Unfortunately, STALKER doesn't hit the mark. Huge bugs and sloppy gameplay cause some serious frustration. Lacks polish.
The first thing that struck me as odd was how slow the game runs. I had to pull in the draw distance quite a bit just to retain 30+FPS. For such a dated (and ugly) game, this is not a good sign. Expect worse performance than Half-Life 2, but with graphics that are far worse.
And that's not all that's wrong with this little gem. The mission objectives are vague, and sometimes you fail a mission with no clue of how it happened or what went wrong. There are waypoints spread over the map, but descriptive text over the waypoints don't even tell you what missions they are for. There's also a nasty bug that involves zooming in and out of the map. The down-scroll mouse button will zoom out, then suddenly begin zooming into the map, making navigation extremely difficult.
There are also quite a few translation issues between the game's native Russian language and English. This is quite common throughout the game and detracts from the ovarall experience quite a bit. It's a shame that THQ couldn't find someone who was at least fluent in English to make the game more understandable.
My biggest gripe with the game is the difficulty level. I've been playing FPS games for well over a decade now, and I consider myself to be pretty good at the genre. This game actually made me drop the difficulty level to "novice", which is STALKER's easy mode. The sad part is that the only reason I had to lower the difficulty level is due to the fact that the NPCs cheat....a lot. The enemy troops tend to have ESP and know when you're approcahing, even if you're walking slowly and behind cover. They also have the incredible ability of being able to shoot through walls and other solid objects. And even After taking over an outpost and killing all of the enemy troops, there wasn't much time before another wave would show up. After killing the next group, yet another wave would appear. This is known as the "GTA syndrome", named after that series spawning mobs right behind you if your back is turned. It's not necessarily something that spoils the fun of the game, but since it takes so many rounds to kill an enemy (usually 15+ rounds), and the fact that there tends to be a shortage of ammunition throughout the game, this can cause serious issues, since you're having to kill more to get more ammunition. It creates a vicious cycle. It's disheartening to kill 20 or so troops, only to be killed with one shot by a soldier who just spawned right outside the base you've liverated. It takes a lot of realism out of the game...especially when some enemies will go through 50 rounds without hitting you, and others can shoot you in the eye from 100 paces.
Yet another of STALKER's shortcomings is the A.I. You'd think a game that has some expert marksmen for enemies wouldn't feature friendly quest NPCs who are so stupid they simply stand around complaining about getting shot instead of pulling out their weapons and shooting back, or at least taking cover. This happened to me on a number of occasions, and it even prevented from completing a few missions. One example is when a friendly NPC named Mole showed me how to get to the underground complex. After he wished me luck, more phantom soldiers spawned by the base we had just defended. I ducked for cover behind a tree, but Mole simply stood there, eating lead. After vocally stating his obvious dislike for being a meat shield, he eventually had enough abuse and died. I lost my mission and had to reload the game. That was just the beginning of the many infuriating bugs that have effectively made me consider uninstalling this game until a better patch is released. It's a shame that most games are unleashed onto the public in an unfinished form like this. The game does have some good qualities as well. The atmosphere is generally very well done. The interior areas look very nice, and the ambient lighting is truly awesome once you're inside. The earthy tones make the game feel as if you're playing in a wasteland. And sometimes I even felt the vibe I got when I played Fallout, which was a true masterpiece. However, the character models and NPC leave a lot to be desired. And there are some very nasty graphic anomalies, particularly fog when it's raining. Instead of a mist, there's a very strange series of gray lines that fly around on the screen. It's very apparent, and very ugly. Probably the worst graphic blunder isn't even a bug. It's the poor textures used on the weapons. In a game that flaunts its realistic weapons, this was a huge letdown. The textures are grainy and look hideous. I figured maybe that was just the case of one or two of them, but every weapon I found looked very bad. All in all, I feel cheated out of yet another game that I was really looking forward to. Now I guess I will just shelf the game for a couple months until it becomes playable via patches. I did try the multiplayer, but there's nothing new in FPS multiplayer games. It's all the same, with slightly different weapons and levels.
Hope this review helped some of you.