Tango reviews: S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl (my first review (please be gentle))

[Tango]

Okay so this game is old and has been superseded by younger, fitter, better looking games but so what, this game is (nearly) brilliant.

So why only nearly? I started playing this game full of hope and promise that it would in fact be this awe inspiring, jewel encrusted, platinum holy grail that the reviews had been mouthing off about for ages, I even bought it in the sodding limited edition tin, and to start with it was pretty good, random mutants and anomalies, atmospheric but then after an hour of play it got stale...

Maybe this is because my bottom end PC at the time couldn't handle Full Dynamic Lighting and all the other fancy stuff that's designed to make this a constantly scary game, maybe its because the game play was repetitive but no it was none of those things. It was the fact that the game which I was currently playing was absolutely nothing like the reviewers had been gabbing off about, giving it almost perfect scores. They lied to us, filling us with hopes which were never fulfilled. I trudged on and completed the game, obviously. Just to see one of the multitudes of possible end sequences. And then I uninstalled it packed it away in its limited edition box and hid it just in case i was feeling mad enough to install it and play the bloody thing again...

1 year has passed...

My friend was on msn to me, we were just talking and he suddenly says 'BLOODY HELL YOU HAVE TO TRY THIS:' and he gave me a like to file front where there was a mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R, does anyone know what that stands for, called 'Oblivion Lost' this mod apparently brings back all the things that the reviewers were promising: random blowouts, all the old mutants, realistic weapons, just to name a few. So after he pestered me for what seemed an age I finally gave in, installed STALKER, put the patches on, installed Oblivion Lost.

Holy Christ on a bike does this improve the game play experience. Within the first 10 mins I was having more fun then i ever did when i was playing it originally. What a difference it had made. This has given me back what I was promised a year ago. This is brilliant.

This mod makes the game so atmospheric I was just minding my own business walking down a road in game at night with flash light on (and full dynamic lighting thanks to new PC) and all of a sudden a frigging great Bloodsucker jumps out a sodding hedge and chews on my arse like its rainbow flavoured candy... Fantastic. I'm firing the L86 and its just like it is in real life (been on a range with one) Brilliant. One second I'm killing a horde of mutants and the next its a sodding Blowout! Excellent finally I'm having a good time with this originally poor show.

Now thanks to this mod I'm having a wonderful time killing things just because I can.

The graphics in this game still hold its ground in today's super real environments, The game play although in places repetitive is still fun moving down critters as they leap from bushes to gnaw at your face! Sound with oblivion lost installed is in my opinion unrivalled and is the most accurate so far. Multiplayer leaves a lot to be desired with only 3 types of map : factory, swamp and village.

In conclusion if you are gonna play this I heartily insist that you Install Oblivion lost.

Thats all for now folks!

 

[Drong]

I've been playing Stalker over the weekend and I've come to the conclusion it hates me, it hates me alot...a hell of a lot. I literally installed it straight after completing Bioshock and previous to that F.E.A.R (and before that HL2 EP2 and before that COD4 and so on) and what with vitachambers and autosaves and plasmids and slo-mo bullet dodging and gravity guns etc, etc I'd got somewhat accustomed to feeling like a hero and able to hold my own in practically any fight.

All of a sudden I find myself thrust into a radioactive wasteland with only a yellow mickey mouse poncho and a cap gun for protection, this game kicked my arse, it kicked it hard, playing this on master is frikkin impossible (and if you say it's not I claim you are either a lying scumbag or you need to get out and discover girls) even playing it on stalker (the equivalent of normal) is no piece of cake.

Ok for example one of the first side mission's clear out the boar pit, ok no worries I think so off I trot and first try to shoot the boars but my cap gun fails to scare them off let alone cause any noticeable damage so I end up knifing them to death instead yet I have no time to sit and bask in boar intestines and glory because the shooting has drawn the attention of a couple of soldiers who decide to wander by and promptly fill me with so much lead they could use me as a radiation shield.

Or the first proper mission where you are supposed to destroy a whole camp full of bad guys but it does not physically give you enough ammo to do the job even if you conserve shots which means your frantically looting corpses and pissing around with inventory screens while the bandits are busily shooting your arse off, yeah you do get some teammates who are supposed to help you but the extent of their help seems to be sitting outside the camp shooting at birds and scratching their balls.

In fact nearly everything is trying to kill you, the wildlife, bandits, the military, mutants, hell even the land itself. The only people I found that were not trying to skin my hide were a couple of neutral stalkers and a trader.

Eventually I got into the game and played it and started to feel like I was actually enjoying and getting the hang of it, only to have a pack of mutant dogs viciously maul me to death while I was distracted fighting a couple of military guys.
Then I realise I hadn't saved the bastard game for 3 bastard hours despite having done lots of bastard mission and the thing doesn't have a bastard autosave even when you trek your bastard arse around for a bastardly number of miles and complete large segments of the bastard story and then when you die the bastard doesn't even quickload from the last bastard save but instead kicks you to the bastarding main menu!

I'll try it again and yeah I'll have to remember to save regularly but surely GSC could have made their distain for me a little less apparent.

 

[Drong]

Sorry i got carried away with my rant there, anyway your review was pretty good especially for a first attempt and i'll definetly give that mod a go.

 

[BlackOps]

Okay so this game is old and has been superseded by younger, fitter, better looking games but so what, this game is (nearly) brilliant.

So why only nearly? I started playing this game full of hope and promise that it would in fact be this awe inspiring, jewel encrusted, platinum holy grail that the reviews had been mouthing off about for ages, I even bought it in the sodding limited edition tin, and to start with it was pretty good, random mutants and anomalies, atmospheric but then after an hour of play it got stale...

Maybe this is because my bottom end PC at the time couldn't handle Full Dynamic Lighting and all the other fancy stuff that's designed to make this a constantly scary game, maybe its because the game play was repetitive but no it was none of those things. It was the fact that the game which I was currently playing was absolutely nothing like the reviewers had been gabbing off about, giving it almost perfect scores. They lied to us, filling us with hopes which were never fulfilled. I trudged on and completed the game, obviously. Just to see one of the multitudes of possible end sequences. And then I uninstalled it packed it away in its limited edition box and hid it just in case i was feeling mad enough to install it and play the bloody thing again...

1 year has passed...

My friend was on msn to me, we were just talking and he suddenly says 'BLOODY HELL YOU HAVE TO TRY THIS:' and he gave me a like to file front where there was a mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R, does anyone know what that stands for, called 'Oblivion Lost' this mod apparently brings back all the things that the reviewers were promising: random blowouts, all the old mutants, realistic weapons, just to name a few. So after he pestered me for what seemed an age I finally gave in, installed STALKER, put the patches on, installed Oblivion Lost.

Holy Christ on a bike does this improve the game play experience. Within the first 10 mins I was having more fun then i ever did when i was playing it originally. What a difference it had made. This has given me back what I was promised a year ago. This is brilliant.

This mod makes the game so atmospheric I was just minding my own business walking down a road in game at night with flash light on (and full dynamic lighting thanks to new PC) and all of a sudden a frigging great Bloodsucker jumps out a sodding hedge and chews on my arse like its rainbow flavoured candy... Fantastic. I'm firing the L86 and its just like it is in real life (been on a range with one) Brilliant. One second I'm killing a horde of mutants and the next its a sodding Blowout! Excellent finally I'm having a good time with this originally poor show.

Now thanks to this mod I'm having a wonderful time killing things just because I can.

The graphics in this game still hold its ground in today's super real environments, The game play although in places repetitive is still fun moving down critters as they leap from bushes to gnaw at your face! Sound with oblivion lost installed is in my opinion unrivalled and is the most accurate so far. Multiplayer leaves a lot to be desired with only 3 types of map : factory, swamp and village.

In conclusion if you are gonna play this I heartily insist that you Install Oblivion lost.

Thats all for now folks!

i think you at best took a few pointers from Yahtzee's 'F.E.A.R.: Perseus Mandate' review and at worst held it down and bloodily ripped it off

 

[neems]

Words

You are essentially correct. And that is one of the things that makes STALKER so good, the ever constant threat of disembowelment.

Also in the early stages of the game, it's best to have a good look around for ammo and equipment before taking on the missions (there's over a hundred rounds of pistol ammo in the bushes between the starting camp and the military outpost, plus armour upstairs in a building in the camp).

I haven't tried the Oblivion Lost mod, I'd give it a shot but I'm currently running STALKER unpatched as it gets rid of the annoying shadow glitch, plus I can use time acceleration. Sounds good though.

 

[Tango]

Thank for the comments.

 

[stompy]

Well done, though I feel that you need to proofread.