Quick take on STALKER, Shadows of Chernobyl:
They make a pretty decent attempt at melding FSP and RPG elements. However, it doesn't do either particularly well.
-The FPS elements are "realistic", in that you can fire an assault rifle clip of ammo at a guy 100m away and maybe hit him three times. I'm sure I wouldn't do as well with a real M4, but I play games to feel like a badass killer. I do like the way that guys can take more than a few shots to the kevlar, but one headshot will kill him. But, you can line up a perfect headshot and miss 3 or 4 times...without the dude noticing sometimes. Maybe a WW2 era rifle would be this inaccurate, but these are AKs, M4s, etc. One thing I have to say is that you can get killed QUICK. I was playing on medium difficulty and a couple shot will bring you down. One close shotgun blast will. I kinda like this sort of thing....if I could hit the bad guys.
- The RPG elements are pretty bland, to say the least. You can pick up "artifacts" that add stats to your guy. But, it is just plain confusing as to what they actually do. Will this artifact make my damn gun shoot where I want it to? Probably not. Another thing is your guy has to eat. While realistic, it is just annoying in this context. Imagine being in a heated gun fight and having a warning pop up that your guy is hungry....its just dumb. I did find it kinda fun to be able to loot your victims for gear and ammo, in a RPG sense. Running over corpes and automatically getting there ammo is the standard in FPS, but it is lame when you think about it. I have to say that I did not play the game long enough and the RPG elements are probably more interesting as you go.
-The mission setup is set up as traditional RPG quests. The problem is that they are usually pretty boring and you usually have to run a few miles to do a quest. The last quest I played was basically, "So and So is selling cheap goods under my name and hurting my business, go take him out." I run a mile in one direction, pass a load screen, find the dude, put one shot into him with a silenced pistol, run the mile back, loading screen, and get a completely lame reward. I know this sort of thing is par for the course in RPG, but 10 minutes of real time is not worth firing one damn shot. It wasn't like I had to camp and sniper him at a good moment either, it was literally run up to the guy and fire once.
-The atmosphere is amazing...by far the best feature of the game. The world itself is really cool looking. There are anomolies (sp?) that look like tears in the universe. You want to go check them out, but you will soon be taking radiation damage. The npcs go about their business. You will see different animals hunting and fighting one another. The music is creepy, the sound is great, etc. Even the bad Russian accents are more charming than annoying.
There is some fun to be had with this game. A memorable quest involved joining a band of Stalkers to attack a Military complex. I really felt like I was in a battle. All that was left was me and a 1 other homie...after a 20 vs 20 shootout! Another quest had me stealing documents from the top floor of a tower in the middle of a military installation. I decided on stealth instead of 50 vs 1. I made it to the objective no problems, but made to much noise trying to escape. So, I left the compound in a mad dash and a hail of gunfire. You could hear all the soldiers waking up and asking eachother what was going on.
This game is about a 7/10. It is a few little tweaks away from being a classis. There is a big issue with the HDR ligthing. With a geforce 8800 gts, I had to run the game on static lighting. Maybe a patch or two would make this a great game, but for now, I have no intention of playing it any further. It is not an automatic uninstall, but as soon as I need the space, it will go.
Thanks for the excellent review!
I pretty much agree with his review, with the exception that it is actually very easy to hit a target at 100 meters in real life, whereas in this game, even with relatively high-end weapons that I have added scopes, etc. to to make them more accurate, they are just plain bad. It's a fun fps, but one worth waiting for the bargain bin on. It's a good $20 game.
The best I can come up with is that it is a Deus Ex wannabe with better graphics, a far less interesting story, less character depth, and crappy weapons.
I have been playing stalker, and I have found it pretty easy to hit things with the weapons with scopes. Especially the sniper that you can find in the Freedom base. Overall I'm really enjoying the game and I hear that it is being modded a lot, so I am sure someone will make the weapons more accurate if it hasn't been done already.
It is still installed, at this point. But, I have been too obsessed with LOTRO to mess with it. It could be one of those games that gets better as it goes, but it bored me.