User Reviews (1 - 11 of 127)

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In an era of excellent shooters, it's good not great...if it works at all.

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: January 21, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Broad, open-ended gameplay in pretty cool realistic environments. The exact opposite of shooters like Call of Duty which very tightly channel you through specific environments, it's almost MMO-like in scale. Really wanted to like this one, but it's a mess. Needs another 6-10 months of QA and bug fixes to get it working properly. Support is minimal at best, so if it doesn't run on your particular configuration (my quadcore with 8800gts and gigaram is no slouch) then you're going to have to live with graphics glitches that make it almost unplayable and crashes that don't just dump you to desktop but lock your machine requiring hard restart. It's been almost a year after release now, and these unacceptable problems persist despite patches being released. Oh, and patches appear to render your save games unusable, so patch before playing.

excellent fps/rpg combo

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 04, 2008
Author: Amazon User

excellent fps/rpg combo

The game play pleases the average FPS, but gives a different twist that is very addicting.

The Big Crash

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: July 19, 2008
Author: Amazon User

I have had games in the past that crash now and then but I have never had a game as worse than this. I have tried all the patches and follow numerous advise from discussion forums yet it still crashes. It is a pity as I do enjoy playing it 'when it works' but saving it every few minutes does become a chore.S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

You are in the Zone

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: September 01, 2008
Author: Amazon User

You can, if you sit back and think about it afterwards, find flaws in the game. But the truth is that they don't matter, because while the game is running you are IN the Zone.

The Zone is a strange, malformed area around the wreckage of the Chernobyl reactor. (Think Tarkovsky on radioactive steroids.) Once it sucks you in, it is very hard to get out again.

Becasue the truth is that the Zone is a world, and like any world, it has its own rules, and its own inner logic. Your own interactions with the Zone and its denizens are carried out against those rules, and as long as you learn the rules, you can live with them. Yes, the game can be difficult, but it is never arbitrary. Your AI opponents will be tough, but if you approach battles carefully, you can still win. When you die (and you will die, a lot) it is usually becasue of something that you have done wrong.

Other have complained that you spend to much time manging your inventory. Yes, life would be simpler if you could carry every item and weapon that you find, but in the real world you have to abide by certain constraints, and the Zone is, in some sense, a very real world.

There are occasional glitches. The mechanism for picking up found objects is slightly, and irritatingly, different from the mechanism for managing those same objects once you pick them up. There is a trading mechanism, but, like a Soviet era supermarket, the number of itmes that you can actually buy is very limited. The structure of the game requires slightly more back-and-forth travelling than is strictly necessary.

But all of these are quibbles, and the truth is that Stalker offers one of the most compelling, disturbing, and immersive game-playing experiences available. If you want to enter a new world, and feel as though you are living there (possibly for an all-too-short period of time) then this is a game that you need to get.

Fantastic Game!!

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 29, 2008
Author: Amazon User

STALKER is a game that is interactive and engaging, it has great gun fights, an awesome story and some seriously creepy locations. I've played through it several times already and thoroughly enjoyed the game each time I played it! There are some great mods for it available too! Developers should make more games this rich...

Fun

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 28, 2008
Author: Amazon User

It is worth picking up, there are several player made mods out for it that fix some of the things missed by the gamemakers. Some of the quests are broken and unmodded enemies can make some impossible shots with a hand gun at 600 meters heh, but it is worth buying for 20 $. I am a fan of hybrids like this, FPS with RPG elements. It runs great after patching up to v1.5 on windows vista 64 bit. There is alot of russian language, which can cause some confusion, but no of it effects the storyline. Also, unmodded ambient sounds get old fast, they play in loops..yet it still earns 4 stars for all that is good about it.

Ambiance/Mood Piece

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 0 / 0
Date: August 11, 2008
Author: Amazon User

Let me begin by saying, STALKER is one of the buggiest games I have ever played. Many things were fixed with patches, but the game is stilled littered with bugs and some goofy programming. Since the patches usually these are just amusing (when you load a game in a bar, everyone will whip out their guns rack them, and then holster them... in unison; frequently groups will talk in unison).

That said, this still gets 4 stars for doing such a fantastic job creating a believable and ambiance filled world. This does a fantastic job of making you feel like a man alone in hell with factions of inhabitants, the wildlife, the environment, and... something else... all out to get you. And it does it without feel like cliche'd survival horror.

Yes, it is frequently tough. Yes there are bugs that range from amusing to confusing to frustrating. That is all forgotten when you find yourself surrounded in a battlezone, trying to punch a hole through enemy lines, and escape all while avoiding the natural dangers.

The non-linear aspect of the game is also refreshing.

Not even close.

1 Rating: 1, Useful: 0 / 12
Date: September 08, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Let's start with the things I liked:
The run down look of the environment, Smart A.I., nice textures and I especially love the PDF map. The appearance of the Human NPC's gives them a G.I. Joe kind of look.

Not good:
Even after version .0004 it's brutal on your system specs but should run much better on newer mid to high end gaming machine. I was running it on a Pentium 2.4GHz with 1Gb ddr3200 with an x1300 xge AGP card. It stuttered and froze up George Bush at a Kanye West Concert. It was not open ended it was scripted and linear.

The unforgivable: No Vehicles?!? Five years in the making should equal at least a skateboard.
Way too political. From the Enemy Factions to the Military it felt like I was playing Red Dawn the video game with mutants. What happened to the Stalking? I bought the game for stalking not Call of Duty type action.

I had to go on the internet to find out why the game kept giving me a German error code after I tried to start it for the first time.
Mine is a relatively old system but I should have never had to boost my Virtual memory to 2gig for the thing to even start.

Uninstalled it, chucked it in the closet.

Not for me.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 7
Date: August 03, 2007
Author: Amazon User

Guess I'm just used to better graphics of a FPS but the graphics are not good at all. To be honest, I only played the game for an hour or so and couldn't get the hang of the controls and mission. Some folks may like it but I'll stick with PREY, Half-life, and the like.

Slowww.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 0 / 4
Date: June 29, 2007
Author: Amazon User

The Good.
1. The premise was pretty good.
2. Enemy AI is ok, but not as good as Halflife 2 or Farcry.
3. The Hungry/Bleeding/Tired thing was pretty innovative.

The Bad.
1. Very difficult.
2. Processer Hog even with setting turned down.
3. Load times take forever.

Overall, worth a buy from the bargain bin.

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