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The game’s engine is a multiplatform one, with console versions becoming more likely with the sequel, and part of me thinks it could end up being the end of a great PC exclusive series. Rough, raw, and largely unpolished… but still great. Here’s to hoping that the sequel actually comes through.
I saw this over on GamersGate’s Twitter account.
This week is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. week over at the digital distribution service. You can get S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl for less than $10, saving you 50%; S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky for $3.98, saving you 60%; and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat for $20.96, saving you 50%. The loyalty edition of CoP is $9.97, saving you 30%.
If you haven’t ever played the series, then don’t miss out on this offer. I’ve played each of these titles, and even though the games are flawed and sometimes buggy, the atmosphere experienced in each title makes this series one to play, even if not as commercially successful as other games in its genre.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat was released over the past few months in different territories [at different times, from October until February this year]. So where to now?
It seems S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is the answer, which we saw coming anyway. There was recently a fan Q&A with GSC head honcho Sergey Grigorovich, again for a Russian magazine called Gameplay. It’s all in Russian and sifting through Google’s version of English is painstaking to say the least.
It claims that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 will be a trilogy of games, kind of like Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, and Call of Pripyat were. Or if you want to put them in chronological order: CS, SoC, CoP. There. Happy?
It was once rumoured that GSC was considering switching to the CryEngine [Far Cry, Crysis, etc.] for use in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, but decided to stick with X-Ray – except possibly X-Ray 2.0 [CoP used X-Ray 1.6].
The reason they considered CryEngine was because it was felt it would make it easier to develop for consoles. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 will be multi-platform – not just PC like the existing three games. There was word a while back that an Xbox 360 version was in the cards. People are concerned that this will mean a downward spiral for the series, as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is considered a “PC” title.
And although many other games are all about DLC nowadays, with the Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Package releasing for PC and PS3 this week even, it doesn’t look as though GSC is buying into the whole concept.
It also says that women will feature in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, and not just male stalkers.
I once tried to break the subject of female stalkers in a forum thread, and my idea was shot down – with some claiming that they “wouldn’t survive”. Bunch of sexists.
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Sources: fan Q&A [world-stalker] - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 [TTLG]
Here are some screenshots I took from Clear Sky last year and more recently Call of Pripyat while playing them. The screens are accompanied by captions too. Why did I do this. I don’t know…
“There’s an emission going on outside? Damn right. There’s one going on in here too!”
“Ooh! We’ve never done it by a train station before!”
“Why the hell did you stick the grenades to the bottom of the crate?”
“To stop them rolling about.”
“Teddy?! I sleep with my rifle motherf*cker!”
It was my birthday this week, and I’m going to tell you all about what I got.
A got a new printer. Last month I went to Incredible Connection and traded in my old Lexmark for a new Hewlett Packard one. This one’s better than because it’s black, it’s light, and it actually works. That Lexmark gave me problems from day one. Good riddance. The trade-in occurred last month, and I got one third of the price off. I had to have it wrapped up and given to me on the day, and I actually forgot I was getting it.
The only thing that sucked is that there’s a USB cable that should have been bundled in the box. When I phoned the store however, they said it had to be bought separately. They wanted R70 for a cable. I went down to Chaos Computers and bought one for R30.
I got a new watch. Seriously, I’ve been without a watch for years now. And the watches I do have are merely just for show, and don’t work. This one has a proper leather strap, and not the cheap plastic ones that split and break after a few months.
I got a new jacket. I get new clothes as presents every year, and this birthday was no different. I got a jacket that makes me look and feel like a pimp. It’s black, but with blue and pink on it, and has a hood.
I got some new games. For my birthday I got S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, Aliens vs. Predator, and Battlefield: Bad Company 2. I immediately put CoP in an installed it. So I’ve been playing that for a few days all ready. AvP will likely be my next game to play, as it looks properly scary, despite some negative reviews. I bet the critics were too scared to even play it, anyway.
I also wanted Assassin’s Creed II and Metro 2033, but not only was it getting a bit expensive, but the DRM in AC II put me off.
I got a free pizza. Ha! This one was the one to top it all off. I ordered a pizza, and waited in the kitchen. Then I waited on the porch. Then I waited in the driveway. Eventually I was waiting in the bloody road for the pizza delivery guy, who got lost apparently. He rocked up, and I gave him the tip, but I said he was late, and that I wasn’t paying for the pizza seeing as he left me there to wait for nearly an hour, and my pizza was warm – not hot. Not cool.
It was well within my rights, because it says right on the box “if it’s late it’s free”.
No pizza tastes as sweet as a free pizza.
Something else I wanted for my birthday was an upgrade for my PC. I just put in a new graphics card, but I sometime want an even better one, and that means I’ll likely have to upgrade everything else just to accommodate it.
We ended off the night with friends and family, and watched a movie, District 9. Crappy dialogue, too much swearing, but awesome CGI and weapon effects. Especially the alien weaponry. Those things just completely vaporise people into a red mist.
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Right now, like I tweeted the other night, I installed Stalker right off the bat and started playing it. The other two I’ll likely save for another day.
I’ll say this: I’m starting to think that Call of Pripyat is the best game in the series – since Shadow of Chernobyl anyway. I good return to form after Clear Sky, not that that game was that bad anyway. But I’m thinking that CoP might actually be better than the first game. I’m thinking of getting a review up and running for the game. It’s been a while since I’ve done one.
Another thing I noticed today is that it’s the third anniversary of the original Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. It was reportedly the 20th of March, 2007, that the game came out.
It was revealed recently in a big announcement that Metro 2033 would support DirectX 11 technology as well as 3D Vision, And several nice screenshots were there to prove it.
If you thought however that the game was too good looking to use the same engine and tech as STALKER… you’d be right. Metro 2033 developers, 4A Games, have put the rumours to rest that they used STALKER’s X-ray engine during the development of the title.
For a while, there have been rumours going around that Metro 2033 indeed used the X-ray engine, and this was even backed up by Sergey Grigorovic or GSC Game World, the STALKER developers. He claims it’s based on an early build of the X-ray engine. But some people who worked at the company and later left to join 4A Games, like Oles Shishkovtsov , say that isn’t the case, as he claims that the X-ray engine couldn’t handle the features in Metro 2033.
"There's no relationship. Back when I was working as lead programmer and technology architect on S.T.A.L.K.E.R. it became clearly apparent that many architectural decisions put into S.T.A.L.K.E.R. engine were great for the time when it was designed, but they just doesn't scale to the present day.
"The major obstacles to the future of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. engine were its inherent inability to be multi-threaded, the weak and error-prone networking model, and simply awful resource and memory management which prohibited any kind of streaming or simply keeping the working set small enough for (back then) 'next-gen' consoles.
When the philosophies of the engines are so radically different it is nearly impossible to share the code, the final answer is ‘no’. We do not have shared code with X-Ray, nor would it be possible to do so.”
Comparing the two titles, Metro 2033 may well look a lot prettier in my opinion. I do sense a bit of professional rivalry there though, to say the least.
The bad news for some people: Metro 2033 is going to support SteamWorks for the PC version of the game, just like Aliens vs. Predator and Modern Warfare 2.
That’ll likely mean that the only place you’ll be able to pick it up online via digital distribution will be Steam, seeing as other companies like D2D boycott SteamWorks titles. They might have to adapt though, seeing as they’ll start losing sales as more and more games start using this feature.
Metro 2033 should be out in the middle of next month for the PC and Xbox 360.
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Sources: Eurogamer - Shacknews
Another little nugget on twitter was that Metro 2033 has a mature rating, due to Violence, Sex, Nudity, Strong Language, Drugs, etc.
Apparently in the game, there will be prostitutes who will obviously have their little way of speaking to potential clients. And the player can choose to follow her in to her room, and give her the money, but that this will be interrupted by an event in the game.
I don’t quite get what they mean. I think it’s like just as they're about to get it on, there’s some spectacular happening that means the player’s undivided attention. I hope he got his money back. So from this, they say that he encounters a prostitute (as in one), so it may not actually be like GTA where they’re all over the place, and you can beat them to death afterwards (to get your money back).
As for the violence, there will be blood, and it can stain floors and walls and the player’s visor (the characters tend to wear gas masks and that sort of thing).
The characters also swear in the course of the game.
There’s even a sequence in the game where the player can take drugs. He’s able to use a hookah, and then experience the effects of the drug.
This sounds even more authentic than S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Oh, on that note, the developers would like you to know that this game is nothing like S.T.A.L.K.E.R., seeing as it’s not an open world romp, but a “tight, cinematic, scripted experience”. It’s been compared to games like Call of Duty or BioShock as far as play-style and gameplay are concerned, just with a little bit of trading involved. They would also like you to know that the game does not use the same engine as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. (X-ray), but possibly a derivative of it. (No, it doesn’t! Damn it! – 4A Games)
In any case, the game is based on the cult novel by Russian author Dmitry Glukhovsky, also titled Metro 2033 (which has a sequel in Metro 2034). Apparently Metro 2033, the novel, is getting an English translation soon.
Metro 2033, the game, should be out next month, on PC and Xbox 360 (no PS3), on the 16th or March in North America, and the 19th in the United Kingdom.
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Source: Connected Consoles
4A Games has been very talkative on Metro 2033’s twitter account, and instead of just superfluous fluff, a lot of details on the game have been given, and the latest titbit is about the weapons in the game.
Of course the games contemporary, and dare I say it, rival, Stalker, boasts a large selection of different weapons to use, and after Shadow of Chernobyl, even upgrade.
Well, Metro 2033 is going to feature the same sort of thing. According to them, you can upgrade you guns with silencers, scopes, extended barrels and more. Upgrading guns is probably just as fun if not more so than shooting them, and that was one thing I liked about Stalker: Clear Sky, despite its many other problems. You can see on the picture above that it looks as though you can attach bayonets for close quarters combat as well.
Then they go on about something called idle animations. What this means is when you stand still for too long, or the gun stands still (AKA not firing it), then the player character will do some things with it. In some games (Soldier of Fortune comes to mind), the player will start to play with his weapon (stop it, not that weapon), or sway his arm around, point the gun around, etc. So I assume it’s something like that.
Nothing revolutionary, but some games have it and others don’t. Some people I know hate idle weapon animations because they’re distracting.
In other related news, the Metro2033.com site had to be taken down because of a major influx of traffic. So the teaser website is back up again.
And some people still think that this is one game which nobody knows about. I think it’s still garnering enough attention. Proper singleplayer campaign, no multiplayer, and it looks awesome.
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Source: Metro 2033 on Twitter
At the beginning of the week I had a post up about all the games that would be released this week, and this is just a follow up post detailing worthwhile games that should be released today (they aren’t always).
Today sees the release of a game I’ve been dying to get since I finished Stalker:Clear Sky for the second time last year: Stalker: Call of Pripyat.
Despite some interest, I can’t help but feel that this one has been overlooked slightly because of the following titles. I guess if you’re an MMO freak, or a console person you won’t like CoP seeing as it’s a PC exclusive. By the way, the European (UK, Scandinavia, and Italy) and Aussie versions will follow later this week, on the 5th, and I’ve even read that the game will be released in Greece too, and the publisher will be hell-tech.
Also out today is White Knight Chronicles and Star Trek Online.
You can get the following games from Amazon (check my Amazon aStore to save time) and Direct2Drive if you haven’t all ready.
You know when you play S.T.A.L.K.E.R., and most of the dialogue from characters in the background is in Russian? Like when you’re walking along and a bunch of people are sitting around a campfire, for instance. They speak their native tongue.
And then there’s the speech in combat, particularly in Shadow of Chernobyl, where they speak in Russian.
Then you get the people who are important to the whole plot and talk to the player, and speak English in that typical accent for the most part. And of course there’s the written dialogue which is almost always in English.
Well, in Metro 2033, set to come out next month, there is an option to turn on full Russian dialogue, accompanied by subtitles, when characters are speaking. So that’s like watching a foreign film that has subtitles. I assume that the subtitles in Metro 2033 will be in English, otherwise if it were Russian speech and Russian subtitles – that would be pretty hardcore right there, if you don’t understand a blind word of Russian, anyway.
And it’s also been confirmed that other international versions will have subtitles in their native tongue. And the French version even has an option to turn on spoken French dialogue. I don’t think many developers have really ever bothered with doing much of this. Subtitles maybe, but recorded dialogue for different territories playing a game…
So far Metro 2033 supports English, Russian, and French dialogue, and maybe more.
Hey, in related news, Metro 2033 has been featured on a list of 15 “under the radar games for 2010”.
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Source: Metro 2033 on Twitter - Destructoid
The Keen Dreams series is all about video games in dreams.
The other night I had one massive dream based on the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of games (probably because Call of Pripyat is due out soon, for the US and other countries, and I want it badly).
So, this is how it went. I was sitting around a campfire along with some other stalkers, most of whom looked like regular people, sans kerchiefs and guns. They were more civilian in appearance and included women.
We got around to talking about my grandfather, Strelok, and how once he and his group (which included Ghost and Fang, and another name that I don’t recall hearing about before: Moronin) possessed a sled of sorts, except it was on wheels (more like a skateboard), which allowed a person to move around the Zone in a manner besides walking or running. I had a similar sort of craft, and I had arrived on it before meeting up with the others, but it just wasn’t the same.
So the story continued. I went in to detail about how there had been a massive explosion somewhere in the Zone and how Strelok had supposedly died atop a hill or mountain.
We set off to try and find the remains of Strelok, and find clues as to where the craft was kept; the vehicle which would allow speedy transport across the Zone’s vast landscape.
We got to the point where the explosion was said to have taken place, and where Strelok’s body, or what was left of it, most likely was. However, one of the group called me over and pointed to a collection of objects lying by a rock. These included the skull of what we thought must have been Strelok’s. And so we realized that he must have survived the explosion, made it down to the ground below, and possibly died later on, maybe due to his wounds.
It was then, that two rival groups pitched up, led by a stalker who looked a hell of a lot like Joseph Stalin. And they were also after what we had come for, and so we all ended up in a massive firefight, as we fell back, covering one another as the bullets flew all around us.
I peaked out from behind a structure at one point and opened fire on someone running towards us, killing him instantly. It was then I realized that he was one of us. I’d accidentally shot a friendly. I hit the quick load button.
We were back at the beginning, before discovering the objects and Strelok’s skull. We went through the same scene of events, but this time, instead of opening fire on anybody, I grabbed the remains and trinkets and stashed them on my person while running for a boat in a river nearby. We all got in and started down the river.
That river must have been the river Styx or something, straight out of Greek mythology, because next thing I knew, it seemed as though I was in hell. There were flames all around, and stalkers, possibly zombified stalkers, and other creatures surrounded me, waiting at every corner, as I tried to find my way out of that place, all the while, cutting them all down with a hail of bullets from my assault rifle, lining up the shots, trying to execute them all with well-placed head shots…
And that was all a dream. I know. It sucks to end right there doesn’t it? That was one detailed dream I had, and they’re the best ones.
I couldn’t resist that headline. Yes, these are new shots of the game to rival STALKER, Metro 2033. It just looks so awesome to me. The character detail is very good. In fact I thought I saw Captain Price from Modern Warfare 2 in there somewhere. It does kind of remind me of that game somehow, not to mention a little STALKER, too.
Anyhow, I like doing the photo album thing just for show, but I’ve put the separate thumbnails here too, for those with no appreciation for art. Your welcome.
On The Verge Yesterday, they showed the second trailer for Metro 2033. I must say that it’s looking pretty good – possibly better than STALKER.
Both games supposedly use versions of the same engine, X-Ray (Metro 2033 is reported to use the 4A Engine- modified X-Ray, according to some. Other say it’s a new engine.), but if you look at the technology use and animation, as well as graphics in Metro 2033, you could be forgiven for thinking that even though it has a slightly different play style (more linear, less open-ended than STALKER), it could well beat the rival series, the latest of which is Call of Pripyat, in some respects. I guess I’ll know for sure when I play both sometime this year.
Metro 2033 is coming in March 2010, hopefully, to the PC and Xbox 360.
We all ready know that Call of Pripyat was released in Eastern and Western Europe last year, in October and November respectively. Now we know that the title will be released on the 5th of February in the United Kingdom, Italy and Nordic (probably means Scandinavia, or Norway), and it’s being published by Koch Media.
The US version of the game is still set for a release on the 2nd of February, 2010.
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Stalker: Call of Pripyat has all ready been released in Russia and parts of Europe this year, but for the US, and the rest of the world, so far the answer has been, “Q1 2010”.
Well, now another updated release date has been given by GSC Game World, the developers, and bitComposer Games, the publisher, and that is February 2010 – perhaps a little less vague than before.
Along with this announcement, there have been some new screens of Call of Pripyat put up as well.
So far, the reviews that have come from people who have played some of the other versions are positive. As I’ve posted about before, if you happen to get your hands on one of these version from abroad, there are a couple of translation projects going on.
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