Found this and forgot I'd even wrote it, it's just a review after finishing stalker that I apparently needed to write. I haven't even re-read it I just think it needs a better home than google sites :S. May read it myself later, either way here it is:
'read piles of text for hours to follow the plot'
Story
Stalker has a relatively nice plot that threads throughout the game, it's not going to win any awards or anything but it does more than just sit there to hold the game together and if you want to get really into it you can get lost in a bit more depth. There is a problem with this, however, as the game really doesn't do a good job of pushing the story on you and I found myself not really caring and only having a vague idea of the plot for most of the game. When I stopped to read messages in my PDA and other things it was nice, and I liked the voiced dialogs (only the first few paragraphs or each quest are voiced but it helps get you into it to start). That's actually a really good idea because the developers get away with less recorded voice work and save space on the game but it also isn't a pure 'read piles of text for hours to follow the plot' either. It basically voices the first parts and if you are interested there is the rest waiting for you, and that's generally what the whole plot is like. Pretty nice and has some depth if you want, but nothing truly compelling and often left aside.
Technical (Visual, UI, Control)
First off I'd like to point out that from reading the developers forums since the game's release you can see there are some glaring technical issues with the game, mainly bugs and graphics errors people are experiencing in general and specifically with some cards. I personally never saw any of these major issues and never had the game crash on me or anything of that nature, so I was happy. That isn't to say I didn't still have problems with the game technically, however, as I still have plenty to complain about. I guess the main thing I thought was bad was a general sense of low optimization of the game, a lack of valuable polish and bug testing time.You can tell this because even on low settings it runs really poorly. This makes sense since the game was 6 years in development by a not so big developer and they were most likely getting antsy about releasing it and making some money, but it shows. So even though I never had the crashes and major errors other were talking about I still had stutters and slowdowns on more frequency than other games.
I found it really awkward to use most of my items and features of the interface, which was made worse when you see the game does NOT pause when you open it up. You have to press 'I' to open up your inventory to see all your items and etc. While in the inventory you must right click an item, then move down and select an action much like a simple drop down menu in windows cept that on the right side of the drop down list it doesn't detect your mouse so half the time you right click something then move down to click 'use' or 'drop' and it does nothing, wasting valuable time if you are trying to use a med kit, or god forbid change weapons. I found the map to be very frustrating as it tends to zoom in and out in a weird fashion and is a tad awkward in general.
Controlling your character is alright and just as fine as most PC FPS games, although I've always disliked the keyboard for crouching and this game is no exception. You must hold 'ctrl' to crouch and hold 'ctrl+shift' to crouch further (no prone however). Not a huge deal but it was kinda weird having two crouches, and not being able to go prone even for using a sniper. Other controls like zooming with the right mouse button and others are general FPS controls and feel fine if you play PC FPS games.
Gameplay
Questing and most of the RPG elements of the game feel nice, they aren't any World of Warcraft but they are done well enough to not get in your way and still add to the core FPS portion of the game. The game claims to have very realistic ballistics simulations, which I really didn't notice or care about. In fact the guns feel really really bad especially at the start of the game, and I didn't notice bullets falling down over distance, and there is no wind.. so I don't know where they get off throwing terms like 'ballistics simulation' at us. It's basically a 30% rate that you will hit the guy even if you have perfect aim, and couple that with the fact that all enemies you face have bullet-proof armor which can take more than a few FULL CLIPS on more than some occasions. This gets annoying sometimes because your enemies all have infinite ammo, and the AI is actually very smart and ALWAYS is flanking and moving to cover and getting distance on you if you come to them etc. So basically, you sit there with your very small amount of ammo and you are forced to run in there and kill them as fast as you can yet if you do that you will most likely die because they take multiple clips in the chest to down and can kill your in a few shots even on easy. If you stand behind cover they flank you and slowly dwindle your health away if you decide to try and snipe them out with your weapon that has horrible aim and just wastes ammo. Luckily if you score a head shot it's an instant death for that poor military man or mutant, although getting close enough to actually get head shots frequently is very tough since even on easy you are killed more than fast at medium-close ranges. I haven't tried the game on anything other than easy in fact, since I die faster than realistic mode in Rainbow Six:Vegas. I've always hated games that have the 3 modes (easy, medium, hard) and easy turns out to be actually very hard, or hard is still very easy... Developers should take the time to set their game up right so that you will want to play the game on normal all the time, since easy will be consistently easy and hard will be consistently hard. Something I found annoying was your weight limit, even though the game aims for a more realistic approach. Sometimes you should actually sacrifice realism (even in a game meant to be as real as possible) for fun or just plain playability.
You may ask why I actually continued playing the game after saying all that negative stuff about the combat... well I used cheats to help alleviate my frustration. I didn't use god mode but what I did use was infinite sprint which was very nice since I always ran our and was forced to stop walking due to carrying like 3 guns or something. The weight system is actually very forgiving if you are looking at it in real terms.. but it really hampers your ability to stockpile items which is what every RPG player does... at least you can stash all your items in random.. stashes and it stays there.
Any monsters/mutants you encounter in the game are very difficult to kill, mostly because they run at you or jump at you and get in close, which makes it hard to aim at them and just like most pc shooters using your knife is ridiculously... it's near impossible to aim a knife in pc shooters yet in real life you just freakin' stab and it's easy. With these games it always feels like you are stabbing with a needle and you gotta get your pixel right on something to hit it otherwise you'll miss, which is hard with those marine jumpy mutants which lunge in your face and constantly move around and whack you in a bent over position (sometimes you have 3-6 on you... which can all kill you instantly or within 2-4 hits... on easy...).
Some really good points for this game is the atmosphere, it really pulls off the living area very well and you really feel like you are in this mostly desolate area full of radioactivity. The random wind that blows by, the sky in the day and the darkness at night really create a sense of tangible loneliness and fear.
