Another Mouth-Watering Preview

[freshie]

Hands on impressions:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/541/541488p1.html

I like the part were it says "Kind of like Deus Ex." Hell Yeah.

[Creeper]

As a big fan of Deus Ex.. that's a good recommendation. :p

[freshie]

Deus Ex was an amazing game. The settings were very immersive, and the gameplay was really fun. The biggest problem with the game is it was pretty easy, mostly because the AI was sucky.

One of the things that hooked me on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was that you would do missions accross a rather large zone that was more contiguous. Unlike other games that put you in a sequential series of maps where you start at the start, and go to the end. Onto the next map.

Being able to explore a large contiguous territory that isn't "on tracks", is a very cool concept. That's they've added RPG type elements to the game is even cooler.

Sounds like the AI is pretty clever as well.

[Salyavin]

One of the things that hooked me on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was that you would do missions accross a rather large zone that was more contiguous. Unlike other games that put you in a sequential series of maps where you start at the start, and go to the end. Onto the next map.As a fan of both Deus Ex and Grand Theft Auto, combining the best features of both has the potential to be one of my favorite games ever. Large, open maps with lots of things to do as opposed to a linear sequence of paths or mazes (with cheese at the end) is where PC gaming needs to go. Take real advantage of that Gig of memory that gamers have nowadays. (Deus Ex IW went in the wrong direction. :))

I'm also intruiged about that bit in the article that mentions a weapons dealer who saves your life and you do missions for him in gratitude. I'm hoping it's not just a cut-scene. If NPCs actually show up in the game at critical moments with help, that would be very cool. The gratitude might then be real, which would make it a much more immersive game.

Cheers,
Salyavin

[-F7]

The gratitude is real. As are repurcussions of your actions. Kill a fellow Stalker in the Zone? Chances are the other Stalkers will consider you hostile and shoot on sight. Kill a member of the Army? Consider yourself hunted.

The multiplayer also looks pretty awesome. I played a bit of it at E3. The map was an old abandoned run down village. Lots of hiding places. You could go onto rooftops and such. Pretty much anywhere you can see you can go. No buildings are closed to you by mysteriously closed doors. As opposed to UT and other FPS multiplayers of the like with their 'guns a blazin' gameplay, Stalker's MP relies on stealth and surprise. If you go running out in the open, you're dead meat.

I honestly think Stalker is going to give Rome: Total War and HL2 a run for their money for GOTY.

[Hort]

<---------also big fan of Deus Ex.... and really crabby at them for screwing up DEx2

[Salyavin]

The gratitude is real. As are repurcussions of your actions. Kill a fellow Stalker in the Zone? Chances are the other Stalkers will consider you hostile and shoot on sight. Kill a member of the Army? Consider yourself hunted.Well, faction reaction (:)) is fairly easy to code. It's basically a matter of changing a hostility variable based on how many faction members the player kills/attacks or helps (however the game defines "help," usually doing missions for the faction). Being hunted is fun, especially if I've done the deeds to deserve it. The Thief games did that well despite being a series of linear scripted missions.

However, getting the player to react to the characters in the game is much harder, 'cause people are hard to program :). Also, negative emotions like fear and anger are easier to provoke (think System Shock 2 for fear or Sephiroth in FF7 for anger), than something like gratitude. I've only experienced it in a very few games like Planescape: Torment, where it was done through excellent writing.

Setting up a situation, i.e. getting attacked by a strong monster and when the player starts to lose, enter an NPC who helps out, is pretty hard to script so that it plays out from the player's actions. Making it an impossible situation (i.e. player can't even damage the fire monster without the NPC's freeze-ray) is no better than a cut scene. But if the monster is just strong enough that when the NPC shows up, I can make a decision to fight alongside, tell the NPC to get lost and take my chances, run away and leaving the NPC to his fate, or let the NPC and monster fight it out and then take out whoever's left in their weakened state (my favorite :)). That's the sort of gameplay I like, especially when I can make the decision in real time instead of choosing on from a menu. It also makes the outcome much more real, like the gratitude to another character if I was weak enough that he actually did save my ass. But it's so hard to do well and so few games have it that when one comes along, it's my favorite game for a long while. I'm hoping Stalker has it, 'cause there aren't really any other potentials on the horizon (Fallout 3 is a looooong way off).

The multiplayer also looks pretty awesome. I played a bit of it at E3. The map was an old abandoned run down village. Lots of hiding places. You could go onto rooftops and such. Pretty much anywhere you can see you can go. No buildings are closed to you by mysteriously closed doors. As opposed to UT and other FPS multiplayers of the like with their 'guns a blazin' gameplay, Stalker's MP relies on stealth and surprise. If you go running out in the open, you're dead meat. That would be the icing on the cake.

Cheers,
Salyavin

[Sid6.7]

*mouth waters*

[freshie]

IGN has a new short hands-on preview of the multiplayer mode:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/542/542647p1.html

Sweetness.