mothra on 23/10/2008 at 13:10

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here my little mini-review:
after rushing through it on russian I couldn't make a good judgement, so now after playing the english one for the first time proper:

- the farther you get the less interesting the maps are
- same storytelling like SOC, a little exposition at the beginning
- almost nothing during missions
- a WTF ending (at least no barrage of text like in SOC)

the enemies are still annoying as hell to kill on vanilla and swallow bullets for breakfast.

- they lost some of the atmosphere and gameplay by making anomaly fields not respawn/wander/appear in different places
- no real use of the blowouts
- bad use of the awesome animal A-life (no body parts ? WTF ?)

but after a few hours of cursing the good old STALKER feeling (although a little garbled) crept up on me and I was hooked again.

the best features are of course revised animations/cover for the AI and the artifact hunt is awesome. I love it.
now I turned on some "realistic weapons" mod and firefights are back to intense (although the grenades are even more ridiculous now - 1 nade kills 4 bandits instantly, i hope they'll gonna tweak this)

all in all, I'm just replaying it and hope for more mods and re-insertion of old maps by modders.

if the next stalker is a mix of SOC and CS with more polish and better pacing it's a winner. I hope they don't go more down the COD road.

mothra on 25/10/2008 at 12:02

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i more or less meant the last level. which is none. or just a little playable interactive video. the end-story cutscene is done very good, I liked them in SOC as well but it's too late too little.

Hidden_7 on 26/10/2008 at 22:54

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I also saw one in a London Drugs the other day, while looking for Far Cry 2. I've found LD is actually a good spot for the slightly different games, if I have trouble finding something at EB or Future Shop I'll often be able to find it at London Drugs, so you may want to try that as well.

Muzman on 30/10/2008 at 22:13

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I finally got this game and I'm actually a little surprised how much I like it. There was so much consternation I was all ready to forgive it for a lot and try to find the rough diamond within (which was a worry since then my chief love then be a unique setting and atmosphere. A unique setting and atmosphere I'd already mostly experienced). But no, it's actually a lot of fun so far. The shooting is, of course, dominant but it's so much better than SoC that it's carrying the game pretty well so far (and I thought the combat in the last game was pretty ok, generally). And fears about a lot of extra english and storytelling are failing to pan out. Wildlife made the last game...live. So far the people are making this one live in a similar way.
I suspect the patches help a lot; haven't really had any crashes, noticable bugs, enemy balance problems or any of the usual suspects. It runs like a dream. It runs waaay better than SoC has ever. I was expecting to tone it down a bit for the new fx and such, but no everything is maxed (no DX10 though), I even have v-synch on. I never have V-synch on! If they released it as it is in 1.505 everyone would have to stop assuming GSC make slightly rough, quirky old school PC games. It's solid as a rock. But, of course, if.
The trade off, I guess is that Clear Sky actually isn't as good looking. They've really scaled back on the texturing detail and so forth for distances, meaning those vistas aren't as awe inspiring. Everything looks fine up close, of course, and the sun stuff is great. They've also changed the colours a bit, probably to distinguish it from the previous. Everything so far has a warmer cast than in SoC and I don't like it very much. SoC has a bluer daylight and it looks much more realistic and works great with the landscape (I wonder if this isn't a marketing ploy, the vast majority of games, films and TV in the US loving added warmth at every opportunity).

Anyway, the first AK 74 (whatever) I found seemed so precious I decided to mod the shit out of it, treat it like gold and all but give it a name. That's kinda fun. A bit like playing Marine in SS2. It's still a bit of a diappointment though. I think by the time it's decent enough to shoot straight most of the time some really great gun is going to fall into my lap and that's ten grand down the drain. I'd be interested to see how a realistic weapons mod would work with this (badly, I suppose).
I've just done the Agroprom underground 2 and am trying to head north. I've managed to avoid getting into the factional conflicts so far. I'm sorta hoping the game will force me, 'cause I won't make a commitment if I don't have to. I'm that big a wuss.
The world seems filthy with options to explore though, from weapons to allegiances, most of which I've ignored. That bodes well for replay.

242 on 30/10/2008 at 22:38

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No, in no way. Very unusual for a modern game to make an important and big part of gameplay absolutely optional. It's very like Meeting with Basso (Calendra's Legacy #1) FM.



If you choose to not participate at all, the game will be pretty short. I think the factions war is the gist of CS, and main story (which basically is almost absent) is a secondary thing.