Spoiler Alert: DON'T attack bands of slavering dogs. DON'T run into radioactive anomalies. DON'T try and loot dead bodies in the middle of a firefight. And, whatever you do, DOUBLE DON'T attack the military. In fact, as a S.T.A.L.K.E.R., you need to be very, very cautious indeed. Otherwise you will die.
We've just spent the last hour getting hands-on with GSC Game World's long-awaited shooter - for shooter it is, more so than RPG - and we're dusting off our hoodie and returning from the irradiated wasteland of the Chernobyl Zone somewhat the wiser and to bring you our field report.
On initial impressions, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is reminiscent of Deus Ex but minus the character development. Perhaps this is down the interface, the context-sensitive chat system used to converse with NPCs and the inventory system, but whatever it is, we can't shake the feeling that the Ion Storm classic has influenced the game to a certain extent.
Events kick off in dingy underground room with walls panelled with rusty metal, and a podgy trader is about to hand us our first mission. He gabbles on, telling us about our PDA that contains a map and mission data and referring to us as the "marked one". He reveals we're suffering from amnesia and that for reasons yet to be fully revealed we're rather keen to track down a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. known as Strelok.
But first things first, and our initial mission is to find Nimble, who's in possession of a flash drive containing sensitive data the trader wants to retrieve.
Climbing stairs and walking into sunlight, we get our first proper look at the world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Running on our state-of-the-art XWorks X8i-C2D PC, it's an impressive visual feast.
A blue sky with wisps of cloud looms overhead filled with birds, while small bushes sprouting from the ground are blown around by the wind, trees bend in the breeze and dust periodically gusts across the landscape.
A minute spent soaking it all up, we then move off to a nearby camp where a stalker called Wolf not only informs us of Nimble's whereabouts but hands over a pistol and a knife to go with a pair of binoculars already in our possession.
Gun! Hurrah! Unfortunately, it turns out that Nimble's been captured by a group of bandits and so, along with a group of Wolf's cohorts, we've got to go bust Nimble's ass out of jail, so to speak.
Unfortunately, it also turns out that these NPCs don't take kindly to you waving a gun in their face, so I have to lower my pistol to get their sawn-off shotguns out of my face. Whoops. Reputation and relationships with other characters is an important part of the game, you see - build up rep with certain NPCs and you'll benefit from cheaper items when trading and additional info for missions that you otherwise wouldn't receive.
Benefiting from the added fire power of Wolf's buddies, we charge off over a rolling landscape to a dilapidated factory where the bandits are holed up and a firefight ensues, the air filled with shouts of the living, cries of the dying and bullets whipping past our ears.
Pistol out, we pop a couple of banditos but take a few slugs in return and start to bleed copiously, our breath coming out in laboured gasps. 'If you bleed lots, you die' a helpful on-screen pop-up bit of info warns us but handily we stumble across a corpse which offers up bandages and a medical kit when looted.
Apply bandages. Stop bleeding. Use medical kit, get your health back. Incidentally, when you sprint there's a little gauge that displays your stamina capacity. The more weight you carry, the higher this gauge goes and presumably you can become so laden down with gear that running is no longer an option.
Bandits dead, Nimble found, flash drive retrieved, mission complete. Nimble starts babbling on about the perfect suit and asking us if we want to try and find it? Yeah, okay, and it turns out this is another mission - whether vital to the central story or simply a side-quest to score extra loot we don't know.
It was at this point that we noticed an icon depicting a broken pistol had appeared on-screen. We'd missed it during the heat of battle, but dipping into the inventory it became apparent that the gun was virtually broken. So, weapons degrade through use - and they jam too, it turns out - but with no apparent option to put it to rights we had to chuck it in the grass and equip a second pistol we'd luckily looted.
That done, we decided to have a bit of a run around to see what we could uncover. Radioactive anomalies litter the landscape. Close in on one - sort of a bubbly, wavering effect in the air - and the Geiger counter goes ballistic and vision fuzzy. Walk into one and it's massive damage time . And, crikey, you can get 'infected' by radiation but here GSC's sense of humour shines through - down vodka and it 'heals' effects of radiation, although it makes you walk a bit wobbly, too.
Scouting further in several directions, we kept coming slap-bang into what appeared to be borders of the land, a chain link fence. However, additional wandering toward a train line - while a military helicopter circled overhead. Looking for us? Maybe - resulted in a couple of things. 1) We found a tunnel will crazy electrical storm-things going off in it and 2) we found a safer opening out of what we'll term to starter zone.
However, attempting to go either route proved futile. The crazy electrical storm-things killed us and the second way resulted in death by radiation. It suggests that there's one or two other missions we need to complete to receive items that will allow us to overcome these obstacles. Well, that's the way these things usually work, anyway.
We've so far only tickled the surface of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but we have to say "So far, so good". Although we're disappointed to discover lack of character development in the game - and we don't really see the necessity for weapon degradation - there's a lot of promise here and still great depth.
You also get the sense that the game world is huge, and there's definitely that 'just one more go' factor to it with so much seemingly to discover.
I got the multi-player beta thing. Really its just a proof of concept, making sure the anomilies work in a deathmatch environment... and the bloody-well do
You get flung about like a... well a rag-doll, but thats without saying. You see visual distortions and noises and if you buy the geiger-style meters you can hear the clicks increase as you approach them.
Not much to do with the Single-Player mind, the gfx were horrible, but it was a beta and just to test if it worked practically. now they can buff it to a pristine shine
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