Australian Gamer Review :: STALKER

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STALKER - Shadow of Chernobyl

Reviewed on: PC
Available on: PC

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has enough good elements for me to recommend it, perhaps getting the first "Brett Seal of Goodliness" since Hungry Hungry Hippo’s. Well, before I do, we need to talk about Bugs.

Players: 1 Player (32 Online)
Genre:
Release: 2007-05-22

Developer: GSC Game World
Distributor: THQ

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STALKER - Shadow of Chernobyl

News from Brett - July 2nd @ 11:59pm

Have you ever seen a food nutrition pyramid?

The general idea is that you try to chow down on foods on the lower half of the pyramid and only eat the products at the top sparingly, especially if you want to live past forty without having adult onset diabetes or being incredibly unhealthy.

If you turn it upside down then you have a more accurate view of my diet, especially the sugar section. I probably already have diabetes, hence the reason why I am so tired all the time, I’d know for sure if I was brave enough to visit a doctor , but I’m not, and thankfully this is a review of “Stalker” for PC so it’s all irrelevant anyway.

Or is it?

What if I drew a pyramid and then broke it down into game play elements that make a good game? Then I somehow related it to Stalker by talking about the open ended game play being good but the steep system requirements and bugs being bad?

That would be educational, informative and stupid all at the same time!

Actually, that would be too stupid ... Wouldn’t it?

Its settled then, we are going to write a review and during it put dumb things we don’t like about Stalker in the little parts of the pyramid, kind of like saying “don’t give us anymore of this please GSC”, then we’ll put the stuff we like about Stalker in the bigger chunks of the pyramid, kind of like saying “stuff a pickle down our pants and accuse us of gerkin around, that’s good stuff GSC”.

Every so often we’ll update the pyramid with a big picture like the one above, it saves me typing and fills up the page. A quick review is a good review and it’s doubtful that I’m getting paid for this one, so let’s get it over with and move onto playing something made by SEGA that involves rally cars and dirt.

Straight off the shelf Stalker appeals. The box cover has a 3D holographic zombie dude on the front that’s actually on a removable card so you can put it on the fridge next to a printout of “Gamespy’s Top 25 Removable Holographic Box Covers of 2007” list. As far as random freebies to get with a game go, this is a good one, although I still prefer my idea of giving away zombie shaped chocolate breakfast cereal in PC game boxes, especially the big ones. Regardless, that’s a topic best left for another time and for the purpose of moving the review forward without losing further readers, we’ll call Stalkers packaging, including its manual a success and give it a positive position on our game nutrition pyramid.

We (I? You? Goddamn, am I changing grammatical deixis back and forth in some horrible display of bad games journalism? Is this what you all expect from me by now anyway? What’s with all the rhetorical questions? WHERES MY BOWLING BALL?) also need to fill a box on the crap end of the pyramid because of “Stalkers” irresponsible use of acronym and subtitle. The full name of the game is S.T.A.L.K.E.R – Shadow of Chernobyl which sounds like a straight to DVD nasty starting Mario Van Peebles, Donald Sutherland and the dude with the bad French accent from Highlander. Not only that, but it doesn’t stand for anything and takes forever to type. No green vegetables there developers.

With this in mind, I’m calling S.T.A.L.K.E.R – Shadow of Chernobyl, “SSOC” for the remainder of the review. Later on I might get a sock, make a puppet from it, film a video of it and then post it on youtube under the title “Sexy Teen Dances and Strips”. But there will be no sexy teens, oh no, there will be only “THE SOCK FROM THE RADIOACTIVE ZONE”. Then we will sit back and laugh at the people who visit the video site and perhaps spam the comments area with links to myspace pages that don’t even belong to us.

So, one good pyramid zone and one bad. Notice how I cleverly worked the word “Zone” into my review. That’s because next we are going to talk about the story for “SSOC” and the area that SSOC takes place in is called The Zone.

The opening sequence shows a truck filled with corpses crashing somewhere near the Chernobyl meltdown site. For those of you not paying attention I’ll repeat that, a truck filled with dead people in the back of it, crashes and rolls over, and all the dead people fall out. The player is dragged from the crash scene and taken to a local trading post but in true first person shooter story line cliché has amnesia with only one hint of their identity, a PDA with the words KILL STRELOK on the screen. The trader tells you that he will help you find Strelok, but only if you enter the radioactive zone left after the Chernobyl meltdown to pick up some souvenirs for him to sell in return for his good deed to you.

Needless to say, this is a positive pyramid segment, mainly because of the dead bodies rolling out of the truck. I can’t describe how good this scene is. I love zombies and I love car crashes so to have both in the opening salvo of a game had me very very excited. The wonderfully cheesy amnesia storyline is just icing on the cake.

Wandering around the SSOC world is genuinely impressive. Day and night passes and even in the newbie friendly early areas there are monsters roaming around as well as other Stalkers to cause you harm. The action is more “shooter” than “adventure” and the game play is open ended in the sense that plenty of side missions are available at any time as well as missions that progress the story.

As you progress further into the zone and subsequent story things become harder. Progress is always hard earned but seems fair and most situations have a number of ways to deal with them. The player is rewarded for fighting smarter as opposed to harder and using roofs and hills when available to fight your enemy from above always makes for easier battles.

It’s a couple of hours into SSOC that problems emerge.

I was lucky enough to have almost exactly the recommended specs to play SSOC and for the first two or three missions performance with average settings was fine. Later performance began to lag to the point where I had to exit the game, reset to lower settings and continue. The poor performance of SSOC on my recommended specs PC wasn’t so much the problem as the uneven game play. One minute you can be banging along taking down multiple enemies at 60 frames per second and then the next you’re bogged down in stutterland because of a crate on the screen. I can only imagine that the whole situation would be untenable on lower spec PC’s and its something that needs to considered before purchasing SSOC.

It’s been 5 minutes since I had my picture on the internet so let’s take the opportunity to update the game play pyramid. I’ll paraphrase at this stage as no-one wants me to repeat myself, especially as what I’ve had to say prior to this moment hasn’t been that interesting anyway. Game play first person shooter good, laggy unpredictable play bad, story crazy ass good.

I like to talk about sound in games, it makes me feel like I’m some rogue throwback reviewer from the 1980’s and gives me a chance to bag on EA which is always fun. SSOC has some decent sound effects and unlike EA games doesn’t have EMO rock or R’N’B licensed music rather than a real soundtrack. There are some fantastic dodgy Russian accents on the voice acting side of things and the temptation to do a Mother Russia joke is too strong for me to resist.

In Australia you play Stalker on PC. In Mother Russia you can’t afford PC so you play Colicovision.

Let’s place decent sound in the middle of the pyramid and move on to game play so I can finish the review and get back to my career as a comedian. As mentioned before, SSOC presents itself as a RPG/Shooter but is more shooter than anything. RPG elements are limited to using items at the right time or small weapons upgrades and the open ended game play is still limited to a main quest with other sub quests triggered at certain times or when you are in certain areas. The player is still guarded from entering specific areas too early because of Radiation and other environmental elements so the game is only free roaming to a certain point.

By now you’re probably thinking that SSOC has enough good elements for me to recommend it, perhaps getting the first “Brett Seal of Goodliness” since Hungry Hungry Hippo’s. Well, before I do, we need to talk about Bugs. Let’s take a trip to Interzone and count down my top 5 personally experienced bugs.

Stuck Down a Hole - My Stalker (who I named Walker Texas Stalker) got stuck down a hole resulting in the game loading between 2 levels indefinitely.
NPC Pinball – An NPC asked Walker to follow him, but then bounced between 2 trees like Sonic the Hedgehog.
The Running Man - Not content with bouncing, some NPCs like to do the running man dance, their legs moving whilst their torso goes nowhere. Am I following you or is this a rap dance battle?
Back from the Dead With Booty – Like George Michael’s career some enemies just don’t die, not only that but if they do stay dead they respawn their inventories when looted making for unlimited health packs and ammo.
God I hate Bono and Al Gore – Not even a bug, I just wanted to say I hate Bono and Al Gore. Lets all have a concert for world climate change day and save the future for the kids? You’re a pair of nitwits and despite whatever anyone says, big sunglasses are never coming back into fashion.

So with the exception of bug number 5, SSOC could do with some further patching. If anyone can patch Bono and Al Gore, preferably with a staple gun in the ass then let me know. I’d like to cover the event or at the very least could provide some industrial size staples.

And so, that’s STALKER for you, let’s put the last sectors on the pyramid, take a picture and move onto the conclusion before I get any more wound up over Bono and end up with a nose bleed.

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Final Verdict

Stalker is a fantastic and interesting game but I suggest you not go out and buy it for a while unless you have an 8800GTX and a tonne of Ram. Patches are coming quite freely and end users are modding the game to fix bugs, whilst the price is only going to get cheaper. For those who can’t wait and who have at least the recommended specs then it is playable now, but every moment of enjoyment will be met with one of frustration because of the buggy state of the current build.

Pros
Atmospheric, immersive and original.
Cons
Mission critical bugs can prevent progress in the game. Runs like a blocked loo even on mid level PC’s.