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Holy Crap... Why didn't anyone tell me STALKER was so good?

by snide

I'm primarily a PC gamer and have been since Doom first came out. I've always loved gaming on a PC because of 3 things... Mouse / Keyboard control is unparalled for shooters The graphics on PC games are always better if you've got a nice setup Western turn-based, complicated RPGs have always been PC only (with the exception of Elder Scrolls) You can mod the hell out of anything STALKER's start...

I'm primarily a PC gamer and have been since Doom first came out. I've always loved gaming on a PC because of 3 things...

  • Mouse / Keyboard control is unparalled for shooters
  • The graphics on PC games are always better if you've got a nice setup
  • Western turn-based, complicated RPGs have always been PC only (with the exception of Elder Scrolls)
  • You can mod the hell out of anything

STALKER's startRecently I got my gaming rig upgraded to celebrate the launch of Giant Bomb. Hey it's a work expense right? Anyways, I've essentially been playing the games that I missed in the last year, buying as much as I can off Steam (whose awesomeness I'll save for another post). After revisiting Neverwinter and having a bit of nostalgia for Titan Quest I figured I'd give STALKER a try. Although the reviews seemed to be lukewarm at best, I tend to always try out games made in Europe/Russia for the simple reason that they tend to make radically different games and you can find some real gems. The last game I "found" was Silent Storm, a turn-based, squad strategy game that was I was absolutely bannanas for a couple years ago. For $20 bucks, I figured I could count on at least a weekend of fun out of STALKER so I loaded it up.

I hope Fallout 3 is as awesomeGood God is it awesome. It's an RPG, well kinda. The game is basically Fallout but as a first person shooter. After installing some recommended mods I got a better looking game with some pretty nifty realism added in. This is the kind of game true PC nerds go nuts for, I'm absolutely loving it. I just figured it was your average poorly made shooter, but I was greated with a living world, hundreds of NPCs, an RPG style quest system and an absolutely gorgous, if not technically impressive, game.

Fair warning though. I would not recommend this game for anyone but old school PC gamers who like their games hard, complicated and so open that you often have no idea what to do but just walk forward. It's the kind of game, like the Elder Scrolls series, where a guide is really only marginally useful and you just kinda gotta feel your way through it.

Did I mention it's pretty fucking scary? I'm one of those guys that really can't play my way through resident evil games because I'm a wimp when it comes to video game horror, but STALKER is such a good game outside of the spookiness that I think I might just make my way through it. I'm only a couple hours in, but I'm really hoping this one has a gripping story all the way through. Right now I'm hella impressed.

I think this is one of those early genre games (Non-linear RPG Shooter) that will be utterly copied by other games in the next few years. It's taken everything that you may have liked about a game like System Shock or Deus Ex and thrown it into a living world where you don't hit the end. You can just walk in any direction you want to go in. Totally badass.