I grabbed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. off the bargain rack on a whim. So far I'm somewhat under impressed, I got the idea that everybody hyped this game so much, but it really isn't very interesting.

The atmosphere is sort of nice, but right now bandits are respawning all over the map, faster than I can loot their corpses, and I just run out of ammo. Apparently it's not possible to "clear out" a level, which diminishes the feeling of achievement. I don't like the bleeding/bandage crap either. Nor the fact that you have to eat in this game. Clicking on a sausage is neither very fun nor very engrossing. And having to use the inventory screen to equip another weapon is just horrible (say you're under fire and run out of ammo, do you want to fuss around with the inventory while they take pot shots at you?). Same for the carrying limit and the fact you simply cannot move when you're burdened. How are you gonna move the loot to the trader when you can't carry it?

I also forget to save, and in this game you have to save all the time. Can't stand shooters without checkpoints anymore, all the manual saving breaks the immersion for me.

NPCs are faceless and forgettable. So are most of the "quests". You help an NPC by giving him a medpack, he becomes your friend, and a minute later he lets himself be killed by bandits (NPC AI is pretty bad, the stalkers just sit there and let themselves be shot).

The radioactivity feels like a gimmick. Hey, you have to drink vodka to cross the next 5 meters of the map! OK...

Some gaudy items in the game as well, just like in RE4. Dog's tail? All right... it tells me that some of those things can be used to create anti-radiation medicine, but I apparently can't do that myself. Or at least I haven't found out how. Just atmosphere?

The overall production value seems to be on an indie developer level. The weapon animations suck. The UI is seriously flawed (the inventory, argh...) The NPC dialogues are largely uninteresting. "Flawed brilliance"? Maybe... it's hard to trace the brilliance, though. Somewhat reminescent of Mount & Blade in that respect, only M&B was less flawed and more brilliant.

I might continue to dabble in it, but I'll also be honest and say I found even Bioshock more entertaining, despite its entire gimmicky linear art-deco adventure-ness. 

http://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-soc-oblivion-lost-2010

I enjoyed vanilla STALKER, but there are problems. I mean the game isn't Quake or Painkiller. It's gritty, realistic and unforgiving. BUT it get's irritating.

Install Oblivion Lost Mod! Just try it, it's great. It 'fixes' STALKER. 

Was chuggy on my Radeon card, because of the ridiculously hi-res textures. This version might be better:

http://stalker.filefront.com/file/Oblivion_Lost_22_for_1005;93039 

That publishers shouldn't release games in an un-finished state, I know this. I was really annoyed when Stalker Clear Sky came out because it was full of CTDs and even BSODs and was aloms unplayable.
But the Oblivion Lost mod is nonetheless good :) 

I feel Stalker is one of those kind of games, if you can't get immersed in the world then you probably won\t enjoy it nearly as much. I love the game (vanilla) and a while back replayed some with the Oblivion Lost mod. Very atmospheric and tense. The feeling of hiding out in an abandoned complex during night or a blowout, then suddenly I can hear a creature or bandits taking shelter. Whether or not I should fight. Managing my ammo, food and other supplies. Or even hanging out by the fire with other NPCs while one plays his guitar, and minutes later we all get attacked and fighting alongside them. It honestly all felt like a big survival adventure where everything is out to get me. It's that kind of game I can immerse myself and just play it how I see fit. And because its unpredictable what happens and how many places change, it's worth going back for other loot and possibly getting mauled by a Bloodsucker since these places are never always left empty.

I have yet to play CS and CoP though. 

and no one answered my question :)

Is it just my system or does this game (in all its iterations) run like balls? 

Stalker is a wierd one. I played it first time back on a (burning out) Radeon 9800 and ran perfectly fine. Upon upgrading my card, it ran like garbage and crashed everytime I stepped outdoors at the start. It wasn't until I got an extra gig of ram would it run well again. So I couldn't really say, perhaps the latter... 

STALKER Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat will run slow if you set all or even most of the graphics options to maximum. Clear Sky was one of the first DX10.1 (one of the only infact) games, and CoP was one of the first DX11 games. But IIRC all of the games will downscal to a DirectX 8 level. So try lowering some settings.

And what are your specs? 

I'll try that mod. 

you're trying to force the game into patterns (quake, diablo, etc.) you know. You won't have any fun that way.

Also stalker is a game that needs to be explored (e.g. dog feet). 

it's not super fast like source, for example, but source is a lot simpler engine.

on a 1.8ghz cpu + nvidia gts250 it runs great, but obviously that's overkill for what the game SHOULD run at.

that said, when i first played it with recommended specs, it ran fairly poorly and i had to set it to basically run in dx8 mode.

it's still one of my all time favourite games. the atmosphere and feelings it invokes are good enough that i can pardon the miserable ai, stupid voice acting, retarded excuses for quests and occasional crashes.

playing morrowind again actually, and i've found the lack of any voice acting does not bother me one bit. 

Haven't tried Stalker, but the discussion is reminding me of Thief 3. I forgave the dodgy game structure, small levels and buggy feel for the fantastic atmosphere, which I very rarely do Assassin's Creed is an example where the gameplay just pissed me off too much. Really tried to like that sucker but no. Perhaps it's better on the PC... 

is it weird that http://tesnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=39255 makes me want to play oblivion again? :P

i'll have to sort of nehrim's installation because it seems to interfere with oblivion... 

Hah, that looks like an awesome mod, I'll resist reinstalling Oblivion to try it though.

Kind of reminds me of Recettear, a jap style RPG where you manage an item shop selling items to adventurers
http://store.steampowered.com/app/70400/ 

AMD Phenom II X4 965, 3.4 GHz with 4gb ram and gtx 465.

Not super fast but can play most games at 1920*1080 at max settings including Crysis. What settings in particular should I turn down? 

All the stalker games generally don't run as well as you might expect from your pc, I guess some things about the engine are a little rough around the edges :)

In Clear Sky and COP they have an option to enable SSAO, turn that off and you've instantly saved yourself about 10-15fps for an almost unnoticeable visual quality loss.

After that, the 2nd most draining thing is the fully dynamic lighting, though it's a real shame to turn this off as it provides so much atmosphere (lightning w000000). Iirc there is a "dynamic lighting distance" slider so try messing with that instead.

Give this a read too http://www.tweakguides.com/ClearSky_1.html

COP uses the same graphics technology as ClearSky so this should apply to that game also, apart from the new dx11 stuff in COP ofc :) 

http://www.tweakguides.com/images/ClearSky_SSAO.gif

just fyi :) The visual difference is not noticeable in gameplay and it can really kill fps especially on older cards. 

I think this one is about guns.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STZ7UuA5ynY&feature=player_embedded 

Chubbies on all of my penises. 

wait what? rage is coming out this year? I assumed it would come out in some indeterminate future... maybe i need a new PC. 

I thought it was out October 4th, 2011, but the date on the video was October 7th, 2011. Either way, yeah, it's coming out roughly a month before Skyrim. 

Rage is looking more like a corridor shooter in that video. Where's the wow factor?

If Tim's favourite weapon is a boomerang style blade, that's not saying much for the other weapons. 

its not saying much about Tim. 

Went back to another of my forever-unfinished games.

This time I knew what to expect, so used a gamepad from the start (no mouse support Capcom?!). Still, my PSX-style controller doesn't support all functions of the original gamecube one. Oh well. No analog support either.

Anyway, on to the actual game. I remember being underimpressed with this when I first played it (probably due to the PC port issues and the slightly crappy combat controls). However, after reading some FAQs I can make better use of the game's combat system now (like leg shots and kicking). It's actually enjoyable after all.

Combat and enemy design are the highlights. Good "gun feeling". Aiming is still too slow and cumbersome - Leon takes ages to turn left and right. I feel that as far as 3rd person combat is concerned, the latest Tomb Raider games offer a lot better aiming and shooting while moving (impossible in RE4). However, RE has the edge in enemy design and the locational damage system.

It's debateable if locational damage really adds much to a 3rd person game with sucky aiming, though.

Inventory is OK since it actually pauses the game and the overall number of items in the game is thankfully limited. Matter of practice. UI is also OK.

The quicktime events are really, really crappy, especially in the PC version. It's sometimes unclear which buttons are which.

The whole escort type gameplay is well done; interaction with the escorted character is well thought out. She is pretty annoying, though; her excessive screaming "Heeeeelp!" is reminescent of Jen from Prey, another damsel in distress that I found highly annoying. The sequence where you control the weaponless Ashley was just superfluous in my opinion (let's not talk about the slider puzzle - that was horrible). Who wants to control a defenseless 15 year old girl in a game that is otherwise about brutal combat? Every time she got abducted, I welcomed it because it let me concentrate on combat. At least once she was out of hearing distance. There are not many sounds more irritating than a woman's high-pitched screams for "heeeelp". Don't they realize that it really doesn't help?

The game looks, in part, shitty on PC (low-res textures and UI, very ugly and generally almost non-existant menu system). Overall the atmosphere and especially the enemy design mostly makes up for it though. A slightly "meh" experience, but the gameplay and storytelling keeps it together.

The environment design was enjoyable in the village part. Unfortunately, the castle that I've almost finished was mostly a linear corridor shooter with pillared walls and flat floors and ceilings. Almost simplistic. The hedge labyrinth that you're supposedly "never leaving alive" is ridiculously simple. Admittedly, labyrinths usually aren't good for gameplay. The sewer with the insect creatures was surprisingly short. The castle also really suffers from low-res textures and cookie-cutter corridor design.

The NPCs are pretty good in this game, even Ashley (apart from the "Heeeelp, Leon!" part). I look forward to playing Ada (and killing Saddler).

Let's hope it gets better again. 

The NPCs are pretty good in this game, even Ashley (apart from the "Heeeelp, Leon!" part). I look forward to playing Ada (and killing Saddler).