claim a reward then you end up failing getting the reward. Also, with some missions something can go wrong meaning you need to load a saved game.

Use multiple save games and save often.

Watch how much you carry - try to keep your load to 50KG max - any more and your character tires quicker.

another over-hyped FPS.

Shame a lot of people bought it, now we have to put up with more of the same until people learn not to buy these things.

I wouldn't say it was over-hyped - based on the end result.

The only main thing missing that people (in general on the internet) have noted is that you cannot free-roam the landscape like in Oblivion - it plays like most FPS-type games that you have to use certain exit/entrance points to go from one area of the world to another. To be honest, I don't find it restrictive at all - each chunk of landscape is quite large and there is always multiple things there to do.

I think it is a very good game - if somewhat frustrating to play at times. It's more like Operation Flashpoint than anything else I've played.

Hopefully a demo will be release so that people can try it out.

I never really recalled there being much hype after it's initial announcement, but anyhow, the end-product (after this patch) is pretty damn good if you're into the genre-mix/tactical side of things, I'm currently loving it, albeit it still has problems that'll likely get ironed out via patches.
(like that rain-issue that didn't get fixed that patch ;/)

I'm assuming this game will grow on me, much like Riddick did (and that game ended with a bang), so I hope the flow keeps nice and consistant throughout as I go abouts my things and doing random fetch quests.
(normally I bore of fetch quests, but they give a nice excuse to avoid the main storyline and just enjoy the surroundings)


[EDIT] Hmm, apparently I don't need my disc inserted to play, unsure whether or not the patch did that, but whichever way you look at it, 10 bonus points to my personal review of the game so far.

Puki, you are crazy (For Stalker, of course)

I've never seen you, but I had a dream that you were sliding
down an escalator in a crowded mall head-first like it was a
waterslide. There was alot of jungle fauna in the mall too, I
don't remember why. The world was ending or something.

What does this mean? Do you have the answers to the questions my subconscious asks me?

Total Largeness - that's the answer - it drips from my body.

I quite like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - I changed my nick as a lot of people will just visit this site then rush off and play S.T.A.L.K.E.R. without realising a patch had come out this quick.

I will revert back to my usual nick tonight.

I remain the greatest and most interesting Blitzer in the history of the world and I am quite partial to peanut butter on toast.

The patch makes all your previous savegames incompatible.

And I agree with puki, not with his stance on being the greatest Blitzer, but with the "greatness" of the game. It's raw, it's bleak, it's Russian.

Just got the game the other day, got a patch. Lets just say its brilliant the freedom you have in the game is amazing. Although the blowout can be a bit scary (random anomolies appear all over the landscape till its covered meaning instant death), apart from that every couple of days (a novel way to clear away corpses and refresh enemies) its brilliant.

You can really while away hours on this game without realising, the AI is flaky in places and isnt the brightest thing out there but its good fun to play.

This game just keeps getting better and better, currently on my first sewer trek, and man that lighting system really does help the game keep that immersion factor going, alongside the convincing thunderstorms.

The AI may be flaky in spots sure (especially when they don't go for cover for some reason mid-firefight), but man it's nice to at least have neutral folks walking about the land just for the sake of it. Beats the "you vs everyone" generalization of near all FPS games.

This game is going to be amazing when I get my new PC in April - I mean I will have everything cranked up in full.

Everyone must buy a new PC and play it with all the effects to maximum - it must be law.

I can't wait.

I started this tonight. I put it on master setting and tried the first mission 'solo'. The 'Wolf' guy said I was being a bit rambo - which made me feel quite macho.

Three hours of botched attempts later I've still not managed to clear all the baddies... Generally they hear me coming a mile away and manage to shoot me more accurately than I could care for. On one attempt I managed to sneak into a loft above two guys, one of whom was strumming on his guitar. After a few minutes I got bored and started shooting at his legs, but this didn't seem to bother him and he started firing his shotgun up at me, blasting my own nether regions to bits.

Feeling depressed, on my 150th attempt, I retreated and headed down the road. There I found two rabid dogs scrabbling in the dirt. I spent a few minutes sitting and watching a dog drag a dead body into a tunnel. I then chased after the dog and attempted to stab it, to no avail. The dog was too slippery.

It's a bleak game.

You are shooting the wrong people - only the friendly Stalkers play guitars (unless this changes at a higher difficulty setting).

The game is hard enough on the 'novice' setting - you can die quickly - replay it at novice level - it will still be a challenge.

Nah they were definitely enemies - showing red on my radar. They were on the road to the left out of the starting town.

I'm loving the fact it is so difficult, it presents a real challenge I've not had from a game in a long time. Having re-tried the first mission several times, the AI has responded differently (and scarily) each time, forcing me to think on my toes. I also think there could me moments later in the game that could be solved by stealth. You can't beat a stealthy stabbing.

It seems realistic to me from my experience with paintball. It's really hard to take cover behind a tree in real life, and easy to shoot elbows, knees, heads and hands that stick out.

The part that I don't like is that some of the weapons are under powered, even headshots don't do an awful lot.

I like it, reminds me a lot of Operation Flashpoint, just with more modern graphics and a unconventional setting.

Has anyone actually found Chernobyl yet - I'm assuming it is to the south of where you start - past the Army base.

Anyone seen Chernobyl or that big ferris wheel thing yet?

Not as much as Armed Assault does.

Yep, its called Pripyat and its near the end of the game.
Realy well modeled place, it actualy looks like the real thing!
Didnt see much of the area around the reactor though, as i was running for my life from helis ;)

Right, get yourself back there - save the game, then email the save game to me.

I can't be bothered to walk there at the moment - however you can.

I'll wait here - watch your back for any bandits and other things that kill you.

Sorry man, but i deleted my save games and restarted with the new patch :/

Since I patched the game, I've stopped cheating and I find the game much more enjoyable. Mainly as I not rushing about so much - I am playing it the way it was meant to be played - stopping, waiting, watching - Larging.

Also - since patching, I've been playing in constant daylight - I haven't seen a night yet. I'm not sure if something is broken, or if they have dramatically slowed down the day/night cycle.

Still goes night here with the patch, time can be seen on the PDA down in the bottom left of the screen.

I agree the patch makes it much more playable :)

The latest patch is 1.0003 - May 8, 2007
http://www.fileplanet.com/filelist.aspx?s=106739&v=0

Make sure you pick the relevent download.

Savegames are not affected with this patch.

Even with that patch, the game performance totally sucks on Vista. The performance on my iMac was ok while it was running on XP, but now with Vista STALKER became basically unplayable.

That new patch, by the way, introduced a couple of other bugs. I started a new game and there was no first aid kit near the dead stalker at the beginning of the game (at the place where the wounded stalker is lying on the floor, calling for help, and where the army helicopter arrives the moment you reach the area). I restarted the game again, and then there was the first aid kit.

With the original version of the game, by the way, it was not possible to go back to the dealer where you start the game. The door was always closed. However, it was not really important, I could finish the game anyway.

Well, I won't downgrade to XP just to play STALKER a second time. The game was not good enough for that, even though in the end I quite liked it.

Regarding performance, in HL2 really flies with Vista on my iMac. Maybe I'll try FarCry on Vista when I'm back from my vacation in Ireland end of next week. Maybe. ;-)

Should have been - I had no problems visiting him.

However, I have previously noted bugs with doors - ie not being able to open them as someone or something is stuck behind them blocking it from opening.

Still bugged to hell though. Oh um.

(Ps Still like the game though)

This game is ridiculously hard.

I just got past 5 or 6 bandits at the end of "Garbage", only with the help of the other stalkers nearby.

Then I come to this military area I am supposed to steal documents from. It's impossible. I can't hit anything unless I am about 50 feet away, and there are about a dozen soldiers roaming around, all with auto weapons and me with a pistol.

It's not just hard, it's impossible, unless there is some scoped rifle or something lying around I am supposed to be using.

you need to get them to follow you to closed points and take them one at a time..

? you should have better weapons than pistol by time you reach garbage ?

I uninstalled this two days after buying kept crashing and messed up my pc.. :(

Leadwerks: yeah I thought it started out pretty hard as well, too hard actually. Once I managed to catch up with the difficulty curve though it seemed really fair. I thought the AI was good in as much as if you're too far away to shoot them, they will be too far away to shoot you.

I thought the AI in general was really good too, I liked how things were going on almost regardless of what you were doing.

It ran fine on my p4 2.6 9800 Pro

I uninstall all this after bastards killed me few times at begining...so I got very pissed off and tried to find cheats and there is no cheats available so i was unable to revenge and kill all bastards with 'pocket knife' and becouse of that I uninstall all that..grrrrrr

Taking on soldiers with a pistol would be hard I imagine, unless you're really good or a glutton for punishment its usually better to use a rifle. Surely you've come across other dead stalkers and taken their weapons?

Yes but there is very little ammo for the automatic rifle. And I was trying to hurry so I could save that "Mole" guy but he keeps dying.

I'll have to restart the area, go quickly, and pick up all the ammo I can.

I absolutely love the lighting system.

There are quite afew mods that changes the traders to sell most types of ammo and a wide selection of guns with a chance of more powerful ones, such as a the FN 2000 thats much later in the game.
I've only used mods after completing the main story line, mostly the realism type mods.