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

Looks good....very Half Life 2-ish in the way its textures and architecture appear.

Of course, so far all we're seeing are high-rez shots that are the size of postcards on our screen I'd like to see how those textures stand up when viewed up close (like how HL2's textures turn to ass when you get close).

Unfortunately, having them show you smooth framerates at 1920x1200...with an 8800GTX in the system is like saying "Hey, we can go very fast in this Ferarri!" Duh.

I hope they release some benchmarks soon...looks like I might be buying my first new PC game in years pretty soon.

yeah looks good. I think I'm going to buy it release week.

I have high expectations of THQ games, so I am excited. If Red Faction 2 had been released a few years later with full online support, we would be like what's Halo? Bring on STALKER!

Wasn't Red Faction really a Volition game?

RF2 was one of lifes great disappointments. It was fun,f or what it was, but considering how great the original Red Faction was....the second parter was definately a bit of a letdown. NOt bad, just not great...and really short as I recall.

Yes, good memory. Volition did both games, THQ was the publisher I believe.

Honestly, I did not even play the campaign of RF2. I was only interested in the multiplayer with my friends. The MP of Red Faction was cool, but the MP of RF2 was simply insane. BTW, I played these games on the PS2, not the PC. Red Faction was a true gem (both campaign and MP). Fully destructable environments FTW! Shooting people through walls with the rail gun! Forget about it!

I was about to say, RF2 didn't have multiplayer on the PC! It had a cool botmatch but the levels sucked, they were very much like old Quake 1 style maps....just very rudimentary.

That game also had fantastic, fantastic weapons.....the chaingun, the dual hand pistols or machine guns, lots of variety, lots of "satisfying bullet-spraying goodness". I wonder how STALKER is going to run on "average" hardware.....not just the high end dual core stuff.

I'm pretty sure I'm CPU limited at 1920x1080 at this point in time....I dont get much speedup by dropping resolutions on my card. Boo-Hoo.

hehe I'm remembet RF too. I didn't play RF2, but RF1 I played MP a lot with my roomie. I also only played the PS2 version.

This game ships tomorrow. Please please be all that and a bowl of gritz.

IGN review is up.

Gamespot has a video review:

http://www.gamespot.com/pc/action/st...ml?sid=6167650

They like it! Can you buy this game via online download?

What are they saying about performance.

No, I dont care how it runs on a 8800GTX SLI setup I hate when 15 year old reviewers assume everyone out there has a $4000 game rig and say "IT RUNS GREAT, BUY IT!"..and then you find out its crippling on anything but $1000+ videcards :P

From the IGN review

Quote:
So what kind of hardware power are you going to need to run this thing? It may not show off all the latest graphical effects, but this game is rather demanding. While it's by no means a top of the line rig, our Pentium 4 3.4 GHz, 2 GB RAM, and 512 MB Radeon X1900 system had problems at maximum settings. The game also tended to stutter quite often, sometimes pausing for three or four seconds at regular intervals, which occurred on two different Windows XP rigs at maximum visual quality. Though that isn't the best of news, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. does support widescreen resolutions, which should please many.

People have to learn that you can't always run the latest games at maximum settings at a high framerates with their mid-level systems. My son gets my hand-me-down hardware so we always dial back the settings a bit on his machine and most of these games still look decent. I've gotten some replayability from some games because I wanted to experience them with an upgraded system with all the graphical bells and whistles. Not always a bad thing to have a new game that stresses mid-level hardware.

I'll try to get the game tomorrow. I'm waiting for my b-Enspirer, it's suppose to be delivered tomorrow.

I have a X2-4200+, 2 GM of RAM, and a.... 6800GS. The good thing is I'm going to play in a Vizio LCD of 32'', resolution of 1366x768. So that shouldn't require that much power, I think so, what do you think?

The reason I asked is because I have to drive 1080p, its the native rez on my flatpanel. Even at lower detail levels if I can't get a decent framerate out of the game it'll be a lame experience for me.

Hence I'll probably wait for HardOCP or Firingsquad to do a STALKER shootout with current video technologies to get an idea of what to expect.

Firingsquad is theonly review site that actually uses 1920x1200 as a review resolution for all of their games (assuming they support widescreen). Most other webites hit 1280x1024 or 1600x1200 and thats it :P

HeadRusch, I have this game. It runs fine on my 8800GTS640 with E6600 at 1920x1200 with full eye candy :P

However I dont really like the game. Are you guys serious? While yes the ambience of the game is fantastic - I really felt like I was in a post nuclear environment - the engine feels really old. Did they intend it that way? It feels like the game was developed using a doom engine rather than unreal or something modern. It took a long time to develop the game, so perhaps it was based on an older engine?

I'll give it another shot but it def feels out of place after playing R6Vegas/GRAW.

You mean because of the visuals? Like HDR Lighting and crap like that? The texture work seemed really good....

This game was in development for a very very very long time, I never thought it would actually be released.

I would expect it to be less advanced than HL2, it should have come out long before HL2 did.

Nah. In all the games, turn off HDR and "crap like that" and it still look better than Stalker. I definitely see that Oblivion looks better with "HDR and crap like that" off.

I doubt that it was actually in development for a very very very long time. Its more like it was on the backburner for a very very very long time before it was picked up again.

Ok so......what makes it look bad? "Still looks better than STALKER". How?
Bad textures? Simple Polys? Simple textures? flat landscapes, not alot of filler in the scenes (ie: empty rooms not alot of destructible or non-destructible junk to have fun with in a level)...??

Do Tell....

Work started on the game in 2001 and it missed the 2003 release date by four years. I've never heard that they stopped working on it, but I suppose that's possible.

It would be nice if somebody that has it would get a decent review...

Yes I'd say the texture quality is sub-par. If you look at some of the screenshots on gamespot - for example the cell block, outdoor shots - the quality that you see here is what I see with everything turned on and resolution at 1920x1200.

Its my thought that in Oblivion, even with HDR turned off the texture is quite good and smooth, well polished. Again I am not sure if the developers of Stalker intended the game to look this way or is it because development started long ago or what but it certainly does not look as polished as I thought it could.

I'll have to go see how it looks at lower settings and see if its worse or not. Those screenshots are pretty much what I see in highest settings.

And yes to simple polys as well but only some objects. Dogs dont look like dogs, not like a wolf in Oblivion. I didnt know that it was a herd of animals until "Wolf" said go kill those animals. The humans look ok.

Again I'm just saying it looks rough but the game play seems to be good. This paragraph from gamespot's review sums up the look of the game.

"Though already dated by a few years, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. still looks good, and its visuals are on par with Half-Life 2. What the game lacks in modern-day graphical pizzazz, it makes up for with intricate detail and immersive atmosphere. There's something to be said for the game's environments, which are infused with a ton of character and detail. It feels like the postapocalyptic landscape it's supposed to be. The countryside of the zone feels rugged and wild, with abandoned towns and compounds littering the landscape. Each locale has its own particular feel to it, so you never feel like the world was made with cookie-cutter building templates. The sense of exploration is marvelous, and it's the little details that make the difference. While you won't need a high-end system to play the game, the sheer size and scope of the world are such that it really helps the frame rate if you do."


I think Half-Life 2's graphics are better actually.

The premise of the game looks great. I just wish it was coming out for consoles. Mabye ill just have to hook the PC up to a switchbox to run it on my TV (Yea the wife will love that ha ha)

Heh, I'm playing it from the couch using a wireless 360 controller though Pinnacle Game Profiler. Perhaps you can just hide your PC in a corner and pretend to your wife that you are playing it on one of your consoles.

I think HL2's graphics still look next gen, I guess I'm behind the times.

Does stalker work with a controller?? That would be great

You can play pretty much any PC game with a controller if you use Pinnicle Game Profler. I made a profile for Stalker which you can download here.

Just tried STALKER. It looks OK to me. I have everthing max out except AA with the advance vid settings in the game. Dont really need AA beyound default since I am running the game at 2560x1600. With a C2D E6600@2.9ghz, 2gb mem and 8800GTS SLI'd, I average about 40-45FPS. Not bad at that rez, Also it make use of the dual core. See them loaded at about 20-30% on each core. Just started the game and played a little. Man you start off with only a Knife (when you get into cambat) and binoculars ... and the ability to throw stones. Atmosphere in the game is thick (not just the weather) and looks real and good. Esp the light changes and the weather, littles things in the game like the chatter in Russian (?) of the NPC was neat. Also blew my mind when I heard music and then notice one of the NPC was playing a acoustic guitar by a bon fire with his bud's. Only thing missing is a BBQ and case of beer. Just wish I had more time to try some more of the game but had to do a server build and transfer a few TB of HD movies.