S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat Coming in February

I'm really excited for this. Even though Clear Sky seemed bumpy (I've still only played it for a few hours,) I have a good feeling about this. With the mod community, and really just a close-knit mob of fans out there, I'm excited for all the inevitable mods too. When STALKER SoC initially came out, it was rough around the edges, but I loved it anyway, and I was really glad that it received a lot of love around here, considering how critical all of us can be. I never imagined there would be three STALKER games a few years later. Very excited.

For those interested in performance.

C2Q @ 3.5 GHz
Nvidia gtx 285
4GB of ram
Vista SP2

1280x960
4xAA, 16xAF
max settings
View distance and fog tweaked in config files to reveal about 3x more landscape in clear weather conditions.

The game has 3 huge main maps. As you first enter a map, the game starts out with about 50 minimum fps. As you progress in a map, it gets saturated with stalkers and mutants, and the minimum fps drops down to about 25 toward the end of the map. It's a bit silly really, imho, as you can step out of a safe house and right away be in the middle of a firefight between 15vs15 stalkers vs mutants.

Overall, the performance is great at the beginning of a map, and drops down to about Clear Sky level toward the end of the map.

As for bugs, the game is surprisingly nearly bug free. No complaints in that department (there are a few graphical glitches, no biggie).

I know Russian so I imported a copy and played through it. It's god damn phenomenal. Best STALKER game yet, and probably the best game I've played all this year. Old-school through and through, no handholding, tons of exploration and discovery, atmospheric, creepy. I'm going to get the English version as well, hopefully through Steam, because having paid only 500 rubles for it felt like me robbing the devs.

In light of this, I'm about to enter X18 lab in first STALKER... I'm scared. Wearing full SEVA suit, 900 NATO bullets, modified sniper M16 looking rifle, Fast-shooting AK... and yet, the damn flying boxes, scary noises just get to me.

One of most atmospheric. games. ever.

Did the have a seperate team work on Clear Sky then? This seems pretty quick.

Also, is this a sequel to the first game?

Oh sweet! It' sooner than I thought :)

Still gotta finish Clear Sky.

This'll be one of my top entries in my list of must-have games to get in the new year.

Metro 2033 and Alan Wake (hopefully) are two others. I can't wait, they all look fantastic.

for those that already played the russian version, how are the underground levels ? clear sky was a huge dissapointment in this regard, after playing SOC i was expecting alot more.

I don't get it, why is it taking so long to release the game in English? The Polish version of CoP already has English voice overs option, but no English text. Why? I have no idea...
Does it really take that much time to translate the text??

It's the most stable game in the series by far.

Never had one CTD with vanilla version. Although it lacks compared to ShoC but it's probably because Prypat is a shorter game and you feel familiar with the Zone from previous games. It doesn't leave such a huge impression simply because you've been there before.

But there's a very active mod community and already mods that expands the game quite.
I'll def buy the english version when it reaches me.

Am looking forward to this game am a big fan of the other two in the series. The only thing that worries me is the graphics look like a step backwards, which makes no sense it is DX11?

The reason I say this is I have been replaying the first Stalker with this mod:

http://artistpavel.blogspot.com/
http://www.fileshack.com/file.x/15793/S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:+SoC+'STALKER+Complete+2009'+Mod+v1.4.2

If any one has the first you have to install this mod it is fantastic, I think it looks better than any of the current screens of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat.

Take a look for your self:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/artistpavel/sets/72157608341111036/detail/

Weird. I clicked on this article to read the comment and a fake Chinese (top2009security.cn domain IIRC) attack jumped in and Security Essentials immediately blocked the page and cleaned this crap from my FF's cache...

Now I'm back and so far nothing.
Weird.


Anyway, STALKER is a preorder for me though Bitcomposer is really a lame, loser publisher for releasing it in German and Russian first, only to release in English ~5 months later, let alone missing the entire DX11 hype-train with ATI (and don't bet on Fermi either).... losers, losers, FUCKIN' LOSERS.

That new guy's a dead ringer for Scar.

I wish my computer could handle it man. I got a new laptop back in 2007 and the first Stalker ran pretty decent, but Clear Sky doesn't run smooth and neither will Call of Pripyat. I'm a big fan of Stalker but I don't think I will be able to enjoy the last two Stalkers unless I upgrade. :(

lots of thoughts in reply

Played through this is Russian allready and liked it very much, has quite an RPG'sh feel to it. Can be played through fast if following only the main questline but loads of sidestep goodies.

This is a definite buy for me.

These guys have had a few bug hiccups with their original, but they've put out some pretty solid fun stuff.
Love it.