I am lucky. Someone let me play their game at their beefy machine. Free and ALMOST without tech-issues. And still... As the tile suggests, playing was a chore. I will not talk of tech-issues since most reviews have done so in depth. I love STALKER. It may be one of the best games ever made. My feelings after finishing Call of Pripyat cannot be expressed properly without overly florid language. It is simply, a master piece. And one of the main things that made it so was the astounding behavior of the creatures that populated The Zone. Human and mutant alike. This game instead spawns mobs at timed intervals, predetermined distances and they hone in on the player. THAT is the replacement we get to one of the most extraordinary mechanics in any game ever: Needs. Needs of the denizens of this world. What the developers didn't change were creatures without any sense of self preservation. All animals are victims of a weird dichotomy: murderous and comically cautious. They will fight until killed unless you shoot them from a vantage point. Then they hide behind a tree and wait, as if they all were equally intelligent and aware. Aside from that, nothing or no one ever flees. Humans will snipe you from unseen distances, and when you kill and loot them, you find they were doing it with a broken inaccurate sub-machine gun. That has 2 bullets left. They also shoot before a cutscene is done. The greatest moment I had playing was when I discovered the comportment of an anomaly. If I moved very slowly, I would be able to hide inside the glass-shards cloud. So when I was hunted by 7 boars, I did that to lure them into certain death with minimal gunshots. It didn't work. The boars all hid behind little trees, and waited. Almost as if they knew. Like voices in C# were guiding them. I could go on, but just like with my free playthrough, I will not. Enter this Zone at your own risk, or if you are a whiny baby that seeks vengeance because your kitchen was damaged by an anomaly.
