a blend of STALKER and Fallout 3.
roll back 3 years later (2008), i found out that patch 2.0 was released so i decided to give it another try without listening to the naysayers (i'm surprised that i did not put the dvd in the microwave back then lol), turned out this game was so amazing that i stopped playing all the other games for a month and luckily most of the bugs were fixed and Widescreen support introduced (great!).
GRAPHICS - i'm going to be honest, despite that we're now in 2010, the graphics are actually pretty good especially if you force Transparency Antialiasing (supersampling) in your graphic card control panel in order to improve the quality of alpha blended trees and vegetations (the difference is huge), also performance now is superb, constant 60fps with everything maxed out smooth as butter, so turn everything to the max and enjoy.
death and running animations are mediocre, in this game this is a nice thing because the characters will irritate you which means you'll want to kill them, more fun to be had :-D
remember, GAMEPLAY first, everything else later.
SOUND - the voice acting is a little crap, but in the sense that "It's so bad, it's good", music is really nice however, i like the "Boiling Point" song during the install and the latin music when driving etc it's really nice, this game gets better if you play with 5.1 speakers as the sound all around you is really immersive.
GAMEPLAY - if you played STALKER and FALLOUT3, then you know what kind of gameplay this is, you're totally free to pick missions at will, walk or drive anywhere you want, it's pretty realistic when you have to fill your gas tank, buy food and drink, watch a stripper dance, take sides and more or even drive for cash.
admitted the game is not polished, there are still a few bugs here and there but nothing show stopper, also the game is very very random, you could be sneaking behind an enemy and a snake appears and bites to death , this is what makes this game so great, randomness.
CONCLUSION?
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please do not make the same mistake i did, this is such a great game, it's now one of my all time favorites, do not listen to those who insist that it looks crap and try to sway you, the gameplay is beyond fun and immersive, graphics ain't everything in life, i've replayed and finished this game twice and now (2010) replaying it again, always a blast.
this game comes highly recommended and to conclude i must say that it works very nicely in Windows7, install, patch, play.
now if you excuse me, i need to go drive the bus for cash.
thanks for reading :-)