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A Brilliant Gaming Achievement

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 04, 2007
Author: Amazon User

This is without doubt one of the best computer games ever devised . Based upon a film , even a novel , it sends you right in the heart of the infamous Chernobyl and its residential area , so that even a degree of reality is present !It is still a mystery to me whether the city itself has been realistically recreated , but you even get to operate ,i.e. shoot the living hell out of the opponents , right under the statue of Stalin ! It is basically one of the fastest and bloodiest shoot'em up games that will even scare the living daylights out of you as you are doing certain missions in the underground tunnels , accompanied with the eerie sounds and screeching , coming from the belly of the beast ! And this is , briefly , the proper name of the game ! A game of Jordanesque proportions ! Not for the minors though !

A very good game and a solid pick

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: December 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have played the halflifes and far cry game and all of the ww2 shooters and just about any and every game worth any salt the last few years and this is as good as any of them. The ever changing weather and in game upgrades are nice and this game gets really spooky in some parts. Depending on the level of difficulty you choose it can be very difficult to play and complete. Is a little buggy in a few spots and the russian speaking AI can get irritating but these are minor gripes as there is a lot involved in playing this game and many hours spent finishing it with decent replayability. It is a large environment both above and below ground with many enemies and wild mutated animals out to get you and the radiation combined with the ever changing freaky weather just add to the whole setting you will be immersed in. Is a top 10 in my book and is a very refreshing change from the norm. A great buy and a lot of game. I wish all games released were this packed with so much good stuff.

Huge game - lots of fun for a long time

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: April 24, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Good graphics, excellent game play, good sound and Huge levels. VERY atmospheric. Definately well worth the money. Download the recent patches though. The 1.0 version of the game was unstable, and the patches break your save games, so apply the patches before you start the game.

Great game ruined by significant bugs

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: June 27, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Stalker has the potential to be a great game. Unfortunately it is ruined by several significant bugs that make it difficult to finish the game. Even with the latest patch (1.06) the game seems unfinished. The graphics are beautiful, some of the best of any game. I normally turn off the music in games, but I kept it on in Stalker because it was not obtrusive and lent to the atmosphere. They did a great job of making the world feel realistic, including changing weather and day/night cycles (among other things people sleep and more monsters come out at night). The mood of the game is genuinely desolate and creepy. Getting into big gunfights was a lot of fun, especially because the AI opponents are probably the best I've seen in a shooter. If you attack a group, they all scatter and hide behind cover. Then some will move around while shooting at you to flush you out from behind your cover while others move to flank you. Many times I was picking off bad guys at a distance when I got shot in the back of the head by one of their group who silently got behind me! The big problem that killed the fun is that bad quest management system. Stalker has many RPG qualities, including non-linear quests. But to finish the game you need to complete certain quests. There are multiple endings to the game, and which ending you get depends on which quests you complete and how. But the game gives you no information to help you decided which choices to make in order to get the most satisfying ending. I did every quest I could, but could not complete some because of bugs in the game. And because I could not complete those quests I was not allowed to try to attempt others that were dependent. So when I got to the end of the game, there were many objectives that I had not completed, so my character just died. This was very frustrating and I'm not willing to replay the entire game just to get around the bugs.

Wait for the patch!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 6 / 16
Date: March 23, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Save your money on this game until the patch, as it will most likely be a doozy of a file!
The Good - Beautiful, immersive game (what I could make work), looks to be the FPS to give Half-Life a run for its money.
The BAD - Well let's see, since it won't restart from quick saves unless I go back to the very beginning and start over, I would say that qualifies!
Anyone considering buying this game, read and take heed of the negative reviews as they are primarily bug related, and WAIT until the company finishes the bloody thing and patches it properly, then read the user reviews to see if that works before you buy it.
$40 is not something most players of FPS games want to throw away on a game that chokes like a cat on a hairball. The developer worked on this beast for six years, they should have taken another six months before releasing it to make this game run properly.
My copy gets pitched on the shelf until its patched!

Steamed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. stinks

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 4 / 9
Date: February 02, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Is it just me, or are the only companies these days producing bugless high quality titles Nintendo and Valve? I'm a hardcore gamer having beaten hundreds of games and played many more and my favorite genre has to be first person shooters (my favorite being Half-Life 2). I didn't initially purchase this title because I had heard about the buggy gameplay and seen the developer's less than impressive repertoire of games. However, even that couldn't stop my thirst for blood one weekend and I purchased S.T.A.L.K.E.R. off of Steam. This review pertains to v 1.0005 of Steamed S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

The game finally finishes installing and I finally begin to run around in the expansive world, but something is wrong. My head hurts and the room is spinning. Game options are extremely sparse in this title, and easily, the worst offender is the inability to turn off head-bobbing. I realize the developer's intentions to create a lifelike environment, but people don't make themselves dizzy when they walk. Even after playing for many hours, I still experienced discomfort at the constant motion. This is the only game I have ever played that made me uncomfortable in its entirety. Luckily, Motion sensitive customers who purchased a boxed version of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. can download a patch that allegedly fixes this ridiculous feature. Steamed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has a different file structure and renders the mod useless. In a nut shell, it really sucks.

A problem with trying to make a game very lifelike is that when anything "un-lifelike" happens, it breaks all believability in the game's world. Such a problem is weapon damage, it's broken. I have run up to human enemies with a sawed-off double barrel shotgun and put two slugs in their face, only to my utter disgust to have them shake it off and kill me while I stand there reloading. Enemies also shoot through walls occasionally resulting in ludicrous deaths.

After playing the game for a couple of hours and doing some sidequests, I notice that there are really only three sidequests in the entire game that you can do again and again (side quests respawn in this title). The three are: Kill an enemy camp, bring me an item, or kill this guy. Okay, so coming off Oblivion, this felt ridiculous. Every once in a while a different quest will come up, but rarely. And then you only have one in-game 24 hour period to finish the quest or you fail it (this need not apply for main quests), this equates to around 2 real world hours. This can be very frustrating, because you cannot stock up on side quests and finish them while you explore. Going out of your way becomes very unfun when the rewards are lackluster. Eventually I decided to not do any side quests at all because they made you run around the map with a time limit and then gave you poor rewards for your effort. Even then, a lot of the quests are buggy, rendering completion impossible. One such example is a quest where you have to find a man his missing gun. I followed the PDA to the spot and spent 15 minutes looking for it. This was not the only quest to feature glorified goose chases, many of the "find the item" quests prematurely end this way.

The PDA system is buggy as well. In some points of the game, it won't show where you are on the map, and fails to recognize which message logs you have read. The PDA also expects you to perform extensive research on story developments since little is explained vocally (NPCs talk little and you have to physically read conversations). If you want to understand the gist of the plot expect to a lot of reading. This is disappointing because a game should be fun, and I found the much of the reading/conversations to be stale and more akin to a high school textbook. You can also find PDAs on people that mark locations of "stashes" on your map. However, upon going out of your way again to find a stash, a bug might keep it hidden (I experienced this many times) or there is nothing of real value. So looking for stashes is basically pointless and disappointing.

Graphics issues are constant, with random frame-rate jerks being constant throughout the entire game. I'll pass through an area with butter smooth visuals and then pass through the same area later (conditions are the same) and my screen will begin having seizures. This is very annoying when you have to transverse entire maps to get to an objective only to have a relatively short trip become long and tedious. Enemies also clip through the walls often after violent deaths at the hands of grenades. Sometimes they get stuck behind the wall and experience extremely noisy seizures. This is often funny, but again is an ugly unaddressed bug. However, even then, the worst thing a game can do is freeze or crash in the middle of a session with no recovery. The worst of which is a freeze that requires hard-rebooting your computer (restarting via cutting off the power). Of about the ten times the game crashed/froze on me in the 20 hours it took me to complete, half required hard-reboots. This IS NOT good for your system and angered me greatly. However, I'm stubborn when it comes to playing through a buggy game and I tolerated (though barely) the constant crashes till I had finished the game and could finally uninstall it.

Despite its mass of shortcomings, the game can be very fun and scary at times. Combat can be exhilarating and searching through dark corridors with only a flashlight while mutants and zombies growl in the dark is nothing short of spine-tingling goodness. The AI is very smart (although it can be very dumb as well). The story can be interesting at times and the cut scenes are some of the better ones I've seen in a game from a filmmaking perspective. Not to mention the "best" ending of the seven possible ending was particularly satisfying.

The bottom line is that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. along with the X-Ray engine, need another year of solid work. The crashes are inexcusable when compared to other robust engines like Doom 3 and Source. Why GSC Game World had to develop an in-house engine instead of licensing one is beyond me. Since its creation, this title has been racked by delays and development issues resulting in much of the game's content to be left out like vehicular transportation and more mutants. This content is accessible through mods but is reoccurring proof of the shortcuts taken to finally release this beast after around 6 grueling years. But 6 years or not, if I could describe this game in one word, it would be "unfinished"; it needed 7 years of work. While it is fun and sometimes great (combat can be exhilarating at times), the uninspired quests, mass of bugs, and horde of other issues make this game a pass. The irony is that GSC Game World is already working on a prequel and Xbox 360 port when they haven't even fixed the first one! Who knows, maybe they'll get it right in the next one. Regardless I probably won't be entering the Zone again, I advise gamers to do the same and try System Shock 2, Half-Life 2 or Oblivion instead. Those who heed my warning and decide to tread into the Zone anyway should remain wary, for there are more dangerous things in this game than hideous mutants.

Enjoyable, Yet Unpolished

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 6
Date: March 27, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I am about 15 hours in, and look forward to keep going when I get free time to play it. It is for the most part an entertaining game with some things done very well, and has the capability to keep you hooked. However, I am one of those people that is really toughing it out, and at times it is painful. I really like the weapons, and the combat, (the most important thing to me in a shooter), and the environment, which is what is keeping me into it, but the issues concerning the missions, jobs, storyline, and dialogue is very irritating. It could be great, but it's just not done well, at all. The game has a very "rough around the edges" feel, and it bothers me as well. It's unfortunate because relatively speaking these are not difficult issues to have done right. But throw them in with the quick save / load problem, and the various bugs throughout the game, and it makes for an unpolished, 3 out of 5 star game. The game is in desperate need of a quality patch before I can recommend it. Especially since the game is a resource hog, and demands a high end system, even for moderate settings. Forget dynamic lighting unless you are very close to the recommended requirements, which is also the only thing about this game visually that is top notch.

Just a Fair Game

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 10
Date: March 24, 2007
Author: Amazon User

I have been looking forward to playing this game for a long time with great expectation.I rushed out and bought it,loaded it on my pc and got ready for a great gameing experiance.Boy what a disapointment!
The graphics are about 10 years outdated.I have a very good gaming pc so i know it is not my pc.FAR CRY looks great on it.Even in the day cycle the graphics are dim and fuzzy.At night even with the flashlight on its so dark all i can see is the muzzel flashes while they are killing me.To me graphics make or break a game and i hate to think i spent this much on a pc for good graphics and these look this bad.Now i know why they didnt come out with a demo first.Boiling Point was a much better game than this one after they came out with a patch for all the bugs.There are no vehicles to drive or fly.You cant trade for any good weapons so why trade just take what you can from dead people.The only way i could get a machinegun was to kill a whole group of soldiers with that lousy pistol,a shotgun that will only kill if its almost touching the person and 1 grenade ( the best weapon in the game ).This game might have been top notch if they had came out with it when they first planned.Now it has been out done by so many other games it seems dated and behind times.Its only saving grace is that most of the recent games are pretty bad to.

Six years apparently wasn't enough.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 4 / 10
Date: April 13, 2007
Author: Amazon User

There's really no excuse for releasing a game with this many bugs. My computer by far meets the system requirements, yet when I save or quicksave, the game crashes to the desktop. Also, the keymapping does not save when I exit the game and I have to reassign all my keys every time I try to play.

I mean, the first patch, released mere hours after the retail release contained 64 bug-fixes. Among these fixes is the wondrful fact that when I try to save my game, the game now takes about twice as long to finish crashing. Don't misunderstand me. The game still begins crashing as soon as I hit save, it just takes twice as long for the program to finally die and for my computer to return to a working state.

I'll leave the part ebout how my bullets don't seem to hurt my enemies to someone whose computer doesn't spaz over something as simple as saving their game.

great game but buggy almost beyond tolerance, but a patch is out

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 3
Date: April 09, 2007
Author: Amazon User

First off- this is a GREAT game. Very challenging, excellent graphics, lots of room to roam, and lots to learn. The landscape is truly desolate and eerie. The open-ended way you can develop your character is brilliant. There's alot to like and the "save early;save often" rule is a must with this game. BUT- the game locks up on me after about 30 minutes of play. The background will begin flashing black patterns over the sky and/or hills. Splotches of color will flash on and off dancing along the ground, along walls, etc. That's a sure sign things are about to go awry. The game begins randomly freezing, starting and stopping in spurts after about 10 minutes of play. The freeze time ranges from 5 to over 30 seconds. Eventually everything totally crashes and a bug report email screen appears but it also freezes so the bug report never gets emailed. It doesn't matter if you are engaged in a big battle or just walking down the road. The longest problem free stretch of play I have had lasted about an hour. I'm running it on a PC with a 2 GHz P4 with 2 GB RAM and a nVIDIA 6800 GT OC video card w/ 256 MB memory. My OS is XP SP2, current. All my drivers are current. This is the only game I have ever had that has given me this much trouble. Even turning down the video settings doesn't help. So far one patch has been released and it didn't help the trouble I am having. Honestly, if it wasn't so much fun while it was working I could easily uninstall it and put it on a shelf until all the fixes are finally done to save myself tons of frustration. The crashes seem to be happening more frequently as I progress in the game. After the stellar job that was done with THQ's release of Company of Heroes, this game is a big disappointment, funtionality-wise. (It's like a bad love affair for me- when it's working I'm the happiest man in the world, when it's not I want to pull my hair our and scream and curse and stomp my feet. Then it works again and all is forgiven!) My advice: I don't think the problems I am having are hardware related based on all the other games I play without any problem. So, expect to wait for the fixes to be released before having a truly gratifying gaming experience with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. If you think my issues are hardware related and you have a bigger more powerful PC to try run it on, absolutely go for it! Either way, it's a worthwhile purchase. Hopefully fixes will be forthcoming quickly.

UPDATE 4/19/07: The first patch did fix everything I was having trouble with. I also discovered that a utility program that runs in the background of my PC had become corrupted and would intermittantly take up 85% - 90% of my system resources. After locating and uninstalling the problem program, my slow downs went away. The patch fixed the crashes and the lock ups. I am a happy man!! Now, one last comment. I have read that some players felt this was a pointless game with no real objectives and no real goals. My view is that it is about daily life and survival in a dangerously radioactively contaminated, lawless, area inhabited by bandits, military, paramilitary factions, fellow STALKERS, dangerous creatures, and wild animals where your main goal is just to stay alive and make it day to day. I suppose it's sorta like The Sims games in that regard. You can play all the side missions, join one alliance or the other, freelance, help people, kill everybody you meet, solve the mystery - whatever you want to do. As much or as little. To me it is not a typical game in which you only overcome set challenges to achieve a specific outcome that declares you the winner. Oh, you can play it that way, but I think the run and gun approach leaves a lot to be desired and you miss a lot. There is so much to see and do and explore. Sometimes survival alone is a victory of sorts. Some one recently commented a friend of his said "it's a game about nothing." What an incredible Zen way to describe it. Just like real life!!

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