Very interesting FPS with a few RPG like problems.
It's practically a DIY indy miracle that the game ever got done at all. I remember hearing rumors about this game years and years before it was released from some of my easter european friends in the states.
In and of that, it is very cool, and I love the eastern europe flavor that it brings to the FPS genre. It's something old done in a different way, and I'm always a fan of variety in games.
First, what is good.
Besides the aforementioned "eastern european" special sauce, which it really is, there are many cool features in this game.
I actually like the weapons in Stalker, they make sense to me, and I like how the game basically forces you to switch around based on what you find on people you kill. It's very realistic in that respect.
The items, in general, are a strong suit of this game, and show the slight RPG intentions that permeate throughout.
I like, but don't love, the dialog in Stalker.
It's cheesy, translated dialog that was probably cheesy to begin with.
It's fun, but not amazing.
I think there is a reasonable amount of post-apocalyptic atmosphere going on in Stalker, so I want to give the environments team credit for the right ideas and interesting and quirky locations like the "garbage."
And that brings me to where the game falls short. For one thing, though the environments are appropriately dire and gloomy, they are way too dark and monotone.
I know this may sound backwards to some, but the game doesn't have to be strangely dark all the time where I can't see stuff on my monitor to look gloomy; this is a video game, we need to see what we are shooting, that part of reality can be bended a little bit.
I tried adjusting the gamma in game, and it just looked too washed out and impossible to see, and this is not my monitor, every other game looks pretty great and it's properly calibrated; it's Stalker being way too dark.
Other things on my meh list: Stalker makes you run around like crazy, everywhere, sometimes without fighting, and makes your character unbelievably frail, so you can't just run super fast to the next place or quick-travel.
This isn't a problem until you start traveling through multiple levels for a single quest and you have already seen all the terrain a billion times over.
It gets boring really quick.
The items in the game are good, but the carrying system is lame. You can barely carry what you would reasonably want to have with you to survive the game, much less collect and sell things easily.
And because everything is so far away, that means that you will be spending ten minutes on a single run to sell some stuff.
There are techniques, like storing things in stashes and selling close to kills, but that is boring. I don't plays a FPS to run around selling things.
This is one of those RPG elements that snuck it's way into the game, to me, it's uninvited.
Next up, the graphics are a seriously mixed bag.
I understand that this game was in development for a really long time, and it show in the graphics department.
For 2007, the character models are appalling. They look like about 2002 or so. think Windows XP.
The environments are okay graphically, I would even say on par with many games of the time, but not breathtaking or special.
Also, the task system struck me as so-so. I didn't really care about any of the missions, and I quickly got bored of killing the same guys in black suits or green suits over and over again.
Which brings me to my last point, which is that the combat is incredibly easy.
The enemy AI sucks and if you play FPSs, you will instantly get how to exploit the enemies and beat every battle with little difficulty.
The only battles you will lose are with superhumans, or mutants, whatever they are, and that's just because you don't have the proper equipment yet (also very RPG).
However, at the end of the day, even with all it's flaws, Stalker remains quirky and sometimes fun.
I think it should be properly referred to as an RPG, because the FPS aspects are really not up to snuff.
If you just like to be challenged while shooting stuff, but don't want a huge open-world map that you are constantly forced to traverse over and over, don't even bother with game because you will hate it.
If you like RPGs that make you run around and complete tasks, and don't like shooters with real challenge like, say, Far Cry 1, then this game may be for you.