S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Impressed or Not Impressed?

I was just curious how many people were impressed by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. now that it's finally released. First off, I'll just let it be known that I was NOT impressed by this game in the least. I played it for about 30 minutes and finally just unistalled it completely. Let me explain why.

GRAPHICS - My current computer is a P4 530, 2GB RAM @ 4-4-4-12, and a Saphirre x1950PRO 512MB card. After going through the STALKER tweak guide at TweakGuides.com I was more or less able to run the game maxed @ 1280x1024, but still I didn't think the game looked all that great compared to some of the other current FPS games out there right now.

GAMEPLAY - First off, I was floored that there was so little voice acting. The fact that you had to READ all the dialog when confronting another NPC was completely unbelieveable in this day and age. I felt like I was playing a game on the SNES or something. Too many side missions made me feel confused and made the game have a lack of focus. I plaed this game up until the first fight scene before I got rid of this piece of garbage. It made no sense to me why the NPC's in the squad wouldn't have given the player a gun to use in that first firefight. I thought the act of trying to hide until one of your squad buddies got killed and stealing his gun was retarded. And lastly, lets not forget the BULLETPROOF enemies. Even standing only a couple feet away and unloading a clip into one of the enemies didn't kill him but he fires off one shot and I'm dead. Go figure. What a crock.

STORY - Completely incoherent. 'Nuff said on that.

Except for the old NES/SNES RPG's like Zelda, The Illusion of Gaia, and a couple others, I've never really cared for RPG's. Like I read somewhere else, this game is simply an RPG that wants to be a FPS game but just doesn't quite cut it. To me it felt like a modern day Oblivion (which BTW was another game I think completely BLOWS). Had I known this game was 90% RPG and 10% wannabe FPS then I would have stayed away in the first place. I gve it a 1/10.

So tell me your opinions.

Isn't stalker supposed to be and RPG like experience in a FPS mode?

If it isn't I have been terribly wrong and must shoot myself in the foot. 

Graphics... The X-Ray engine is one of the better game engines in a while,can scale to lower end PC's and has the best use of Dynamic Lighting so far in a game. Some poor textures (especially weapons) though that should be patched in the future.

Gameplay... Stalker has RPG elements remember... most RPG's (like NWN2) still relies on text based conversations, otherwise the game would get to big (audio takes up lots of MB's). As for combat... the game uses realisticly (for a game) modelled bullet balistics... Shooting is a skill in Stalker, it's not a run-and-gun FPS like Doom3. After some practise with the differant weapons I started taking enemies out by the hundreds! My brother is a cop (South Africa's version of S.W.A.T) and he loves the combat becuase it feels, to him, like real life combat... and he would know, he's been in more than a few firefights...

Story... incoherent!? After only 30 minutes!? It's like watching the 1st 30 minutes of, say, Lord of the Rings and saying "This makes no sense!" The story is rather cool actually...

You are of course intitled not to like Stalker... but I think you had NO idea what you where getting yourself into when you bought. Next time, read up on a game before you buy it.

Isn't stalker supposed to be and RPG like experience in a FPS mode?

If it isn't I have been terribly wrong and must shoot myself in the foot.

grisibur

Stalker doesn't really have any *traditional* RPG elemements in the game as some people may expect. You interact with NPCs via a RPGish window (Think of an updated Fallout dialog screen)... You can choose quests to take for different rewards...Then of course you have an inventory and can change a few of your stats if equip certain artifacts, but nothing permanent.

Yeah

Not impressed at all with stalker. 

What's with the mindless running around aimlessly while getting back an artifact to another person? Really bored me. 

Stopped playing even though I'm more than 3 quater through.  

i found stalker to b highly impressive, the graphics aren't bad for an engine that is atleast a yr old. the game play is pretty intense the realistic ballistics make gunfights difficult and fun again. as far as the rpg elements, i'm satisfied with to an extent. the one thing they could've and should've included was a some sort of a character progression system (leveling up in other words). it would make sense because this is an exetremely open ended game, with alot to explore. if had to score this game i'd give it an 8 out of 10, flawed but otherwise great.

I thought that I would just tell you how good is the game, but I ended writing a hole review. So I am not going to add it in here.

GRAPHICS - You can't expect a game that began development at-least 7 years ago to look much better than any other game that began development at the same time. Though, I admit the requirements for the game are steep.

GAMEPLAY - if you want focus, ignore the side quests and just play the main story, there is more voice acting done by the main story npcs. I think I remember starting with a pistol, but I might be wrong. Armor would be the reason you can unload a clip into an enemy from a couple feet away and not kill him, and the reason he kills you in one shot is because he is smart enough to take the easy head-shot.

STORY - Not completely incoherent, you just need to pay a little bit of attention to see through the sometimes confusing thickly accented dialogue, the story is actually pretty transparent.

I can tell you don't care for RPGs, if you did, you'd know the only RPG elements in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is the side quests, which can be ignored anyway, and the inventory system which is sweet, and the fact that you can buy and sell ITEMS, but who uses that feature in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. anyway? It's a very realistic fps, and it's not for people who aren't very good at fps.

I'll admit the games several flaws, but it come with a fair price tag, so you definitely get your money's worth