Serious Sam Review - PC Game Reviews

Stalker Review

You play the role of one of these stalkers. STALKER is a R.P.G. and unlike other R.P.G.s players will travel an immense territory of a zone stretching for 20 square kilometres, explore it, gain money and experience and move along a free "non-stiff" story line towards the game final. The player will earn money from shovelling residue out of infernal oven of Chernobyl Zone. Returning from the radioactive zone, he will sell the stuff to underground dealers and scientists in research camps on the Zone border. With the money acquired he will buy weapons, equipments and other stuff including safety suits. In this R.P.G., the experience of the player does not grow because the developers want to stick to realism and want the player to develop his real mastery.

A.I. in STALKER is just out of this world. Game characters live in a world the player can only drop into, they have their own joys and sorrows. As character would react in life, so as he should react in the game. For instance, if the player attacks and kills one of the guards, the rest will go to seek hiding, radio their headquarters, and won't stand still or run out towards the player. The Player's communication with the game characters will serve an essential part of the gameplay. By means of communication the player will find out important information, acquire tasks, trade or make deals to accomplish a task co-operatively.

The developers have developed a whole new engine for STALKER. The engine, called the 'X-Ray engine', renders 300 000 polygons per frame at 60 fps on average hardware. With real life graphics, some of the best seen so far in an FPS, the engine also boasts of features like detailed character models (500-15000 poly), dynamic lighting, detailed maps and particle system with real physics.

Also some common features include Game time flow, change of time of the day i.e. day to night and one demand loading which makes it possible to create huge levels. With these features the game sure does seem to be a masterpiece.
The trailer can be downloaded from www.stalker-game.com .

Genre: Survival Action/RPG

Release Date: November 2003

Publisher: negotiating.