This is the review after getting the game to work; continued in part 2
I had high hopes for Stalker CoP. After playing Metro 2033, I was ready for more of the same atmosphere, and with Stalker, I was promised with such. Part of the advertising was true: I did experience the true agony of a post-apocalyptic 'zone'. But it wasn't with 'playing the game'; it was 'making it work'.
I can't even begin to describe the agony that was involved with the process, that in the end, still resulted in crashes and ultimately me uninstalling it. I understand that some people magically get the game to work; well, that's fantastic, but if you read my review (and many others), you'll see that this game is nearly unplayable for a good number of people.
The reason why the score isn't -terribly- low is because the game still showed promise (somewhat). The plot seemed interesting, after I brushed up on the first two games (in terms of story on wiki). Also, it looks nice, and yeah..well I'm trying to be charitable.
All in all, the game is broken. Without mods, it's near unplayable because of how terrible it looks/runs. So I decide to download a highly rated mod, and it'll be ok right? With most games yes; with this game I spent practically an entire day to get it work. And then waking up on the second day, I proceeded to get a massive number of CTD. After that, well, uninstalling, reinstalling, etc etc etc; I gave this game a -lot- of patience and effort, but really, it's terribly optimized. I have a decent rig and the thing drops FPS like crazy (and of course, crashes to desktop). It takes about 2 minutes to load, and it only uses one core, so having multiple cores doesn't do anything at all to lighten the load, so it's like you're playing back in the stone age. And of course, more crashes. Adjust settings; more crashes. More research.
This has probably been the most unplayable game I've ever had to deal with; there was no way I was spending a third day; in post 2008, this is darn near unforgivable.
I was incredibly let down, and underwhelmed. The atmosphere for the first couple of levels (that worked for a while) didn't seem all that impressive; the AI was wonky, the shooting was cheap and unsatisfying, and the camera was nuts. All in all, I can't compare this game to the fantastic atmosphere/experience of Metro at all.
Frustrations abounds, I rage uninstalled. And really, I don't think it's fair to blame -me- at all.
~
part 2:
After another day, I finally got the game to work by ditching everything altogether and going for the Complete Mod, which worked out quite nicely. As a result, the game's score went up considerably, as I finally got to play it.
The game is good at creating a certain ambiance; that is, you are usually on your toes as you can be killed in any moment; it had a similar vibe to Fallout in that you could loot bodies for materials and sell them for money (RU). At first, it seemed like the game was going to be alright, and a loot hunting/immersive experience a la Fallout 3. Unfortunately, I was mistaken.
Don't get me the wrong, the game isn't bad per se. But even after playing it with mods and highly limiting the crashing, the game just wasn't/isn't worth all the trouble. Even though Metro 2033 did have its quirks and wonky mechanics, in the end, it was the atmosphere and story/characters that saved it, and kept me playing. All in all, I rather enjoyed Metro 2033. With Stalker CoP, not quite as much.
It may seem easy to dismiss a complaint about voice-acting as 'shallow', but in a game that relies on atmosphere, it's really worth mentioning. Stalker CoP feels like a chore; there is no sense of 'progression' or satisfaction. After playing for hours, the 'story' had yet to get anywhere at all. The game plays in a tedious fashion; pretty much everything is 'hidden', and the quest tracker is worthless. Usually this wouldn't be a problem (as one could justify it via 'lack of hand holding'), but with the look of Stalker CoP and the way the world works, it basically means you're going to be pixel hunting, or 'let's crouch around and rapidly click around to trigger an objective'. It's somewhat sloppy.
CoP had all the tedium of B-grade f2p MMOs. First of all, there are walls and walls of text. I have nothing against reading, but when the -entire game-'s 'feel' is pretty much portrayed in such a cold/flaccid manner, color me surprised when I start losing interest. Some of the most intriguing concepts (such as say, an anti-bandit raid) turns into a chore devoid of pleasure, where you're basically hiding behind your allies to avoid getting instantly killed by a cheap headshot, while spamming bandages and health kits. This is considering the fact that I do not consider myself lacking in terms of FPS experience/strategy. It was also 'normal' difficulty.
Toss in the fact that the story doesn't actually, well, get anywhere at all. For the entire duration of the hours I put into the game, I had no idea what I was doing. What exactly was I doing in the zone besides scrapping up random not-yet-broken guns/loot to sell for RU, which I would the use to spend on upgrades and repairs that made you feel no more powerful. With no 'levels/exp' or story to drive me, I felt like I was a scrapper, reading long uninvolved texts that were the 'justifications' for 'emotion' connecting to my 'missions'. So yes, I think the most apt comparison for Stalker really was a B-rate MMO (grinding/text-emotionless-quests).
And despite -all- this the game didn't even play well. The shooting is -extremely- unsatisfying (honestly), and the mechanics are weird and disorienting. The 'crouch' function is a great example of how badly this game aged; the lack of smoothness, combined with the unsatisfying weapons, poor shooting mechanics, shoddy graphics (even with mods/imagine what it'd be like without), lack of emotional storytelling, slow-prodding through maps (whoever thought I'd ever crave a 'mount' in something outside of an mmo..), poor programming/lag, crashes, and bland 'characters'. It's really hard not to be entirely let down.
All in all, the game isn't 'terrible'. I've played 'bad' games and this is not one of them (thus the not very low score). It's just that I had high expectations for Stalker, and thus, was accordingly critical. If you want to compare Stalker to the run of the mill poor-FPS, it's actually not bad. If you're going to compare it to the higher tiers, however, like that of Metro and Beth games, you're going to find yourself sorely lacking. Especially considering the long loading times, crashes, and amount of time one may spend getting the game to work at all, the fact that the experience itself was so lackluster only furthered my disappointing conclusion.