S.T.A.L.TO.E.P.: Lost alpha – shadow of games

In April 2014, a group of modders, under the tag of Dezowave Team, released a long-building project (more than 6 years in development), which put an ambitious plan-to show the wide masses of the dream of all the initiates-the “same” stalker, lost somewhere on the way to the release.

But whether the international team managed to outline the final product GSC Game World? If you start from user opinions from different sources – no, but it holds the level of good game. So, on Stopgame, the project has an assessment of 7.6 points;8 points on the thematic portal AP-PRO;8.7 on Moddb;Other modifications have long been created on its basis – in short, At first glance, Lost Alpha turned out to be fame.

But my impressions of the game are not so positive, and in this text I will try to explain why. All composite mods fell under the distribution: plot and mechanics, critical bugs, graphics and even localization. Your opinion may radically differ, this is normal. But if you have something to add or tell, I will be happy to get acquainted in the comments.

Oh, these fairy tales

Start, of course, stands from the plot part. In general, she goes along the same paths as the original game, differing in details. But if the restored ideas themselves are interest for familiarization, then their implementation will chop the entire venture in the root.

For example, plot videos about the experiments previously conducted in the zone are held in dark dilapidated locations on damaged equipment – in such a situation there are no questions at all why everything is coming around.

In addition to Kat-scenes, most of the characters encountered are poorly spelled out: that the duty at the beginning, that the military at the end are limp weaks, who can no longer kill the bloodsucker, nor the armored persons officer manage. For gameplay, of course, diversity, but according to the logic of things – just stupidity. It would not hurt a little more time to justify such situations.

The shooter himself also does not shine with his mind and quick wits, and can talk about bloodsuckers that I have not yet met. But not only the main character may amaze – the whole Colonel Petrenko from the debt turns out to be a very big master of repair affairs – even the simple stalkers weapons and the armor repair. Why this function not to endow any of the dozens of subordinate fighters around him is the question of unanswered.

In general, the main tasks that are intertwined with the old plot are implemented quite well and have several points with the right marks on the map. But most of the new ones are often just the location of the final target (even if it is several levels below or higher) with a description in the “Find Wire” style. And it doesn’t matter that for this you must first find the entrance to the dungeon on the other end of the map.

The lion’s share of instructions and so consist of the banal “Bring-Sow”, which is quickly boring, and such execution generally causes rejection. Having added large deserted territories to this, it can be assumed that Hideo Kojima was inspired by Lost Alpha when developing his “courier simulator”.

Additional quests also do not shine with ingenuity, and sometimes even with logic: for example, the unsuccessful stalker asks to return his usual thunderstorm, and gives the reward of the overalls of Seva, which costs several times more expensive.

The quintessence of plot adventures for me was the emergence of Illuminati and Matrix, as well as the banal copy of Half-Life, after which for some reason the degree of delirium does not increase, and the expected Hitler on the tyrannosaurus from the portal does not appear. Although he would have the place there. It is simply impossible to seriously perceive such intricacies of history.

Not a bug, but a feature

The mentioned large distances in Lost Alpha were supposed to be overcome by cars. But besides the fact that they stand both a cast -iron bridge and are controlled in the same way. The poor sale of vehicles forces to reject such “pleasure” immediately. After all, if the car rolls over, then there is no possibility to leave it, only the loading of another conservation saves. And the fuel disappears just before our eyes. Apparently, leaky gas troops – quality standard in the zone.

Thus, Running the vicinity of the Chernobyl nuclear power. But in long walks, sooner or later, you have to use a sleeping bag – a useful thing in harsh places, by the way. It will help both pass the dark night and remove radiation and other ailments from the body. The power of the Earth, probably, also gives. After this, even from the skyscraper can you jump – the real hero gravity is not in the way.

And if there is no next task of desire, you can sit down for any of the dozen computers who work flawlessly even in abandoned underground complexes. But the best option, of course, would be a PC on the basis of debt, the benefit of a nearby serving unnecessary questions does not ask.

But what would it be worth asking the warrior yourself, it is why there is a machine gun in the game if it does not work? No, he shoots to shoot, but where? Because of him, in theory, a dynamic quest to clean the area from mutants turns into a monotonous shooting of animals from a sniper.

By the way, trophies collected from animals and other monsters can be sold not only to stalkers. But to find out if their secret merchant will not be burying – he is so secret that it disappears while the stingy runs to his mark. Well, I didn’t really want to.

Plyushkin syndrome

Special mention deserves the oblique inventory. The biggest misfortune was that in the course of the game You can gain a dozen kilograms of quest things behind your back, which cannot be given, sell or, at least, throw it away. This situation happens when you find things without a task or collected not everything to complete it. For example, having spent more than an hour studying the X-18 laboratory and spitting on this business, I managed to find 4 out of 5 documents, but I had to drag them with me to the final itself, without options. And other documents too. And three sets of tools. And test psi-shlem. And random key ..

The display of the old-new icons of products in the inventory also looks very stupid: a melted cheese is half a sleeping bag, like corn with other olives. True, after the discovery of giant olives on the shelves of the same cans, I realized that the authors simply had never seen canned food in real life. By the way, “Tourist breakfast” and nameless stew have one icon for two, but different characteristics;and two identical PDAs can have different icons.

But useless alcohol to choose from as in the liquor. By the way, it rummages the same from drinking – that from vodka, that from beer. Well, okay, alcohol is evil, this is understandable. But what remains beyond understanding is why grenades of the same species in the inventory do not stream, occupying several cells.

Help Dasha find logic

Funny, but fact: every second counter offers to buy a guitar and a province accordion. Moreover, it doesn’t matter with whom you are trading-absolutely everything is musically literate: loners, bandits, duty, military … It feels like it was not in the exclusion zone-a harsh and merciless land, but for the competition of amateur musicians in a local cultural house.

In addition to the https://ukcryptocasinos.co.uk/review/betfoxx/ disappointed bards, the game added weapons from the masters, but for some reason all the inhabitants of the zone in their hands were the most basic weapon, with the rare exception. Apparently, local techniques do not cause confidence.

There is also mechanics of repairing things outside upgrades. And if the NPC cope with the repair without any problems, then the stingy himself could not patch his suit, although he found the remote complex-there were not enough parts. What is the point of hiding such sets in deserted places without the possibility of their immediate application – the question is open.

But what causes not questions, but Enormous irritation – this is the battery in the flashlight, which sit in just a few minutes – Chinese consumer goods, not otherwise. In case of preparation of sorties in dark laboratories, it is necessary to stock up on dozens of nutrition elements. This in no way affects the complexity of the game, but infuriates incredibly, because it is not always possible to get batteries for the future.

Well, I don’t play like that

You remember that there is a plot in Lost Alpha? Here it must be adhered to. Without options. If you fulfill the quest not as it was planned by the developers, then you can not count on the advance further, or worse – catch freezing. Example: At the beginning of the game, there is an opportunity not to save the fox, but simply to kill, but after that a new task will not appear, and then you have to wander around the zone in search of an arrow before turning. Or the opposite situation: at the landfill, Gray first wanted to, but then changed his mind to share information. I had to post a person because of the glitch. Such flaws on the part of the developers make you persist before any more or less important solution, so that later, if that, do it “right”.

One of the advantages of the game, Dezowave Team called a lot of new locations. Well, as “new” – partially old, from Bildov’s developments. But the team of fashionables forgot to mention that for the most part it is just deserted corridors in ten minutes of running. And unable to pass the way differently, for half (!) from 30 hours of the game it will be necessary to drive from point A to point B through one, two, or even three locations. And some of them have insurmountable obstacles, as, for example, faults on a landfill or ram horn from fences along the road to the bar. In such a situation, the most desired product becomes an energy drink, which you can probably drink a whole tank for the game. Here they ask the guides to break into the zone, as it was in the sequels of the game. And they even meet according to the plot, but you still have to run the swordsman nearby, looking down in the back of a partner.

To all of the above, you can add a whole cart of small bugs, which you will cease to pay attention to, such as a message that the battery is discharged when you dump extra flashlights or lines about preservation, which does not disappear from the screen.

AND If you can close your eyes for small shortcomings, then there are directly huge problems that can break through is a serious jamb. As it turned out, not only in my dungeon Pripyat simply did not work as a code castle. And then you can’t get through, having even a document with numbers in the inventory. I had to use a classic trick with opening the door by throwing weapons in a certain place.

In short, if the developers sought to create an impassable or not very friendly to the newcomers of the game – they did it for glory.

Beauty requires sacrifice

Original game, because of the technical flaws of the X-Ray engine, in terms of the stars from the sky is not enough. But the authors of Lost Alpha walked in earnest, wrapping the number of environmental effects and vegetation to the prohibitive level. The statics turned out a pretty good picture. But in the dynamics, this resulted in a noticeable FPS jumps depending on the environment: often in each forest more often and other thickets, the number of frames can fall to 20-30 on the DirectX 10 and 9 renders, returning to 100 to simpler areas. In static lighting (DX8), the frame of the Framret is many times better, but the picture, of course, is not so beautiful and in some places graphic artifacts appear, such as transparent zombies. In fairness, these “invisibility” are in any settings.

On the release, the developers clarified that the game is sharpened under DirectX 10. But I had a question: the first demonstrations of the GSC gameplay were back in 2002, when there was no question of the tenth “Direct”. A If Lost Alpha is trying to return the “same” stalker, then why use Render more, for which the game was not originally developed?

Circus Buratin

In this fashion Almost all KAT scenes and animations, which were not in the shadows of Chernobyl, are made very primitive And they look ridiculous. Obviously, it would be better not to use awkward videos, replacing them, say, with the study of documents in the inventory and notes in PDA.

But there is a good view from the camera from the third person and even the second. In this performance, a funny run without weapons seems not so caricatured. True, there is no practical substantiation of this function in the game.

In my opinion, it would be better to devote more time nailed nails to their NPC points, which stand like tin soldiers, although against their background other stalkers manifest the likelihood of life.

Musical pause

The music in the menu ended even when digging in the settings. Trifle, but still unpleasant. In the very game itself, the situation is even worse – songs from each radio receiver are twice louder than any person around. The volume control in the settings here does not affect. It is especially funny at such a “disco” to try to listen to the Likbez Sidorovich. He is about Khabar, but it comes to you only as “Once a year, gardens bloom“. Although we must pay tribute to the surroundings – the Soviet epic as the background of the old hardening merchant is very in the subject. As for the huckster itself, its voice acting in the game does not go to any comparisons with the shadows of Chernobyl, giving way.

Also, in most custom symptians, often one character speaks very quietly, barely audible. At the same time, his interlocutor, who stands nearby, sounds quite normal. Example-in one of the X-laboratories the suffering “Help me!»Rushes from the far corner in all rooms, but what the warriors on which the camera focused are talking about is difficult to understand because of the volume of the speech of one of them. Apparently, no one has sufficiently engaged in the normalization of sound.

There is a Russian spirit

Like the inventory, the domestic localization of the game is worthy of a separate conversation. The implementation of new jokes and songs, this, of course, is good. But it would be possible to allocate at least a little more resources to the text component? Yes, the original game is rich in mistakes of different sense, but at least there is an atmosphere and identity, logic and meaning – call it as you like.

In Lost Alpha, in those places where Russian speech simply did not exist, all conversations are an abstract and poorly related nonsense. It is clearly seen that the whole new text was written only in English and banally missed through some Google Translate with minimal editors.

An example of a conversation of a guide with a sword:

– I am a conductor, the same one, of the legends. I spent you to the center of the zone a few months ago. Remember?

– This handwriting is vaguely familiar to me. By the way, the doctor wanted to see you.

– And here I am. I don’t know much, but ask – I will try to answer.

– This is good! See you!

Another example, this ghost is already communicating with the shooter:

-passing to the bunker X-2 in front. After we get there, the decoder of the fang will help us go inside.

– And you will put explosives, as we agreed?

– Only after we deactivate it. To make sure that the government will not get it into its own. Follow me carefully and carefully – the last time the three of us almost turned into a distorted ball of flesh.

And so throughout the game. I would not even distinguish the localization of a free mod to a separate point, if not for one “but”: The guys are so proud of their work that without a twinge of conscience, they put their names in the final credits in the first place. After them there is a Dezowave command. Well, GSC Game World received only a few lines closer to the end. Yes, the authors of the original game, whose content was used in fashion, allocated a whole paragraph in the credits.

I want the zone to disappear

If you remove the frankly weak sides from Lost Alpha, such as useless locations, inappropriate and poorly working mechanics, a frank farce in the plot and banal tracing paper Half-Life, then the output will turn out … s.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. This suggests that at one time the publisher gave GSC the right kick, which was only good for the game.

And it’s clear to the fool that no one would cut out interesting and well -working ideas then. But Just taking and returning the rejected content, only wiped it from the dust, without analysis why it was removed, and how can you do better – it will not work to create a whole picture.

It can be argued that there is a more sophisticated version of modification (Developer’s Cut), but if Dezowave Team could not correctly realize the cut gameplay, then look at the author’s “dodger” – entertainment for an amateur, as for me.

Only one question remained at the end: is it necessary to look for the “same” stalker, or he always had it? The answer, obviously, everyone has their own.

The best comments

La was so upset that there is no desire to touch other mods yet)

Lost Alpha, I just also remembered the first trip by car, which turned over at any attempt to turn at speed higher than the turtle (and taking into account the fact that during the “trip” of the player is shot from the helicopter, the speed of the turtle is equivalent to the death sentence), the search for the mentioned documents (there was some inconspicuous room, which I hardly found in an hour of wagging in the uniformdarkness-a battery on the flashlight of the village) and constantly running on the instructions of Sakharov (and there really 3-4 plot quests from scientists are forced to run back and forth).

But the most disgusting moment was earlier: at the very beginning, where it was necessary to save the fox, I did not pay a ransom, but simply shot captured a member of sin. A few hours later, during the plot quest, I run into the tunnel and the hero simply dies without any explanation. Well, I think, bug, but when rebooting everything was repeated. Googled-this is due to the fact that he ruined the relationship with the sin. I had to leave the tunnel, about 15 minutes (if not more) to run either to Sidorovich, or to the bartender (I don’t remember already) to restore relations through them, and then again in this tunnel. Not only is the quest itself very doubtful (since after meeting with sin you again have to run into the dark valley from which you come to this), it is not clear why the hero dies without googling.

Gray first wanted to, but then changed his mind to share information. I had to post a person because of the glitch.

Railed in a voice)

Well, as I heard, this is really “Bildovsky”. I played a little, but for a long time. There is just a finished A-Life: monsters of all kinds can run stupidly on you, and at this time the gameplay resembles a cool Sam)

I will take a pencil, maybe there will be something to share)

Certainly. Immediately Uncharted or Tomb Raider (with small riddles) or GTA (with a combination of simple tasks for performing one) come to mind.

I have a claim more to the fact that in Lost Alpha there is where to walk around, but it all comes down to banalities. For example, transport mechanics – it is used in exactly two plot tasks for the entire game (and then it is easier to immediately go out and solve all issues outside the car). Or “craft” of artifacts – there is a mechanic, but in the course of the plot there is no need for it (there is a side task, but it is easy to miss). Or “super-aggressive night a-life”, but not a single “night” task.

I hope my thought is clear.

That’s just the same playing the usual alpha blossom, and not the DC version and was a mistake T.To. Many problems and shortcomings of the usual version (such as too light turning of cars, bugs and the presence of some illogical/poorly executed kitszen and plot branches, etc.D. ) were resolved in it, plus with DC there is an automatic moder installer, which is enough to run and he will find accessible mods, it remains only to choose which ones you like (there are improved NPC models, a mod for the use of batteries for a flashlight, autumn packs of textures for vegetation and much more).
Plus, you can also find options for a regular DC how to enable Spawn Menu (it was useful to me.To. At one time, I almost passed the usual one, but abandoned it, and by that time I found a lot of decent arts that gave +20-30 kg of overweight, so I just sprinkled a couple at the beginning, so that it was less worn due to the need to drag the habar back and forth) unlike DC: Extnded, where the developers have already begun to create some kind of game, they developed their antiand gave the opportunity to persist only by the fire in safe places.