New Acquisition in PC Gaming

Building my PC was primarly meant for High Definition video editing and such, but for as long as I miss the capture card to record those console games, I'm not going to get much out of my PC unless I start buying more games for it. To this effect, I bought some old games which I had yet to experience, one of which I have been a fan of the franchise ever since the very first title. These games in question are Cryostasis, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl and Thief: Deadly Shadows.

I have recorded, edited and put up 3 videos, one for each game, in an attempt at giving a more entertaining way of presenting the new games I acquire. With such a plan though, it also means I cannot show much of the game since I am still at the beginning and it also means I cannot show anything on the exact day I buy them. But does that really matter? All I know is I had plenty of fun creating these videos by using the introduction cutscenes and adding few gameplay parts here and there.

As I am quite lazy today, I will post the actual resumes from Steam for each game, along with the main logo and the video I have created. I will, however, make this blog super long (as usual) by adding my own personal impressions and comments.

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The North Pole, 1981... Alexander Nesterov is sent to investigate the 'North Wind', a nuclear ice-breaker now trapped in the Arctic Circle with its crew frozen to death. Alexander must fight the horrors contained within the frozen vessel and use his mysterious 'Mental Echo' ability to reveal the final moments of the dead crew.

I start with Cryostasis as it is the first game I got before the others. I had come across that game many times on Steam while browsing through the endless list of titles, but the numerous problems that could be found in the forums had prevented me from actually buying it despite its low price of $12. People have often reported having issues making it work in Windows 7 and a lot of problems seem to arisen when playing on ATI cards. The game was optimized for nVidia cards, and to make it worse it even was badly optimized, even for nVidia, so just imagine how it is with an ATI card. Nonetheless I decided to give it a go as it reminded me of Bioshock, and luckily enough it works flawlessly, although I cannot run it maxed out due to bad optimization.

During the recording session, I had to put every settings on the lowest possible in order to get a steady 30FPS. The game sure has a lot of potential when it comes to graphics, but unfortunately the lack of good development and the lack of attentive developers to the current issues prevents this game from shining amongst other titles. Otherwise the gameplay itself reminds me a lot of Bioshock, where you wander around searching for things, slowly unveiling the story behind the area and encountering some strange enmies, which in this case seems to be frozen creatures from the depths of the ice. In the game you have access to melee and ranged weapons. In the video I only go around punching here and there as it is taken from the beginning, but eventually you get an axe and guns among others. As you are in the North Pole, warmth plays a big factor as you need to keep yourself at a good temperature. This is achieved by finding light sources that generates heat (lamps, motors, etc) to which you raise your body temperature. As you get colder, your life, which is determined by your heat, deteriorates and lowers drastically. In these cases, a single hit from an enemy means death.

The video takes parts from the introduction and some gameplay bits from the game's introduction as well. It is normal that you do not understand anything of what is being said, I don't understand anything either. This is my longest running video for the blog.


Cryostasis

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You are Garrett, the master thief. Rarely seen and never caught, Garrett is the best that ever was. Able to sneak past any guard, pick any lock, and break into the most ingeniously secured residences. Garrett steals from the wealthy and gives to himself, making his living in the dark and foreboding City.

Thief is a long time running franchise despite having only 3 active titles as of now. A fourth game has been officially announced and this is the reason I go Deadly Shadows, which is the third title in the series. The main reasons as to why I still didn't own this game is due to the issues that has plagued the Thief series ever since the arrival of Windows Vista and superior computer components. You see, the game is a complete crap at running under anything that's higher and more recent than Windows XP. Seeing a topic about running the game under Windows 7 64 bit, mixed with the Thief 4 announcement, I gave up and bought it. Luckily for me, it almost ran first shot.

Thief is everything a stealth lover wants. You break into places, loot and steal their valued item to then sell them back to a dealer to gain some money. You know out people, grab them and deposit them in the darkness for nobody to notice, allowing you to continue your journey calmly. Of course, there are times where even a professional thief can get caught, thus you can engage yourself in sword fights or you can always shoot people down from a distance with an arrow. At your disposal you have access to noise arrows to distract enemies, water arrows to extinguish torches and flames, a blackjack to hit people and knock them down, a dagger to kill them rather than knocking them down, and your good old skills at picking locks and many more. How good of a thief are you?

For the video I had absolutely no idea what to do, therefore I used the cutscene that plays when staying in the main menu and added very few gameplay parts to it, almost nothing. It's not such an issue though, as the cutscene shows everything there is to know regarding gameplay.


Thief: Deadly Shadows

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In 1986, the world's worst nuclear disaster occurred at the Chernobyl power station. Soviet authorities established a 30km 'Exclusion Zone' around this nuclear wasteland, but in 2006 a second explosion rocked the stricken reactor, obliterating all living things and causing the Zone's boundaries to ripple outwards

No problems here, unlike the two other games. First time I heard of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was by a friend of mine at work, or a coworker if you prefer. I also came accross the title quite a few times while searching for games, same as with Cryostasis. I finally decided to give it a shot, which marks my first experience with the FPS/RPG genre and so far I am loving it.

I don't have as much to say about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. considering it is much bigger game than the two others and I am still at the beginning, so other than taking missions, side missions, shooting at people and mutants all while avoiding anomalies from the Zone, I don't know much. I do know that you can loot everything that is dead in order to gain more ammo or ressources, as well as trading with other Stalkers to gain money or purchase new items. The game seems to revolve a lot around "the Zone", and how only one Stalker was rumored to have reached the center and survived, where the others who went to far within the Zone never came back. It definitely is an interesting game with good gameplay so far and I'm looking forward to progressing further.

I had a really hard time coming up with a video for this one, so I used the same tactic as the other two by including parts of the introduction cutscene mixed with gameplay elements. I wanted to get some really good shots from the Zone, but I have yet to actually enter deeply in there and so I stayed with some basic elements. It isn't my favorite video out of the 3, it actually feels empty, but the ending is my favorite one. The ending doesn't seem to make any sense at first, but for those who have played the game, I feel it relates extremely well to the feeling and emotions of the other Stalkers that are stuck there with you, along with the overall ambience of the game.


S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

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Here you go, yet again another tremendously long blog for such a simple announcement on my part. I hope you survived this one and if you did, be sure to left me a comment and let me know how you did to get through this one.

Hope you have enjoyed it and thank you for reading!