Jashin on 28/11/2009 at 18:22

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Jesus how much longer does NA have to wait? :bored:

I'm dying over here.

Briareos H on 28/11/2009 at 19:33

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Finished.
The way the ending cinematic is made, (ie. from small story chunks - which is an extremely simple and awesome concept), I feel like it's possible to change it according to the quests carried out or not. Which means I'm going to get totally compulsive over my next playthrough.

Good god, this is everything I want from PC gaming

Briareos H on 29/11/2009 at 21:45

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Rather than writing a full review which wouldn't add much from what has already been said, I'll list here the details that impressed me:

* I loved being thrown into the zone with only a character backstory, a vague goal and multiple destinations without any kind of hand-holding. This is the first sign you get -and a strong one- that GSC now have a deep understanding of what makes STALKER so attractive.
* I found the detail in level design to be excellent. Pripyat is more beautiful than ever, but the two other (satisfyingly huge) areas deserve even more praise. Anomaly fields are now finally interesting and good-looking, so are quests - which scarcely involve rehashing old ideas or places. And they are impressively balanced between fetch or investigate, defend or attack, humans or mutants, outside or inside.
* Five words: PITCH BLACK NIGHT - DREADFUL WEATHER
* AI is not bugfree, but it's much better than the original. The tweaked A-Life leads to fascinating unscripted events. It's true that the zone has a lot more stalkers in it -friendly encounters are very frequent- but I didn't find it a problem at all.
* The story fits nicely with SoC and the ending is awesome. By ending I don't mean the story itself only, which is good but could be described with utmost detail in 2 lines. I rather mean the feeling that you are just an important piece of the puzzle tackled in SoC, showing you without over-exposition what the zone became, what people did right after the original ending and where it all led. Leaves you with a strong taste that the next big thing about the zone is coming fast.
The impression that the first STALKER story ends here is perfect, and beautifully illustrated by the closing cinematic made of story patches showing what happens to all the interesting characters in the near future - depending on your actions in the game.


On the other hand, what prevents this game from reaching perfection:

* One more huge creepy lab-type level wouldn't have hurt. I'm a big fan of those.
* Alright, with CoP, GSC have proved that they understand that a core interest in STALKER is immersion in a consistent, appealing universe. So why do they still use that retarded translation scheme where only story related dialogue is translated? All the more if the final voices are as awful as the ones linked by Koki (and those sound 'professional' enough to make me think that they are indeed the english voices)*.
Thank you very much, but I want my game all in russian and subtitled. It can't be that difficult to implement in-game subtitles where all the discussions in a given radius are printed at the bottom of the screen with the name of the speaker. Others have done this already.
* I know that game designers get headaches when they face the issue of making sure the player doesn't miss key story points. However, in-engine cutscenes interrupt the flow of the game and take away from the immersion. Plus, they are badly done. Do not do them anymore. Please.


Anyway, second playthrough well under way.

* Though the original russian voices don't sound like the best thing ever either, at least they don't detract from the credibility of a scene. BTW, thanks Koki, those are great for understanding - especially the ending.

Koki on 30/11/2009 at 09:40

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And yet some did. Hell, I finished it twice before it was out in Pollackistan.

http://poplicks.com/images/al-gore-sees-light.jpg

It's magic!



It's not that the Zone has more Stalkers, it's just that Bandits aren't aggressive towards the player.



Ahah, yeah. I posted the link when I was still downloading them, and when I actually checked them out I was amazed at how bad they are. Honestly I'd rather play without them, maybe only turn them on in Pripyat when there's lot of unsubbed talking done.



Was there anything wrong with the "cutscenes"(If you can even call them that)? I think that if you're going to have a long voiced monologue they work pretty well - compare it to the beginning of CS where everyone's just talking and talking and talking and you read the text thrice and they're not even halfway there yet.

242 on 30/11/2009 at 11:48

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And the Monolith guy.