[Weekend Steam Deal] S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl for £3.49

Soldato
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10 Mar 2003
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Targeting system awful?
You manually point at your target and press shoot, how is that awful?
Accuracy is pants for auto fire, as it should be, single shot is fine.

You can roam a huge amount, I know I have, not straight away you need an ok-ish suit first to help with rad.

It's not rubbish

By awful I'm not on about the ability to point the cursor over the target and press the button I'm on about how random it is if you hit. The enemies seem to be able to hit you from a mile away with no problems.

The roaming may get better later on in the game - however it's very limiting for the first hour or so. I'd suggest that most people will decide in the first 20 minutes on whether they want to stick with a game. I perservered with this for a hour thinking that it would suddenly get better (due to the people on here saying it was good) and it didn't. I finally had enough of all the bugs (yes I know there are patches but they shouldn't have released it in the state it was in) and the limitations.

Classic "I don't like it, therefore it's rubbish" post.

Sorry Memphis I thought I had put enough reasons down for what I class as rubbish. In fact there's quite a few people in this thread who agree with this - I just went further by expressing why I thought it was rubbish. If you don't agree that it's rubbish then at least post why and then we can keep the topic flowing and hopefully help anyone out there who hasn't got it to make an informed decision on whether to buy or not.



M.
 
Soldato
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Still to play this, end of day was only £3.50 so not much to loose if I dont like it.

Aslong as its better than Crysis I will be happy :)
 
Associate
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of stuff i say ---->
By awful I'm not on about the ability to point the cursor over the target and press the button I'm on about how random it is if you hit. The enemies seem to be able to hit you from a mile away with no problems.

The roaming may get better later on in the game - however it's very limiting for the first hour or so. I'd suggest that most people will decide in the first 20 minutes on whether they want to stick with a game. I perservered with this for a hour thinking that it would suddenly get better (due to the people on here saying it was good) and it didn't. I finally had enough of all the bugs (yes I know there are patches but they shouldn't have released it in the state it was in) and the limitations.



Sorry Memphis I thought I had put enough reasons down for what I class as rubbish. In fact there's quite a few people in this thread who agree with this - I just went further by expressing why I thought it was rubbish. If you don't agree that it's rubbish then at least post why and then we can keep the topic flowing and hopefully help anyone out there who hasn't got it to make an informed decision on whether to buy or not.



M.

That's a fair enough way to judge your average shooter - have a wander round for an hour and see what you think. But that approach is never going to work in a game with RPG elements such as Stalker. It's a given in that kind of game that when you start out all your equipment will be dreadful, you'll be restricted in where you can go and and you won't see a 10th of what the game has to offer in the first couple of hours wandering about.

You're perfectly entitled to your opinion, but for people that have never played it i would strongly suggest that you give it more of a chance than this, because those that have actually completed it tend to rate it very highly. It's certainly in my top 5 games of all time.

Agree with you completely on the bugs by the way - both this and Clear Sky were a complete mess on release. But thankfully have been well supported since and numerous patches have fixed the vast majority of problems.
 
Soldato
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Yep, one of my top 5 best games ever ... but only after I had completed it the second time with all the patches out.

That said, it is a very marmite like game and for the first several hours of playing, most people won't see what's the big fuss.
 
Caporegime
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Stalker, for me, is the best gaming experience of 2008. Just took me eighteen months of delay before I had a good enough system to really do it justice, the patch also helped.
 
Soldato
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Anyone got a link to just the sharper/higher res etc texture packs and the taller patch on their own?

I can only find them as part of a bundle which changes the gameplay, and I don't really want that yet.
 
Caporegime
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33,188
That's a fair enough way to judge your average shooter - have a wander round for an hour and see what you think. But that approach is never going to work in a game with RPG elements such as Stalker. It's a given in that kind of game that when you start out all your equipment will be dreadful, you'll be restricted in where you can go and and you won't see a 10th of what the game has to offer in the first couple of hours wandering about.

You're perfectly entitled to your opinion, but for people that have never played it i would strongly suggest that you give it more of a chance than this, because those that have actually completed it tend to rate it very highly. It's certainly in my top 5 games of all time.

Agree with you completely on the bugs by the way - both this and Clear Sky were a complete mess on release. But thankfully have been well supported since and numerous patches have fixed the vast majority of problems.


RPG elements, if by flawed and useless ones yes it has them.

The enemies barely scale, while your character goes from useless twit with guns that defy logic in their ability to shoot in a cone and inaccurately for no reason. The second you get past arguably the best fight in the game at the scrapyard you get guns that defy the previous game logic and every gun from then on is super accurate and can headshot anyone at any range. This isn't RPG, there was no adding to your weapon skill, or increased skill via usage of weapons. Its simply woefully inept weapons designed that way to make the game overly tough at first, and fairly accurate but far to power weapons in an instant. I'd take accurate weapons, as in realistic weapons any day, but the second you get one enemies become ridiculously easy to kill and the game offers no difficulty there on in, at all.

The AI sucks, the best couple of fights in the game, scrapyard(2 fights) are HEAVILY scripted and are incredibly real feeling and great fun due to it, most of the rest of the game is crap barely roaming idiots who simply stand behind the nearest object and fail to remotely get close to harming you.

This is before you add in the being able to be almost invunerable with artifacts/armour about 90minutes into the game(if you suck) which also makes the RPG scaling crap, generally as you get tougher, get better weapons and armour, enemies should scale, but they really don't.


Its a very very close to a great game with some basic and simple to fix design flaws. Yet another example of a game that wildly overreached in ambition and as such ran out of money, time and had to cut 2/3rds of the game, mess with the story, kill the ending, rip out 90% of the RPG-ness and left a crippled game VERY close to being great, but not at all good in the shipping version. Atmospheric, great design of the world, but painfully easy, fairly short, utterly pointless sidequests.

I can't even bring myself to illegally download Clear Skies, thats how bad the first one turned out, yes, I can't be bothered to play a stolen game as the first was so bad, not a good sign :p

EDIT:_ I bought the stupid fancy tin edition of the first one, what a waste,
 
Associate
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Well I'm really enjoying it. Definately worth my £3.50. Playing with the STALKER Weather Overhauled 2.2 mod and it's just so atmospheric. If you can let yourself get into this one it's pretty damn good I think.
 
Soldato
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Hmm, I'm stuck at the beginning lol. Ive just done the mission to kill the gangsters and get the memory stick from the stalker. I'm on another mission now, Ive just retrieved something from a dead stalker and I'm near a tunnel with electric bolts inside it and have no clue what I'm supposed to do?


I need to figure out all the controls and menus as well.
 

Sel

Sel

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Hmm, I'm stuck at the beginning lol. Ive just done the mission to kill the gangsters and get the memory stick from the stalker. I'm on another mission now, Ive just retrieved something from a dead stalker and I'm near a tunnel with electric bolts inside it and have no clue what I'm supposed to do?


I need to figure out all the controls and menus as well.

That's where I got to before I died, I also killed some wild animals and had to return for my reward but nothing happens when I go back.
 
Soldato
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I got past that bit now. There were some guards at a bridge, i paid them 500 notes to pass then had to help a stalker.

I'm starting to get into this game now :). Might just install some mods if they will work with saves?

WTF are these artifacts all about? I put one in the boxes at the top and my radiation levels started to rise?
 
Soldato
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I got past that bit now. There were some guards at a bridge, i paid them 500 notes to pass then had to help a stalker.

I'm starting to get into this game now :). Might just install some mods if they will work with saves?

WTF are these artifacts all about? I put one in the boxes at the top and my radiation levels started to rise?


You'll see that each artifact has some negative effects and positive effects (although some rare ones only have positive effects).

I'm guessing you've just put on an artifact that has the negative effect of increased radiation exposure.
 
Associate
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You can also head to the east of the guardpost and cross the railway for free where there's a broken piece of fencing. I gave up trying to navigate the lightning tunnel.
 
Soldato
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You can also head to the east of the guardpost and cross the railway for free where there's a broken piece of fencing. I gave up trying to navigate the lightning tunnel.

I made it through once when I tried playing the game a while back, and decided not even to attempt it this time around! Found the shortcut to the east, but then on a return trip decided to kill the guards... best move I made ;).
 
Soldato
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Just a quick question, what are the three triangles in a purple circle on the map? It says something is hidden under the roof of the building near the bridge but i cant find anything.

I tried killing them guards but got pwned lol. I only had that rubbish shotgun at the time. I thieved a load of bread and guns as i went past them so got my moneys worth. I'll look out for the broken fence next time. Or kill them with my new weapons.

I'm quite liking this game so far, deffo worth the £3.50.
 
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