Stalker reviewed in PCG UK

Hmm, it turns out disabling dynamic lighting actually disables all the fancy FX, like bump-mapping etc. No wonder it runs so great.
 
I have no idea, but I really want the fancy GFX without the shadows. It seems like a stupid option to turn everything either on or off.
 
Thanx for the interesting heads-up, cerpin. Any more reviews on stuff like bugs, AI, performance on different rigs etc. would be very useful to us mere mortals who have to wait til friday ;)
 
It seems that the Paralax Mapping is the source of the poor performance, as it's one of the features enabled when you turn on Dynamic Lighting. I hope they enable the ability to turn on/off the individual options.
 
CR0M said:
Thanx for the interesting heads-up, cerpin. Any more reviews on stuff like bugs, AI, performance on different rigs etc. would be very useful to us mere mortals who have to wait til friday ;)
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here's a thread on impressions from someone who played the game ..tons of info without really giving away plot

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/stalker/show_msgs.php?topic_id=m-1-34160336&pid=540331

I liked this part:

Another hightlight on how A-Life system looks like. Once I saw a couple of "flesh" creatures (mutant pigs with "crazyfrog" faces) eating some corpse - it was nice and quiet until pack of blind dogs showed up on the edge of level.

Dogs finished one pig quickly but another one managed to run away - dogs chased it. They were running from road to nearby "Duty" ("Dolg") outpost but stalkers didn' open fire - when dogs and pigs saw humans they just turned away to the deserted willage. There were lots of anomalies all around the willages - graviconcentrates (mosquito manges), burnind fluff, springboards. Many dogs got ripped apart in anomalies (i saw a bloody dog scull runnin around) but pig was willing to make it at any cost. Oh no! This willage is not-so-deserted - some really bad bloodsuckers (chtulhu guys, they can turn invisible like Predator) joined the chase. It looked like Benny Hill show chase.

Almost all dogs died, survivours runned away limping. Bloodsuckers gettin ready to finish pig and have some breakfast, but another pig attacked bloodsuckers and killed one. But another killed that pig.

Last scene: last pig and last bloodsucker bite and beat each other. And they both died almost instantly when some nearby anomaly triggered.

I repeat - i saw it with my own eyes.
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or copy paste laziness?

trusted review editor: "ughh I'm too hungover to write this review ...no one ever reads the internets I'll just copy this review!"
 
That was basically a second opinion from someone else in Bit-Tech, the first score given was the same, 8/10 as the other reviews. The rest of the article was identical. Bit-Tech pretty much always give a second view of these things, which is no bad thing, as different people have different tastes and different views.
 
from Eurogamer review:

Early on in the story I was trying to find my way past a group of well-armed bandits. As night fell I circled their position. I could not get too close, since I was low on ammo, and my weapon was only a sawn-off shotgun anyway. It began to rain, and then thunder and lightning opened up, doing a haywire strobe light on the landscape. As I moved through the dark heaps of wasted masonry I saw movement: large things ahead of me in the valley. In the rain and dark I would not have seen them, except for the lightning. I sat there in the rain, terrified, watching these things move through dead scrubland. Should I just wait for morning? Could I just sit here in the rain, hiding behind some smashed concrete? At least that would be less terrifying that going onwards. I waited for a long time, paralysed with indecision. Finally the things made the decision for me: they closed, attacked, and ended the moment with a brutal close-range fight. I stumbled backwards into a nearby anomaly - my gravity-fluked corpse danced around in a tree.
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sheesh, I'm going to have a hard time playing this game without shrieking like a little girl
 
Make a recording and post it right here or the angels will be sad.
 
I'm playing the game right now, through perfectly legal means!*Wink*

It's bloody awesome, performance is great, unlike what was hinted at, atmosphere is top notch, AI is great too, aside from a few oddities every now and then.

I'm able to run all things maxed, 2x AA, 1024x756 res, AF is maxed, only thing not maxed is textures which is just one step below maxed.:)
 
6800 Ultra, 440 mhz overclocked Golden Sample - somewhat quicker than a gt but still pushing a zimmer frame nevertheless.

ta for the linky
 
Space Farm said:
Single player maps are often more detailed than multiplayer maps.
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Yeah, but half the FPS at lower settings? That's insanity. The MP maps are are really good looking, too. From what I'm reading now the performance in SP is better than what was rumored, though.
 
Also Elfuhrer, in the single player maps you can see pretty far out. I believe multiplayer maps arn't like that. Throw in the hefty AI and logic scripting.
 
I'm not too worried about it anymore, everyone says that the performance is great. Judging by Stern's link I can pull off the medium performance level and turn a few things up higher. And it still looks great in those screenshots.
 
I have a 7900GS OCed, Core 2 Duo E6600 2.4, 2 gigs of 6400 800MHz RAM and it runs great on near maxed settings :)
 
I have a 2000+ amd, 768mb of ram and a 9600XT and I run the mp beta pretty good on high. Not certain of fps because I don't know the command for it.
 
Okay, I have the freaking game, but, every time I try to install I get some "source file corrupted" error. When it's trying to extract one of those archives.
 
I went to my local ED games after work and found much to my suprise that they had Stalker in stock. It's installing now, also the minimum graphic card rec is higher then i expected. but W/E at least i can play it....right?
 
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