Krynn72
The Freeman
- Joined
- May 16, 2004
- Messages
- 26,094
- Reaction score
- 925
TL;DR Version: GET THIS GAME ITS AWESOME LOOK AT THOSE SCREENSHOTS HOLY SHIT. ALSO READ THIS WHOLE POST IT TOOK ME A LONG TIME TO MAKE.
Figured I'd make a new thread on it now that its out, and share my initial impressions. I've only played 1.4 hours so far, but damn I am impressed. I didnt really read much on it beforehand. All I knew is that it was by some ex-Stalker devs, and it has survival elements in it. I bought it on steam Saturday, got it pre-loaded, and it unlocked at about 11:50pm. There wont be any spoilers in this until the screenshots.
First impression was "oh shit... its going to be really buggy like stalker" because when I ran it, all I got was a black screen with nothing. So I found a thread on steampowered with a bunch of others who had the problem, someone posted a solution that worked for me, and in a few minutes I was in the game and playing.
Gameplay
This is definitely not a standard shooter. Its got some sort of awesome Half Life2/Stalker/Vietcong feel to it. Guns seem to be inaccurate as shit, but the guy you get your starting guns from pretty much says as much. I'm sure they'll get pretty good later on though, because already I've got a much better shotgun than I started with. You can interact with the environment to an extent, blowing out candles/turning off lights, pressing E to talk to anybody and get some kind of comment from them like in HL2. You crank levers and pull things apart by tapping E and all sorts of stuff, so the levels have a believable feel to them, rather than just feeling like a game map.
Survival stuff isn't very intrusive. Basically, your character will gasp if he starts breathing in some nasty stuff, and you tap G to put on your gas mask. Hold G to take it off, if you think you're in a safe place to do so. The filters only work for a short amount of time, so you gotta check your watch every so often to make sure you have enough time to switch them out. You check your watch simply by holding T, and switch filters by tapping G when you have the mask on. Don't think I've really encountered any other survival gameplay yet.
One thing that is confusing to me is the health system. You dont have a health bar, as far as I know, so it seems like you need to guess if you're hurt or not. It might be regenerating health? So far, all I have done is when I start seeing red and hear my guy's heartbeat, I use a medkit (morphine syringes).
Inventory and bartering systems couldnt be simpler. You have knives, a pistol, automatic rifle, shotgun, and explosives. To pick up a new weapon, you exchange your current one of the same type. No dealing with messy packs full of items and all that. Money is pre-apocalypse bullets. This is a really cool idea, since you can also use them in your weapons, but you'll be literally shooting people with your money. You find the shitty normal bullets and pre-apoc bullets all over. So far I havent shot any good bullets yet. Bartering is simple too, you go up to a merchant, browse what they have and when you go to buy something, the price is listed in the pre-apoc bullets with a discount based on the trade-in value of your current item of the same type (if its a weapon. Dont think you can sell medkits and such. Not sure on that though)
The biggest thing with gameplay, I think, is that it feels polished. With all the stuff they put in the game, it seems like everything would feel very mechanical, or detached somehow due to a lack of polish, but not so. Everything from the animations, to the responsiveness of the controls feels as they should. Theres even nice little flourishes, like when you hold up the lighter to see your map, when you move around the flame blows around. Thought that was cool.
Atmosphere
The thing im most impressed with is the atmosphere of the game. The graphics only tell part of the tale, because once you start walking around, you really get a feel for the world. Its like the developers took a page straight from the HL2 book of engaging worlds. You walk around in the towns and see kids running around, people leaning on the walls talking to each other, sitting at tables playing cards or drinking. You see a guy and his girlfriend having an argument, a father saying goodbye to his wife and kid, a guy playing the guitar for a small crowd. The underground towns feel so alive, its like nothing I ever played before. HL2's intro chapter is the closest I've ever seen to this, but Metro 2033 takes it to a whole new level. Like I said above, you can walk around and "talk" to people like in HL2 by hitting E, or if you just stare at them, and they'll say something to you. Makes for a very believable world. And then the scary moments... the atmosphere the environments give off is fantastic. Very Stalker-like. The only thing I dont like about the scary stuff is unfortunately, the monsters. So far, I am unimpressed with the impact of the creatures on my emotional state. Yeah, they run along the walls, and come at you from all sorts of ways, but its become so cliche and standard-fare that you expect it. Though there was one part that freaked me out, but it was unrelated to the monsters (i think). Won't spoil that though.
Graphics
Right off the bat I was taken aback by how good it looks. I was running on high (a preset one step below max) settings at 1920x1200 and it looks phenomenal. Check out the screenshots below. Performance-wise, it was struggling. I was getting ~20-25 fps on average. Manageable, but I eventually turned it down to normal settings to get ~35 fps. I forgot to take screenshots of it on normal settings, but I'll post some later. Trust me, it still looks damn good. Load times are fantastic. No load time was over 10 seconds for me. At the load screens, your character reads a few lines of a journal entry related to what is about to happen in the next area, and each time the level was loaded before he was done saying those 2-3 lines. And it doesnt seem to have a major texture streaming issue like most games with low load times, where textures load in as really low res, then pop in with the full resolution as you play. Its there, but not nearly as noticeable as in other games.
If you're wondering, my pc specs are as follows:
Windows 7 x64
Radeon 4850 256mb
8Gb DDR2 ram
Q6600 Quadcore processor @ 2.4ghz
Now for screenshots. I'll try to sort them by spoilery vs non-spoilery. I wont post full size since they're at 1920x1200.
Safe ones:
[ 
Spoilery ones:
Figured I'd make a new thread on it now that its out, and share my initial impressions. I've only played 1.4 hours so far, but damn I am impressed. I didnt really read much on it beforehand. All I knew is that it was by some ex-Stalker devs, and it has survival elements in it. I bought it on steam Saturday, got it pre-loaded, and it unlocked at about 11:50pm. There wont be any spoilers in this until the screenshots.
First impression was "oh shit... its going to be really buggy like stalker" because when I ran it, all I got was a black screen with nothing. So I found a thread on steampowered with a bunch of others who had the problem, someone posted a solution that worked for me, and in a few minutes I was in the game and playing.
Gameplay
This is definitely not a standard shooter. Its got some sort of awesome Half Life2/Stalker/Vietcong feel to it. Guns seem to be inaccurate as shit, but the guy you get your starting guns from pretty much says as much. I'm sure they'll get pretty good later on though, because already I've got a much better shotgun than I started with. You can interact with the environment to an extent, blowing out candles/turning off lights, pressing E to talk to anybody and get some kind of comment from them like in HL2. You crank levers and pull things apart by tapping E and all sorts of stuff, so the levels have a believable feel to them, rather than just feeling like a game map.
Survival stuff isn't very intrusive. Basically, your character will gasp if he starts breathing in some nasty stuff, and you tap G to put on your gas mask. Hold G to take it off, if you think you're in a safe place to do so. The filters only work for a short amount of time, so you gotta check your watch every so often to make sure you have enough time to switch them out. You check your watch simply by holding T, and switch filters by tapping G when you have the mask on. Don't think I've really encountered any other survival gameplay yet.
One thing that is confusing to me is the health system. You dont have a health bar, as far as I know, so it seems like you need to guess if you're hurt or not. It might be regenerating health? So far, all I have done is when I start seeing red and hear my guy's heartbeat, I use a medkit (morphine syringes).
Inventory and bartering systems couldnt be simpler. You have knives, a pistol, automatic rifle, shotgun, and explosives. To pick up a new weapon, you exchange your current one of the same type. No dealing with messy packs full of items and all that. Money is pre-apocalypse bullets. This is a really cool idea, since you can also use them in your weapons, but you'll be literally shooting people with your money. You find the shitty normal bullets and pre-apoc bullets all over. So far I havent shot any good bullets yet. Bartering is simple too, you go up to a merchant, browse what they have and when you go to buy something, the price is listed in the pre-apoc bullets with a discount based on the trade-in value of your current item of the same type (if its a weapon. Dont think you can sell medkits and such. Not sure on that though)
The biggest thing with gameplay, I think, is that it feels polished. With all the stuff they put in the game, it seems like everything would feel very mechanical, or detached somehow due to a lack of polish, but not so. Everything from the animations, to the responsiveness of the controls feels as they should. Theres even nice little flourishes, like when you hold up the lighter to see your map, when you move around the flame blows around. Thought that was cool.
Atmosphere
The thing im most impressed with is the atmosphere of the game. The graphics only tell part of the tale, because once you start walking around, you really get a feel for the world. Its like the developers took a page straight from the HL2 book of engaging worlds. You walk around in the towns and see kids running around, people leaning on the walls talking to each other, sitting at tables playing cards or drinking. You see a guy and his girlfriend having an argument, a father saying goodbye to his wife and kid, a guy playing the guitar for a small crowd. The underground towns feel so alive, its like nothing I ever played before. HL2's intro chapter is the closest I've ever seen to this, but Metro 2033 takes it to a whole new level. Like I said above, you can walk around and "talk" to people like in HL2 by hitting E, or if you just stare at them, and they'll say something to you. Makes for a very believable world. And then the scary moments... the atmosphere the environments give off is fantastic. Very Stalker-like. The only thing I dont like about the scary stuff is unfortunately, the monsters. So far, I am unimpressed with the impact of the creatures on my emotional state. Yeah, they run along the walls, and come at you from all sorts of ways, but its become so cliche and standard-fare that you expect it. Though there was one part that freaked me out, but it was unrelated to the monsters (i think). Won't spoil that though.
Graphics
Right off the bat I was taken aback by how good it looks. I was running on high (a preset one step below max) settings at 1920x1200 and it looks phenomenal. Check out the screenshots below. Performance-wise, it was struggling. I was getting ~20-25 fps on average. Manageable, but I eventually turned it down to normal settings to get ~35 fps. I forgot to take screenshots of it on normal settings, but I'll post some later. Trust me, it still looks damn good. Load times are fantastic. No load time was over 10 seconds for me. At the load screens, your character reads a few lines of a journal entry related to what is about to happen in the next area, and each time the level was loaded before he was done saying those 2-3 lines. And it doesnt seem to have a major texture streaming issue like most games with low load times, where textures load in as really low res, then pop in with the full resolution as you play. Its there, but not nearly as noticeable as in other games.
If you're wondering, my pc specs are as follows:
Windows 7 x64
Radeon 4850 256mb
8Gb DDR2 ram
Q6600 Quadcore processor @ 2.4ghz
Now for screenshots. I'll try to sort them by spoilery vs non-spoilery. I wont post full size since they're at 1920x1200.
Safe ones:
[ 
Spoilery ones:
