Playing Shadow of Chernobyl was great, I get that it had alot of "gaps' in content and poor pacing , poor gunplay, underplayed survival mechanics, and a poorly presented story mostly through a journal. What that game had that I now know as the A-life system, so I'll try to explain like so many others have how that impacting your experience. A-Life made it so that NPC's across the game world were persistant, you meet a stalker in the field picking up some loot off a body and adding it to his inventory, you go trade with him he has that loot, you meet him farther up the road and he got punked by some dogs and you revive him now your best buds and he will defend you if he ever sees you in trouble. The game world was broken up by large open design levels, and if you traveled to them you could very well meet your new friend there doing whatever, you could also make enemies same deal, mutants roamed from area to area dragging bodies around to eat them. This was the critical element in the game that kept it interesting, of course gearing up was fun but without A-life the game would've been dull after you finished the few set piece missions. STALKER 2 A-life went through trouble, I guess it has to due with resources because once again a dev team decided a game must be a seamless open world at the expense of the far more important stuff. So now they have randomized spawns around you poorly simulating the first games spawn method, this also adds to the frustration to player because the ai is spawned right near you at aggro ranges. So the games come with alot of the same problems and missing a critical element, we do have a better presentation with sound, acting, story but it means diddly if it is boring. list of negs -ai is aimbot accurate -ai spawns in 60m area around you -empty world -bad flashlight -bad time compression -ai has no persistance or is meaningless as rep and levels aren't tracked -more to list but I'm tired of editing
Game is nice and stable on modern hardware, combat feels a bit oddly balanced so you have to plan your party builds. Also it's a bummer that you have the black bordered window, but it's nice playing the game with the original cutscenes and rules.
The core game itself is alright, the real draw to the game though is sadly drawn back by it though. You can play the campaign with a persistant army which gains experience and salvages guns, you get money and recruits alotted to you which you can use to expand your army and outfit them. Problem is the game constantly scales the enemy to you creating near impossible scenarios except by doing the constant issue in strategy games of exploiting them. It is to the point where it becomes frustrating and unrewarding almost making army manament completely pointless thanks to the game just countering you by providing the enemy ai with more people and gear for upgrading your army.
While I like what they were trying to do with this game I feel like the art direction with the buildings and the early 3d engine look terrible. A really neat thing though that I do like is how the civilians pretty much provide for themselves going shopping and gathering their wants and needs vs impressions series of games just having a building in the vicinity that does patrols and thus provides whatever goods. Although an issue arises over this self providing system where the citizens seem to be incompetent at times to getting their goods for themselves and will end up revolting over it and there's jack you can do about it. This can become frustrating as it will shut down your city cause the dolts can't grab a few common goods from a store next door which is maxed out in supply. really if you're really looking for a beautiful city builder I'd recommend impressions line of games Caesar, Pharoah, and Zeus. The system for them gathering goods and food doesn't look as natural in this but it actually works and the buildings look amazing.
