The “Perfect” Post Apocalyptic RPG

 Before I continue I just need to state for the record that I am a fallout (originals) fanboi. In my opinion Fallout 1/2 are the pinnacle of post apocalyptic cRPGs, actually probably the pinnacle of cRPGs in general, I can’t think of a single cRPG I’ve played through more times that the fallout games. Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2, are probably second on my list. In the last decade there hasn’t been a single game that has even come close to removing them from the top spots on the list of my all time favorite games.

So I’ve been thinking a bit about some of the recent games I’ve played and all the things that I liked and I found lacking in them. So I’m gonna outline what I feel the games did right and what they did wrong. Then I’m gonna give a basic description of what I feel would make my perfect post apocalyptic (gonna refer to it as PA from now on) RPG.

Let’s start with the classics:

Fallout 1/2

What They Did Right

Um, pretty much everything… haha, okay typical fanboi comment aside, what made those games that great? One thing stands out above everything else, the writing! Yes the setting design and the art style was amazing as well but it got outshined by the quality of the writing. The depth of characters, the locations, the back stories, the quests, the little jokes thrown in randomly, all these things fleshed out the game. Ironically the weakest story in both games was the main plot. I played those games just for the dialogues and the characters. The only other game that came close to the depth of the world and the dialogue was Baldur’s Gate 2.

Let me just go on a little bit of a rant now, to a large extent during the time period that the games were made, gaming was still a small exclusive past time. Most gamers of that period were male, and older, and usually a little geeky. There was no massive casual gaming culture as we knew , the console age was just starting and PC games were still in large, the smart gamers choice. I kinda feel that this contributed greatly to the depth of writing present in the original fallout games, when there was more focus on that sort of thing, and much less focus on large explosions, instant action and shiny graphics in games. Storylines were appreciated and dialogue sequences weren’t skipped just to get to the next level of killing hordes of nazi/aliens/etc. I miss those days, but maybe that’s just me.

Let’s move onto the combat and character systems in Fallout, the combat was a slow strategic affair, more a kin to a game of chess rather than a quake deathmatch. That again was indicative of the times, turn based combat was pretty common in games at the time and so no one complained. I personally loved the slower more thoughtful approach to combat. It made battles all the more epic since at the end you felt like you had not only outgunned your opponents but out thought them as well.

The character system was the now familiar SPECIAL system, which was based if I recall correctly on the GURPS system. I’m not gonna go into detail about the system, but it was basically a standard DnD style character attributes system. In addition to the character stats you had a list of skills, ranging from combat skills to dialogue skills, and perks. Anyone that’s played fallout3 will be familiar with both these. I really preferred the more open approach to character development found here in comparison to the rigid DnD character systems that pigeonholed your character from the start.

Another excellent design feature in the fallout games was the option to not fight! You could make it through a massive part of the game without firing a shot. This allowed me to replay the game several times with entirely different experiences. I played as a standard gunfighter character that just slaughtered everyone, then I played as a smooth talker, and realized how much additional depth the game had, and how much content I had missed out on by just gunning my way through everything. The level design was also excellent, there was no repetition between areas, you never got bored exploring. Items were also pretty scarce and so you had a sense of achievement when scavenging. There were tons of different weapons, different ammo types, different armors, etc.

The enemies were varied and tough, at no point did I feel like a god prancing through the world invulnerable, there was always some brotherhood of steel paladin or some super mutant to cut me back down to size.

What They Did Wrong

I honestly can’t really think of anything to complain about here. There were several glitches with quests not working properly and other miscellaneous bugs but those are not design problems. Design wise I can’t think of anything that could have been better. So

I’ve fanboi’d myself out so let’s move onto the best modern PA games: Fallout 3 and STALKER, seeing as we’re in a fallout mood we’ll start with fallout 3.

Fallout 3

What They Did Right

Their world design on the surface is excellent, wandering out in the DC wasteland from a first person viewpoint was excellent. I found the experience quite immersive. The various locations were quite well designed as well but there was some pretty major problems in regards to the world when you look at it in a little more depth, but I’ll get to that. The first person view and the graphics were again quite good and really help immerse the player in the environment, I found the combat system fun (it had some problems) for the most part, and really didn’t mind the VATS add on, it was fun blowing off parts in slow motion.

What They Did Wrong

(WARNING: bethesda fans should stop reading now)

When will bethesda realize that p&p RPG systems DONOT work well in first person? The obviously didn’t learn the lesson from morrowind or oblivion. Why bother giving the player the illusion of aim, when it had no effect on damage. How many times was the player stormed in oblivion by an enemy with 6 arrows sticking out his face? Seriously, it just shatters any immersion the player has with the game. The same happens in FO3, it didn’t matter if you shot someone in the face or in the foot, emptying a clip into an enemies face at close range only to have them still come at you is just stupid! Having a PnP character system in a realtime FPS game is stupid, what is it used for? just calculating whether you hit and how much damage you did? Uh, that’s what aim and distance is for, seeing as its already an FPS and chances are they already do an intersection test to see whether they should run a weapon hit check. Shooting a monster at point blank range and not hitting is ridiculous, and just ruins that sense of immersion once again.

The locations in the game while well designed from the outside lacked any sort of depth, a settlement with 6 people in it? seriously? Even megaton with its masses of people (read 20) only had 3 or 4 worth talking to. Just like every other recent bethesda game, there was a massive lack of depth. The levels were repetitive, if I had to see another sewer / subway I was going to scream. They just made a shallow simple hack and slash game and called it fallout. Yeh, it was fun for a while, until I ran through my bazilionth tunnel.

Also there were some consistency issues I had with the game, they’d be destroyed building and cars everywhere, the aftermath of a nuclear attack, and yet all the cars energy packs seem to have made it out okay, even though the cars themselves were destroyed. Also the addition of the nuke launcher?! Seriously?! I cna only think both those items were added in for the console “instant gratification” players take like “lotsa splosions!”. Weapons were not varied enough, and also items were everywhere, I don’t think I ever ran out of stimpacks or ammo. Obviously in a desolate wasteland, every single fridge or box will have tons of ammo and stuff in it, since no-one would bother looting (sarcasm!). Power armor was strewn everywhere, you never struggled for weapons or armor. Then they threw in a half baked recipe system that never really worked, the items you made were mediocre at best and you never really needed them anyways, again another stupid left over from oblivion.

The enemies were ridiculously easy to kill, supermutants going down with something ridiculous like three shots from a hunting rifle. I think by around level 14, nothing in the game could touch me, I’d maxed out my gun skills, my speech skills, my repair skills, and was busy maxing out my energy weapons skills. The quests were simple and linear, no back stories, no depth: “fetch me 30 nuka cola bottles”, why? because the NPC collects them of course. Why would I even give a damn? The moral choices were clear as night and day with the exceptions of the ghouls and tenpenny tower (kudos on that one guys). The characters were shallow and uninteresting. Trying to talk your way through things was pointless, it always boiled down to a fight. I honestly got bored 3/4 of the way through and didn’t bother finishing it.

The game can be simply described as a PA hack and slash, they might as well have foregone the quests entirely and just gone the diablo route. All in all it was a fun, simple, flashy, repetitive game without any sort of depth.

STALKER: SOC and CS

What they did right

 (I do realize stalker is not an RPG but it had a lot of RPGesque elements)

No stupid character system to calculate hits and so on, these guys were smart enough to realize that FPS and hit checks don’t work so well. You shoot a guy in the head he goes down, shoot him in the body, you’ll need to shoot him again.

Amazing environment, beautifully done, I don’t think any game has managed to capture that sense of desolation and abandonment as well as STALKER did.

 Excellent weapon range and customization options, excellent item range and artifact options. Pretty much every aspect in regards to weapons and items in the game was excellent. Items were scarce, health packs were pretty rare, various ammo types were extremely rare, artifacts were obviously rare, basically everything you carried, you had worked hard to acquire.

 The enemies were tough from the start till the end, you never once felt overpowering and untouchable.

What They Did Wrong

Infinite enemies, that was the one thing that pissed me off about both games, you’d killed everything in an area leave, come back literally 3 minutes later and the area would be repopulated with enemies. It just made the game annoying especially when travelling across multiple areas, you’d have geared up at a vendor, then by the time you got to your objective you’d be at half health with no health packs and no ammo.

CS introduce a broken faction system, which was interesting if it had worked! I should put this in the things they did right but since it never really worked I have no idea what it was supposed to do.

Terrible incomprehensible storyline and endings, I finished both games and really have no idea what the hell was going on. I had to go read the damn wikipedia page to get an idea of the storyline I had just played. I’ll put it down to a poor translation from russian to english. The game had so much potential for storytelling, tons of stalkers huddled around camp fires that could tell you rumors or interesting stories. They made use of it once or twice but not enough. The quests were all just fetch quests. Simple task / reward affairs, again so much potential especially in regards to the faction system. I really felt that having quests to go weaken enemy factions strongholds would have been excellent, so much potential for inter faction politics. Instead they made a open world FPS till you reached a certain point, where you couldn’t go back and followed a per defined route to an end mission that left you entirely unsatisfied. It’s like being led to a candy store through a rough ghetto, only to go inside and be given a stick of celery.

So now we come to my perfect PA RPG

My personal perfect PA RPG

Okay, so after lots of thinking, I actually think STALKER is an excellent base for a great PA RPG, but with some heavy modifications. Let’s just take stalker as a based and fallout’ify it a bit This is not going to be a full design doc, that I’m working on in my spare time but rather an idea of the things that I think would make a great game.

The World

The world present in stalker was excellent, it was well designed but severely underused. There were so many areas that could have been excellent little sub plot triggers or quest locations. Like the pump house in Clear Sky, great location, well modeled and designed and absolutely no reason to be there.

The world should be just like the stalker world, open and varying, there was next to no repetition across areas in stalker, unlike in the “seen one subway tunnel seen em all” fallout 3.

The Gameplay

Fallout 3 made me see that FPS is an excellent format for a PA game, you want to be able to feel that sense of destruction, emptiness, hopelessness that would be present in such a world, where fallout 1/2 portrayed that feeling through the rich writing, fallout 3 out did them in that regard with the magnificent vistas of destruction (pity that was all there practically was, an outside image).

In regards to the character system, I don’t think that a strict pen and paper style character system has any place in a first person game, it’s too restrictive and like I mentioned tends to destroy some of that sense of immersion. I’d suggest a system of skills, where you can increase the skills with each level. I’d also suggest reducing the number of skills to the bare minimum:  light weapons, heavy weapons, first aid, repair, speech, electronics.

I’d suggest health to remain the same as when the player starts out, so that the game is equipment based more so that stat based. I’d like to struggle to acquire my equipment and know that without it I’m pretty much as vulnerable as at the start of the game.

The combat system should also be a bit modified, I think that in additions to the skills there should be a proficiency list of all the weapons in the game. When you first find a weapon you should not have any skill in using it, an M4 is nothing like an AK so the assumption made in most games so far is that it is. I’d suggest introducing a system similar to that in dungeon siege 2, where the more you use a weapon type like an M4 the more proficient you get in using it. Start off with a massive crosshair and insane recoil and slowly reduce both these with use.

The weapons skills should affect the learning rate of each weapon. This game mechanic will further tie you to certain weapons and make the game inventory centric.

Characters shouldn’t be able to master all the weapons in the game, and so it should give them incentive to replay with different load outs. I’d also suggest various levels of specialization (beginner, intermediate, expert, marksman, etc) with each weapon, so once you cross over into a new level you unlock a special function like automatic fire, or three round burst, or allows you to use different ammo type…

The Weapons, Armor and Items

The range available in stalker was excellent, and the upgrade/customization system present in Clear Sky was the best I’ve seen in any game to date. I’d say keep a similar range of weapons. Perhaps add in some more ammo types and armors. Add in helmets and add helmet customizations. Perhaps even add extras like pants, boots etc, which affect things like stealth, stamina, etc… This adds the option for random generation of items (diablo style).

Players like customization, and the game should provide them to create entirely custom characters and loadouts. Have character skills affect the efficacy of items, good first aid gives you more health from health packs, better repair better repairs items, pretty much the way the fallout games handled the link between skills and items.

The Enemies

Enemies should be like the player, and their difficulty should depend on their equipment and skill sets as well, ie. a tough enemy must have high end armor and be at the max weapon level with a good quality customized weapon while an easy enemy must be wearing light armor and still be figuring out which end of the gun the bullets come out of.

At no point should the player feel invincible or fragile, obviously with better equipment, the weaker enemies will pose no challenge. The player must also be rewarded for good aim, and as such feel that he can take down tougher enemies if gets the right shots in. Getting a lucky shot in always feels so rewarding. Perhaps add the VATS system in as well just for some spice, calculate the chance to hit based on distance and weapon skill.  

The Storyline / Quests

Now the most important part of any RPG is the story, the characters and the quest. I’d suggest making it a very open “main” plot, something like the player’s brother needs money for an operation and the player entered the zone to raise the cash. Something that is a goal to work towards but that doesn’t restrict the player from the start. The game should be all about exploring the game world, learning about all the characters, the back stories, the politics. The player should be able to leave a lasting effect on the world. Having an ending like fallout’s with a slideshow of all the areas you visiting and how your actions affected them would be amazing.

The game should be like a long TV action series,  lots of character, lots of dialogue, lots of action.

Try to avoid stupid things like simple fetch quests, make them a little bit more elaborate, it will take a bit of thought, but that’s what you’re paying your game designers/writers for.  Make it interesting, make the choices have consequences, ie, “if you do a job for boss a, against boss b, boss b’s thugs might rob you of your belongings” etc… I think that multi part elaborate quests are what should be done rather than simple boring task. I recently finished GTA4 and towards the end of the game, I didn’t even bother watching the cut scenes, cause they boiled down to 4-5minute speeches to tell you to go to “point x” and kill “person y”.  Keep things interesting.

The game shouldn’t be about instant gratification, it should be a game where the player sits down and can’t stop playing for hours. I hate it when I sit down with a game and after an hour I’m about to throw my keyboard out the window when I’ve been given my 45th go to the other side of the map and kill/fetch something quest (ie STALKER, far cry 2, GTA 4).

Conclusion

This rant got to be super long and I apologize, It isn’t as detailed as I’d like it to be but if it was it would take another 15 or more pages and I doubt you’d want to read that much. I hope that people would agree with some of the things I’ve said or might even have better ideas. The comment box is just below, please use it

Fallout 3: Falling flat…

So i’ve had plenty of time to play with fallout3 before being hit with a game stopping bug and now i’m stuck waiting for a patch. The fallout series, rather let me say the original fallout games are still my favorite games of all time and i was one of those rapid fanboys that couldn’t wait for number 3. So what do I think of fallout 3? I’ll sum it up in the most common sentence you’ll find online: “oblivion with guns”, i’m severely underwhelmed and dissapointed wuith this game and it only goes to show that bethesda haven’t seem to have learnt anything from their oblivion experience or maybe they just dont care.

So this isnt gonna be like every other review post online (not to mention is my personal opinion) where I go into how the games starts out with your birth, that entire section of the game is unneccessary and pointless. It has absolutely no relevance on the game and only serves to annoy the hell out of you, especially if you want to restart the game. The first two had it right, give you a brief intro and throw you into the action. Last thing that kinda annoyed me about that whole section was as you leave the vault, you get a prompt asking if you want to change something? you just spent 30 minutes, being led by the hand to create your character and now you get the option to change everything?! what the hell was the point of that whole exercise then, couldn’t they just have given you that screen to start with?

Super Duper Mart

Lets ignore the shockingly weak storyline, the first two games had the character go out into the world on epic quests (which i’ll admit weren’t the strongest plotlines either but that wasnt where the beauty of the game was), here they send you on a search after daddy dearest. Next let me bitch about the world, while the world at first, is quite impressive (again that oblivion moment after leaving the prison – de ja voo any one?), that feeling doesnt last for long. The entire game consists of predefined routes (dont even try explore cause you cant) through the city and dungeons, oh wait i mean subway tunnels. Seriously? you went and put the annoying and pointless dungeon crawling element of oblivion into fallout? WHY THE HELL?!?! Now just to add to this annoyance they decided that most areas aren’t accessible unless you go through the tunnel first. Hmm, i have to go over that mound of rubble, can i climb over it, oh no, i need to now mission through another generic subway tunnel to get there. This is how i’ve spent the bulk of the game. I’m gonna come back to the world a bit later.

Lets move onto the character system, after you set up your initial SPECIAL stats, there is a perk at every level where you can get an extra SPECIAL point to any stat, so thoses initial choices dont really matter cause you can just add points when you feel like it. Then the skill system has also been nerfed, tagging skills makes no difference, it just add an extra 15pts when you start to that skill. Where in the first games tagged skills got increased with 3 points for every point spent while un-tagged skills only increased with 1. So here I am at level 16: lockpick at 85, repair at 100, small guns at 100, science at 80, speech at 90, medicine at 40, barter at 40, large guns at 40. My character stats are ridiculous as well: str 6, per 6, endurance 6, charisma 7, intelligence 8, agility 9, luck 6. So my character can do practically do everything in the game, i can lockpick, hack and repair everything i come across! The whole point (for me) of the original fallouts was to replay the game with a unique character that could only do certain things in the game, this gave me a vastly different  game experience each time.

I remember playing fallout 2 with a dumb gunfighter and then i played with a smart science geek and ended up having a totally different experiences, i was able to do quests in different ways with different outcomes. Where I may have gunned my way through an objective the first time, i talked my way out of it the second. Actually bothering to invest in the speech skill mattered, in oblivion 3, sorry i mean fallout 3 it doesnt matter since there are no restrictions on anything. If you want, use the speech skill but it doesnt open up any hidden game areas, major quests changes etc, you can get more money, YAY (sarcasm), not that there is anything worth buying, but before i get to the items, combat and inventory system, i need to spend more time discussing the world.

In the original fallouts the world was a large area on the west coast of the US, in FO3 we’re limited to a single cityscape. From a gameplay perspective it makes sense since you cant really create a seemless world that covers such a large area but then again the old system in the previous games allowed the designers to create unique and interesting areas in the game, not cut and paste kilometres of generic ruins and tunnels. While seemless worlds have their advatages, It felt that there was most thougth and care involved in the world design of the originals. There were settlements which upon entering made you feel like this is a group of people struggling to survive, there was politics, personal and power struggles. The world felt gritty and real. In contrast Fallout 3 feels plastic and empty, there are no really memorable characters or locations, like for example at first glance when you see the capitol building you’re like “WOW!” then you walk inside and it ends up being a five room, linear dungeon crawl. What a fucking let down. The majority of the world is like this, made up of generic ruin that you cant explore and just serve as scenery.

I still remember being a prize fighter in new reno, helping out the super mutant sheriff in broken hills, finding timmy in the well, being forced into a shotgun wedding, taking out the bandit lair, i remember taking about a magic the gathering ripoff with a ghoul and getting hand to hand lessons in san francisco, there are tons of moments like those from the originals that i still remember to this day. I played fallout 3 last week and cant remember a single character from megaton apart from the sheriff that died in like 5 minutes. The first fallouts had entire settlements that made you feel like you had actually stumbled upon a surviving city, what do we have in fallout 3? megaton and rivet city, both are around the size of the smallest settlement in fallout1/2. You run into a few more settlements in FO3 but the settlement consists of a few semi-identical rooms and perhaps at best 3 unique characters. 

Oh Noez, a Raid3r iz Killings Me!

The dialogues are boring, the quests when you can find them are lame as hell, collect nuka cola and deliver it to a character? you’re kidding right? this isnt WOW, i dont want to search the world for bottles of nuka cola just to get 100caps as a reqard seeing as i’m carrying 5000 and have nothing to spend them on. What the hell? why would i even want to do that? I’m sorry bethesda but stop trying to make RPGs, just stick to action oriented hack and slash games. In your dialogue and quests, there is the good path and then there is the bad path. You’d have to be a moron not to be able to distinguish between the two. There never really is any gray areas, I cant remember ever having to make any serious choice that really affected something in the world. Blow up megaton or dont blow up megaton, hmmm, tough choice… Thats why i loved the originals you often ended up being good by doing bad things, or hell half the time there really wasnt a good choices period. You were never a shining knight or some moustache twisting villain, you were a human trying to survive.

I mentioned that the quests were pretty lame, let me give a few examples. I guess i should give a spoiler warning but it really doesnt matter, i’m not giving anything away. Apart from the nuka cola collection quest i mentioned, there are various characters in the game that need certion types of items and will pay you to deliver them, if money was a problem i might consider doing it but since i’m flowing in the cash from just missioning about there is no need. I also found it pretty ironic when the outcast brotherhood of steel wouldnt buy power armor from me, even though he specifically said he was looking for exactly that. Then lets get to some of the more “complex” quests which mainly consist of choosing who to kill or fetching an item from a “dungeon” oh wait i mean ruin. And the quests outcomes have no real effect on anything. In rivet city you get a choice to frame someone or blackmail the quest giver, if doesnt matter what you do, there are no downsides to either of the two option nor any benefits to doing the quest. Thats the major problem i have with the game, there is no incentive for me to do anything. Cash, items and ammo are everywhere, i dont need to do quests for money cause even with the moeny there is nothing to buy. Also i’m around half way through the game and power armor is dropping left right and center?! It kinda ruins any sort of excitement in getting hold of it. I understand that they need all the items for repair purposes but personally i would have made repairing items possible buy using the junk you find in the world, that way you could limit the items and provide more of a sense of achievement in getting a high end item. That way they could have made repairing something extremely hard and so finding a item in excellent shape would also be an exciting moment.

Okay enough of that, lets move on to the atrocious inventory system, yes i know the game is meant to be played on consoles too but your original fanbase for fallout are pc gamers, so you decided to reward them with shitty one button interface? ugh! then they decided to implement a weight limit for your inventory only to make ammo weightless, so i’m running around with 50 missiles, like 5000 bullets of various calibres, 6 mini nukes, couple of thousand energy cells but if I try carry three sets of armor, i cant move? What prompted that design choice, did you think console players wouldnt be able to micromanage their inventory? “OH noez, i actually have to plan how much ammo i take with me, this game is too hard, my brain is gonna go boom. Time for some Gears of War or Halo where i dont have to think as hard”.

I was also dissapointed with the lack of variety and the total abundance of items. While there may not have been that many in the previous fallouts, i was so excited when i finally got hold of an assault rifle quite a while into the game. I had to work for it and barely killed the guy holding it, I felt a sense of achievement. Here within 30mins of wandering in the wasteland you have practically every weapon available in the game, the only thing you end up needing to buy is stimpacks and maybe some ammo now and then. Where is the sense of achievement, the sense that you had to work for something. GAH! The condition and repair system is something that i do like and i think its an a good addition, but it isnt enough to save an otherwise bleak item list.

The combat system funnily enough is somethign that doesnt bother me, i actually kinda like it, it might not be the original turn based system but it works. VATS was quite a good idea and i cant fault them on it. The difficulty of the game tho i can fault. I’ve died 3 times in the game and two of the times it was cause i ran out of ammo in the beginning of the game but once i tapped into the never ending supply of ammo lying around that didnt happen again. I have yet to found an enemy that was challenging, i’ve massacred entire villages without needing to use a single stimpack. Super mutants are easy enough to kill even at low levels. Correct me if i’m wrong but werent super mutants a bitch to kill in the first two. Mutants (which dont seem to exists in FO3) were hard enough and if you saw a super mutant you were always like “Oh shit”. In FO3 its more of an “oh great another 4 mutants” moment.

Then there is the obligatory barbie’s playhouse moment, wherein you are presented with a house in megaton if you do the good karma quests, which you can kit out a bit, with absolutely no purpose. You can get a workbench, a laboratory, a nuka cola machine and several themes. Why? this isnt the sims? I couldnt care less what my house looks like. Then there is the custom items that you can build at workbenches but there isnt much point since they arent really all that great, You can just as well stick to the standard items.  

Fallout 3 is simply oblivion with a skin, the shitty empty villages are there, the pointless dungeon crawls and fetch quests are there. Its a silly hack and slash with practically no character customization, everything that made the original fallouts what they were is gone. This is a glorified fallout tactics, a dumbed down, watered down attempt at the greatness of the first games. It is a failure as an RPG, but as an action hack and slash it isnt so bad, but thats not fallout, fallout wasnt a hack and slash. Fallout3 compared to the orignals is like what icewind dale was to baldurs gate. If I was bethesda I’d realize that my strengths lie in the action RPG realm and not even bother with trying to make this great “in-depth” and detailed world. They just cant. Even now as a dungeon crawl it fails, since there is no epic item to find, no epic boss to kill, no amazing abilities to unlock. Bethesda doesnt seem to understand what made the original fallouts great.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R Clear Sky – Review and Postmortem

Okay so i bought Stalker Clear Sky last week and have managed to find some time this weekend to play it, I’ve spent a good 20 hours in the game and decided to write a small review on the state of the game because it is the first game in ages that really grabbed me.

First things first, the QA of the game is shocking, 3 patches released within 2 weeks of launch, not to mention the fact that the game is unplayable prior to patch 1.5.0.4, i tried with 1.5.0.3 and the game would constantly crash to desktop or even blue screen of death’d my machine. To manage to BSOD my vista machine is an impressive feat, so amazing that i cant even imagine how they managed to pull it off. I’m sure with a few more patches all the crashes will be resolved. In its current 1.5.0.4 state the game is quite stable, still not 100% but its playable for several hours without incident.

Okay So the main reason why i’m writing this is simple, this game could have been amazing! it could have been the best game i’ve played since fallout, but it’s not. The fact that the potential is there is great but the game designers seemed to have fallen flat and ended up delivering a half finished masterpiece.

So what did they do right:

• Gorgeous terrain and lighting: this is one thing they did right, the terrain, lighting and weather effects are just jaw dropping.
• Day Night Cycles: Beautiful, watching the sunrise, the sunset, it really adds that touch of realism.
• Level Design: The level design is great, and it works, not too large and not too small. Excellent usage of props to deliver the intended emotional feel
• Great Weapon and bullet physics: love the fact that weapons have condition, effective ranges, bullet drop spread, etc. Having realistic weapon modelling adds to the tactical planning and assault elements, knowing that the enemies outrange you will make you think twice about a frontal assault.
• Weapon Upgrades and repairing: Excellent system, this is that way other games should do it. Again adds to realism and resource management.
• World Setting: love the theme and setting. Cant fault them.
• Difficulty: I like being challenged by games and this is one game that challenges me, i like having to actually sit and think whether i want to enter a battle, whether using up my ammo and health packs is worth it.
• Resources: Love all the items and the fact that they arent abundant and you have to work for them. I love having to manage my inventory
• Damage Effects: love the elements of radiation and bleeding. Really adds to the pressure in a firefight.

The game has pulled me in and i cant stop playing, but they also did a lot wrong and in my opinion the game is lacking several key things that would make for a better game experience. So lets start with the wrong:

• Terrible Character Models: the character models looks atrocious, the outfits and armor is plain ugly, it really ruins the game for me, its hard to play the game when the enemies look like seedy porn dealers in their overcoats, or a hobo with a shotgun. Even the military uniforms look terrible. The character modellers need to be shot, or even worse force to dress up like their models. You know the character models remind me of venom’s models, seeing as stalker is practically venom 2.0 this isnt surprising.
• Cant rest/sleep: i dont want to spend half the game stumbling around in the dark with a flashlight that has a 3m range. Give me the option to rest in friendly encampments, or pay to sleep, etc. I dont know why the designers would put in day night cycles and food and so on just to have a character that doesnt rest! Putting in fatigue would have been a great addition to the realism of the game.
• No Economy: All the merchants offer the same prices on items, this is plain stupid, i want merchants in my faction to offer better deals than merchants in other factions, i want there to be ways to earn discounts for merchants by doing quests for them. Same thing with technicians. It doesnt matter what you do or dont do prices stay the same.
• Faction Warfare is a bit buggy: After retakening the same spot 4 times in a row spending a ton of ammo and health packs just to walk away and have it retaken instantly pisses me off. I would like to have spent my time clearing out a level for a faction for a reason, give me better prices at your mercahnts, maybe take over the area with your troops and make it easier for me to travel safely. The system was a great idea but poorly implemented.
• No character development: the world is populated but you never really feel like you get to know any of the characters, they are barely even fleshed out. I still fondly remember imoen, minsc and sarevok from baldurs gate, i remember the sheriff of NCR and brothel madam of new reno from fallout 2, i remember tali from mass effect. In Stalker you never really acre or remember anyone, everyone is just a name and often a terrible name like “dave mutant” or “peter corpse”, what did they run of out slavic surnames? The game designers failed miserable here, they made the tools to create an amazing immersive game and just used it for a sub par shooter.
• Pointless Quests: go collect my loot from tree x, or pole y or pipe z? You’re kidding me right? Or perhaps, go to location z and kill generic bad guys. Thats about the depth into which stalker goes. I want to do stuff because its gonna benefit me or i’m gonna see the change in the world from doing it. Running for 10 minutes to reach to a stash just to get 15 shotgun shells and a sausage from it really pisses me off. Again they could have put in alot of politics, hidden agendas, etc in the game. All the tools for them to do so are present.
• Unused Geographical Areas: There are lots of areas that are just empty or have no purpose, for example in the swamps there is a recycling station, it would be nice to get there and talk to the guy in charge to find out that mutants have been plaguing them at night, so you go to sleep, wake up at night and go hunting to earn faction points and maybe some cash. Can you imagine how much more immersive the game would have been if those sort of things were present. Yes it would be more of an RPG, but all the tools for an excellant RPG are already there. This could have been a fallout 3 killer.
• Enemies jsut respawning, after cleaning out an entire map of bandits, leaving and coming back just respawns them all. This is fucking annoying! At least have them SLOWLY filter back in over time, and what are the faction guys that have now taken over the map do? Nothing apart from die. Again, you work really hard and dont get rewarded at all.

Like i said earlier stalker is a great game but i’m dissapointed with clear sky, it brings practically nothing new to the table. Same locations, same buggy AI and gameplay, same pointless quests, same weapons and items. Whats new? Lighting effects, a great upgrade system and “faction warfare” which is also really buggy.

The game feels empty and shallow, it needs more depth, a richer storyline, sub storylines, character development, you need to make the player feel part of the world and that his action no matter how small matter, unfortuneatly as the game stands now, nothing you do matters. its just a plain boring FPS where you dont have to do anythign on the side, just follow the main storyline from level to level and you jsut play the game as an FPS. All the potential in the world just to fall flat.

I feel so strongly about how great this game could ahev been that i’m considering trying to find people to start a mod project and fix the issues present in the game and perhaps show the world what could have been even if only for a single area. I do realise that good developers and artists especially ones that are willing to work are hard to find and so its just a pipe dream for now.