S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

[ZEE]

.

[Adagio]

Stalker is IMHO the best game released in 2007 of those I've played
The game is far from perfect, but still a lot of fun (and it takes a long time to finish, at least compared to other FPS games)
I like the large areas, the environment and the diversity of the enemies... and for some unknown reason I've also had a lot of fun online with team deathmatch, I've had a lot more fun than Crysis and UT3 online

But as said, Stalker is far from perfect. The more you play, the more you start to notice it's problems. What annoyed me the most about the game is the travel time and that you can attack the same place thoussands of times, without it affecting anything (I have lost count on how many times I took out all from the Freedom faction, but they always come back)

The AI is ok, not the best but certainly not the worst either. But at some points they do act very stupid. When attacking the freedom factions fortress you can take most of them out from a distance (just use your sniper weapon to kill the people at the fire, for some reason the AI ignores that the other people around the fire is killed one by one)


It took me two tries to get into this game. First time I played for one hour, then put the game to rest. A few months later I started playing again and now I'm glad I did

[DrSpike]

It got quite poor/mediocre reviews, so I didn't actually ever check it out.

[Standup]

Probably one of my fav games of 2007 and I'm not a big FPS fan.

The atmosphere is great and the plot is pretty engaging as well. The downside is it's still pretty buggy after 5 patches and a lot of people still have technical problems. You still have respawned NPCs dying instantly when then appear in the campfires. My own personal bug bear is that spawning has been moved to the second core on dual core but can be up to 10 minutes behind so seeming empty areas suddenly become full of bad guys spawing around you in midair.

The dynamic AI isn't really as dynamic as it first appears and I'd like to see more interaction and more RPG elements but that's my natural bias creeping in.

As Adagio says your lack of impact on events becomes more apparent the longer you play or the more time you spend in an area. The farmhouse attack in the first area seems to be somewhere you have a lot of influence on the world but you soon realise that it's basically a loop and whatever you do nothing much changes.

[Solver]

Ooh, gotta get back to this later when I have more time. They do capture the atmosphere well. Nice references to the book. Generally well-made. Bad AI flaws, horrible buggyness, complete lack of polish. Spawns

Leaving this post so that I remember to get back here with detailed thoughts later

[Apocalypse]

Originally posted by DrSpike
It got quite poor/mediocre reviews, so I didn't actually ever check it out.

They fixed a lot of annoyances after patches.

[DrSpike]

Still wont be able to put this very high on the list with so many Xbox games to play at the moment, and a Civ4 patch imminent (though it's been imminent for quite a while so maybe they've decided just to screw us).

[Standup]

I'd say it's still one patch short of being 'good enough' but there are a couple of user patches that address most of the annoying issues.