Well, I can read a few paragraphs. I'm also a big fan of RPG games and even mixes of action/RPG like Obilivion. I'm 39 years old and of course games have only relatively recently begun going to spoken dialogue. There are instances however where you're presented with a half page of text. It'd be okay if something gripping was going on around you, but so far, it's not in my opinion.

Perhaps my expectations were too high. Perhaps I just haven't been in the right mood. Perhaps I don't like the quirky feel of the game. For whatever reason I just haven't enjoyed it much so far.

Feel free to like it all you want, No need to feel sorry for me. I'm just stating my opinion and I'm very clearly in the minority.

I thought I was the only one, but apparently adrake4183 agrees. STALKER just hasn't appealed to me yet. I bought it a few weeks ago when GoGamer was selling it for $9.90. I had really high expectations based upon all of the gushing I'd heard from everyone over the last year or so.

I'm a huge FPS fan - though my tastes probably lean more towards action - and being forced to read the huge WALLS of text in STALKER was a big turn-off. Yes, that's right, the spoken dialogue is minimal (except for all the NPC chatter which is not in English) and you're forced to read. And read. And read. Sorry - but I just wanted to shoot and explore.

Also, the shooting felt really sloppy to me.

I keep loading it up, hoping that I'll finally get what it is about the game that people like so much and that I'll be able to overcome the design decisions and gameplay that I dislike. Until then, I guess I'm in the minority here.

I find this to be very cumbersome as well. Why do we need to wade through hundreds of old games to find current games? I love classics - I have a bunch of them on their console of origin already.

By the way, I can appreciate that older games don't always hold up in gameplay in light of newer generations that have built upon their shoulders, but shouldn't classics be reviewed on a scale of their own? We don't expect them to be improved upon - we expect them to play just like the original. Right? A user searching for, say, Shinobi III is going to find the original version (rated 9.5 by other critics) and the Wii version - which is identical - rated at 7. Yeah, I know - read the review. It just seems inconsistent and yet another reason why they should be in a category of their own.

Unfortunately, I didn't get the Sony emblem either. I got disconnected but rejoined around the 45 minute mark. Even logged into chat and everything. :)

I was just getting ready to post this very same topic. I did notice that it was fine in Firefox, but IE7 exhibited that same behavior. For subscribers, part of the text is obscured by the cover art. (see pic below)