Cardia on 27/1/2009 at 17:52

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I´ve just finished this game last week, and here are my notes:

Good things: The scenaries, the atmosphere, enviroment, architecture are the best thing of the game, also i liked the storyline and the videoclips that appeared when you complete main objectives.

Bad things: the gameplay could have been much better, i think its silly how someone gets tired for walking, it only make senses while running, the enemys weren´t well distribuited in the areas, either there was to many of them or too few, so the difficult of the challenge was not well balanced, some enemys took me alot of bullets to kill them:sweat:, also it was boring to search for the right items to explore certain areas,and i spent most of the game deciding what objects to carry on my inventory, pity that you cannot carry unlimited things like on the game "Ghotic".... that is a big mistake in a gameplay, and finally i guess i wasn´t able to explore many areas, as the main goals didn´t let me explore for more, or at least there should be more main goals to force me explore better certain areas.

Anyway the good things of the game overcome the bad things, so i can say that i enjoyed and i liked this game:thumb:

I´ve just bought yesterday the stalker "clear sky", let´s hope this one has a better gameplay.

Koki on 27/1/2009 at 19:50

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The default movement in STALKER(i.e. simply pressing the "forward" key) is actually running. The fast movement everyone consider running is sprinting.

You CAN walk, there's a key for that, I think by default it's Shift. But it will take you ages to get anywhere.

Koki on 28/1/2009 at 07:16

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Having limited inventory is a good idea in a game like STALKER, but they screwed it up with the following:
- Unrealistic weapon ballistics, meaning you need to carry 20kg of ammo since it takes ten bullets to kill anything.
- There is no cash in the game; everyone seems to have direct wireless connection to their bank accounts. When you talk to someone and see he has 5000RU and then shoot him in the face, all his money disappears. The only way to get the money is to sell him 1000 kielbasas(Since that's only thing they do buy in vanilla which is another screwup) then kill him and pick the kielbasas back up.
- The main fault of STALKER, there's too many people and they're too well equipped. It's really silly to kill dozens of bandits and leave pistols, machineguns and assault rifles laying everywhere.

steo on 28/1/2009 at 17:26

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Again, there's a mod to stop them repeatedly saying 'Hello, hello' etc. all the time.

I agree, the weapon ballistics needed tweaking from vanilla stalker to make killing people less about finally getting that headshot and having to use the best part of a mag per enemy but far too many mods throw it too far in the other direction which in turn ruins weapon balance. I suppose it's all a matter of preference but I have the game set up so that weapons are all a bit more powerful - a few bullets to the torso of a bandit will take him out, and I also have the guns all a bit more accurate so that it's possible to make a silent one headshot takedown with a PB6 at close range and a scoped AK74 is usable at long range but still inferior to a SIG550 or SA80 which in turn are inferior to the dragunovs or Vintorez (provided you can cope with the bullet drop).

steo on 28/1/2009 at 21:52

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I disagree. I find my setup to be a good compromise between realism and balance. The weapons are all more accurate and powerful than in vanilla stalker but there are worthwhile differences between the weapons so that, I find, there is more balance than in vanilla stalker.

For example, the enfield is the heaviest of the 5.56 rifles and also slightly worse for reliability and a fixed scope makes it a bad choice for close range combat (bearing in mind I play without crosshairs). However, it is the most accurate assault rifle and has the biggest scope on it so it's second only to the sniper rifles for long range. On the other end of the spectrum is the G36 which again has a fixed scope but this time with very little magnification making it more like having a proper crosshair as opposed to just iron sights. That and the fast rate of fire makes it great for close-medium range though it can't match the accuracy of the SIG550 or the L85 for longer ranges. The SIG550 and the LR300 are hold the middle ground, both being very adaptable with scope and grenade launcher attachments (and silencer for the LR300). The LR300 is the lightest but being a little less reliable and less accurate while shooting a bit faster and having less kickback makes it more inclined to used up closer, the opposite being true for the SIG550. The FN F2000 is much rarer and more expensive but is similar to the G36 though with better accuracy and a slightly bigger scope. Meanwhile, an AK74 could potentially see you through the whole game, though you'd still be better off using something better.

I find this to be much more enjoyable than all the weapon changing mods I've played which often tend to make one of the 5.56 weapons better in pretty much every way to the others, or else make them all pretty much identical. Or else they'll give you 'realistic' accuracy which makes any scoped assault rifle effectively as accurate as a dragunov. Perhaps you could easily cap someone in the head at long (for stalker) range with an LR300 but given the size of the maps in stalker, that kind of realism ruins balance but it is possible to make damage/accuracy more realistic than vanilla stalker while keeping a good amount of balance, which for me provides the best gameplay.

My biggest beef with weapon mods though, is their insistence on upping the bullet speed on the 9x39mm weapons to mach 3 to eliminate all bullet drop from what is specifically a subsonic cartridge.