06-15-2010, 11:57 PM
Okay so I was supposed to post this... months ago... and backfire reminded me... a week ago.... and I still haven't done it. Now I'm bored and have nothing to do so WHATEVER. Here we go.
STALKER Call of Pripyat is a FPS RPG, taking place in an area around the city of [url=http://"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pripyat_%28city%29"]Pripyat[/url] and inside the city it's self. The game takes place after the events of STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl (Points to spell check for recognizing "Chernobyl" but not "Pripyat") and with an entirely different character. Alexander Degtyarev, who is a military operative is sent into the zone, disguised as a STALKER to find out why some helicopters that were heading for the center of the zone crashed.
There's a basic plot summery without spoilers (I don't feel like writing about the rest of the story anyway -.=.-)
High Notes:
- Great Graphics
Still has the same problem as STALKER Clear Sky did with god-rays but not as bad this time.
- More "Alive" Zone
Creatures fight cretures for food, STALKERS raid dead bodies, my biggest note that I've never seen in other games is I once watched a Flesh drag a dead STALKER away then watched the Flesh get killed by a few dogs then the dogs appeared to eat the dead STALKER.. A little gruesome but an impressive trick.
- Better Stash System
In the previous games I couldn't help but notice all the "empty" containers just sitting around. They stayed empty until you found the 'note' on where the stash was. In CoP these stashes can be gathered at any time now and when you get the 'note' it simply states "Already Located"
- Artifacts Respawn
Artifacts make for a hell of a good way to make cash, and after emissions some respawn. Only complaint is they respawn slow, suppose it's a way to keep balance.
- Sleeping
Not to restore health or remove 'fatigue' but rather just advance time. In the previous games, you could get stuck outside at night without NVGs (Night Vision Goggles) which lead to some serious problems, more often than not death. (...Or wandering into an anomaly and spending all your med-kits getting out)
- Gear Storage
Your actually provided with a container in each area to store your belongings indefinitely, instead of hulling them around. (I once remember storing well over a thousand AK rounds..)
Saving the best for last:
- Game Stability
Something I never, ever expected to see with this engine, stability. Until I started installing mods, this game never, ever crashed. (Truth be told it crashed once.. but that was because my video card had been running at max overclock for.. three days I think.)
Bad Notes:
- Missions
In Clear Sky and SoC you had randomly generated "Go here, kill these guys, get this thing, and bring it back to me" Missions. Sadly, in CoP these don't exist, they're all pre-generated fixed location missions, this puts a bit of a limit on the money that can be made. A second related note, there are several missions that can be glitched up to the point of not being able to be started or completed due to getting objects before hand, or going to a place before hand, which again creates problems for the player.
- Story
It's... well dull, in SoC you were trying to find out who Strellok was, there were twists and turns, then a hell of a surprise. In Clear Sky you had the whole faction war, Scar's survival and what the hell was happening to the zone. CoP only has the "What's with the helicopters" crap, on top of that the biggest "twist" is a "Guest Appearance" at the end of the game.
- Weapon usage
The game had a bit of trouble here, almost all mutants were best taken down by shotguns, meanwhile your best choice for humans (this does not include humanoid mutants such as Controllers and Brullers) are sniper rifles or single shot rifles. On top of this the times where you had to kill humans and the times you had to kill mutants were so far apart, you could safely carry one weapon or another and not worry.
- Tools
STALKER Clear Sky gave us the upgrade system, but you had to find the info on the upgrades, okay this is understandable. In CoP you have to find tools instead, the problem is that the "Calibration Tools" are clear in Pripyat, all of them, why is this bad? Most "Night Vision" upgrades can not be used without said tools. The idea of tools wasn't that bad, but putting them all in Pripyat? Yeah that wasn't so great.
- Controllers
I've had a varied response to them myself but I personally find the new noise for them, well painful. When attacked by a Controller it plays an extremely high pitched noise, for some, it's cripplingly painful, others don't care at all. See for yourself:
c-c-c-controller [S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Call of Pripyat ]
- Ammo Rarity
Some of the ammo in the game is intended to be rare (NATO rounds, HMG rounds, Sniper Rifle Rounds, Grenade Launcher rounds (Warsaw Pact & NATO), and RPG rounds) but some of this, you can't get any other way than at the very end of the game. It makes it very difficult to use some of the weapons you can get early on if your limited to the clip it has. I'm fairly certain under the best conditions a sniper can't stretch 10 rounds over.. maybe 60 people?
- Artifacts
While the respawn much, much more often the problem is most of them do more harm than good. Before, you could balance this out with another artifact, but now these radiation absorbing artifacts are few and far between (Yet worth no more) (On top of this "Compass" now generates 6 Rads a second, as apposed to.. none)
- Multiplayer
Single-player is great, but multiplayer has.. many... kinks that need worked out. The rank system is... not that great, it limits you from buying certain weapons and on top of this cannot be disabled. On top of this weapons, ammo, and gear must be "bought" at each spawn, which means you die, you don't get your money back; there is no option to disable this either.
The Worst: Fluorescent Arm-Bands (Multiplayer)
My only guess is that this is the ONLY way the could figure out how to define "teams" but all players are equipped with glow in the dark, fluorescent arm bands in Neon Green, or Neon Blue. Which, shockingly enough, stick out no matter what team your on making stealth damn near impossible.
All in all, I like it despite the downsides, I've played though it now four times since I bought it (Before anyone asks, no I don't have a life.) and am working on a fifth play though. Might be fun to organize a 32 player "Artifact Capture" (Capture the Flag) game, but I doubt anyone would play. Did I get my money's worth? Yeah. Could it have been better? Yeah. But every game has it's ups and downs.
So yeah o.=.o Thanks for reading the small book here... (Preview and Spell-check are your friend
)
STALKER Call of Pripyat is a FPS RPG, taking place in an area around the city of [url=http://"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pripyat_%28city%29"]Pripyat[/url] and inside the city it's self. The game takes place after the events of STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl (Points to spell check for recognizing "Chernobyl" but not "Pripyat") and with an entirely different character. Alexander Degtyarev, who is a military operative is sent into the zone, disguised as a STALKER to find out why some helicopters that were heading for the center of the zone crashed.
There's a basic plot summery without spoilers (I don't feel like writing about the rest of the story anyway -.=.-)
High Notes:
- Great Graphics
Still has the same problem as STALKER Clear Sky did with god-rays but not as bad this time.
- More "Alive" Zone
Creatures fight cretures for food, STALKERS raid dead bodies, my biggest note that I've never seen in other games is I once watched a Flesh drag a dead STALKER away then watched the Flesh get killed by a few dogs then the dogs appeared to eat the dead STALKER.. A little gruesome but an impressive trick.
- Better Stash System
In the previous games I couldn't help but notice all the "empty" containers just sitting around. They stayed empty until you found the 'note' on where the stash was. In CoP these stashes can be gathered at any time now and when you get the 'note' it simply states "Already Located"
- Artifacts Respawn
Artifacts make for a hell of a good way to make cash, and after emissions some respawn. Only complaint is they respawn slow, suppose it's a way to keep balance.
- Sleeping
Not to restore health or remove 'fatigue' but rather just advance time. In the previous games, you could get stuck outside at night without NVGs (Night Vision Goggles) which lead to some serious problems, more often than not death. (...Or wandering into an anomaly and spending all your med-kits getting out)
- Gear Storage
Your actually provided with a container in each area to store your belongings indefinitely, instead of hulling them around. (I once remember storing well over a thousand AK rounds..)
Saving the best for last:
- Game Stability
Something I never, ever expected to see with this engine, stability. Until I started installing mods, this game never, ever crashed. (Truth be told it crashed once.. but that was because my video card had been running at max overclock for.. three days I think.)
Bad Notes:
- Missions
In Clear Sky and SoC you had randomly generated "Go here, kill these guys, get this thing, and bring it back to me" Missions. Sadly, in CoP these don't exist, they're all pre-generated fixed location missions, this puts a bit of a limit on the money that can be made. A second related note, there are several missions that can be glitched up to the point of not being able to be started or completed due to getting objects before hand, or going to a place before hand, which again creates problems for the player.
- Story
It's... well dull, in SoC you were trying to find out who Strellok was, there were twists and turns, then a hell of a surprise. In Clear Sky you had the whole faction war, Scar's survival and what the hell was happening to the zone. CoP only has the "What's with the helicopters" crap, on top of that the biggest "twist" is a "Guest Appearance" at the end of the game.
- Weapon usage
The game had a bit of trouble here, almost all mutants were best taken down by shotguns, meanwhile your best choice for humans (this does not include humanoid mutants such as Controllers and Brullers) are sniper rifles or single shot rifles. On top of this the times where you had to kill humans and the times you had to kill mutants were so far apart, you could safely carry one weapon or another and not worry.
- Tools
STALKER Clear Sky gave us the upgrade system, but you had to find the info on the upgrades, okay this is understandable. In CoP you have to find tools instead, the problem is that the "Calibration Tools" are clear in Pripyat, all of them, why is this bad? Most "Night Vision" upgrades can not be used without said tools. The idea of tools wasn't that bad, but putting them all in Pripyat? Yeah that wasn't so great.
- Controllers
I've had a varied response to them myself but I personally find the new noise for them, well painful. When attacked by a Controller it plays an extremely high pitched noise, for some, it's cripplingly painful, others don't care at all. See for yourself:
c-c-c-controller [S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Call of Pripyat ]
- Ammo Rarity
Some of the ammo in the game is intended to be rare (NATO rounds, HMG rounds, Sniper Rifle Rounds, Grenade Launcher rounds (Warsaw Pact & NATO), and RPG rounds) but some of this, you can't get any other way than at the very end of the game. It makes it very difficult to use some of the weapons you can get early on if your limited to the clip it has. I'm fairly certain under the best conditions a sniper can't stretch 10 rounds over.. maybe 60 people?
- Artifacts
While the respawn much, much more often the problem is most of them do more harm than good. Before, you could balance this out with another artifact, but now these radiation absorbing artifacts are few and far between (Yet worth no more) (On top of this "Compass" now generates 6 Rads a second, as apposed to.. none)
- Multiplayer
Single-player is great, but multiplayer has.. many... kinks that need worked out. The rank system is... not that great, it limits you from buying certain weapons and on top of this cannot be disabled. On top of this weapons, ammo, and gear must be "bought" at each spawn, which means you die, you don't get your money back; there is no option to disable this either.
The Worst: Fluorescent Arm-Bands (Multiplayer)
My only guess is that this is the ONLY way the could figure out how to define "teams" but all players are equipped with glow in the dark, fluorescent arm bands in Neon Green, or Neon Blue. Which, shockingly enough, stick out no matter what team your on making stealth damn near impossible.
All in all, I like it despite the downsides, I've played though it now four times since I bought it (Before anyone asks, no I don't have a life.) and am working on a fifth play though. Might be fun to organize a 32 player "Artifact Capture" (Capture the Flag) game, but I doubt anyone would play. Did I get my money's worth? Yeah. Could it have been better? Yeah. But every game has it's ups and downs.
So yeah o.=.o Thanks for reading the small book here... (Preview and Spell-check are your friend
)