Reviews - SMGJohn

This mod is overrated, so much so its almost funny how ridicules it is.
This mod is all about dying, but the only fun is how you will end up dying.
There so many counter intuitive gameplay elements to this mod its almost a little sad.
The fact that your teammates just randomly loot everything before you get to it is also moronic.
Frankly I am lost at what kind of game this is meant to be, I understand its survival sandbox but where is the fun? To die and literally shoot other people just so you can get **** to survive for another day? Its ridicules.
The fact bullets can instant kill you as well makes this all more irritating, the mod tries so hard to be realistic that gameplay went straight out the window.
The fact this has the name "STALKER" in it, is an insult to the STALKER games as it has nothing to do with them, the core gameplay of STALKER is nowhere to be seen in this mod.
Its too try hard for elitists who never stepped outside their moms basement, in a very long time.
And perhaps it is time they crawl out their hole and realise a thing or two about game design.

This is a review of the Directors Cut version of the game, latest and most up to date 1.4007 with all the patches.

Let me just start of with, its a shame its so broken, while there are workarounds for ATi/AMD hardware, the idea that the main story and side quests have to break so many times that you grow a habit of keeping a save before you do the mission and one for after is ridicules.
There also gameplay elements that are obnoxious the longer you play, some may enjoy this kind of Americanised gameplay style, the maps are very large, very tunnel designed and some of them are so empty its probably a reason why GSC removed them from the get go.
Because the areas are so large you are kind of forced to use cars, now I do not mind cars but in Lost Alpha they just do not work like for example like they do in ShoC, the physics on cars are broken, how and why when they worked fine in ShoC is actually beyond me but there only a few selection of vehicles that work well enough but even then there still quirks with them that **** you off more times than they should. There is also the fact that MOST maps in this game are very unfriendly towards vehicles, there some maps that are almost impossible to even drive on like if you want to have vehicles, you should have at least made it possible to drive on them like in Oblivion Lost.

There also some extremely badly designed interior spaces in this mod where you get stuck too many times or the stairs just do not work LOL so you are forced to keep jumping to get up.

The mutants in this game are also extremely tough to kill, now I do not mind this if it were not for the fact the game forces you to basically just use one type of weapon to deal with mutants, shotguns. Because anything else is too wasteful, unlike previous STALKER games were you could run around even with just a handgun, in Lost Alpha you have to keep a shotgun with you no matter what, any assault rifle is just going to mean you have bullet sponge enemies so you are wasting a lot of ammo.

I could go on about how awful the cut scenes are but most people are already beating this one so much there no point, its bad and there mods to disable it, get those if you REALLY want to venture into Lost Alpha.

The mod has potential, it really does, there are moments of fun, but all the walking, all the quirks, and the missions breaking untold times is not fun, I love all STALKER games, I put STALKER on my wishlist in 2004 and I waited so many years for it what felt like an eternity for it to be released.
Lost Alpha tries to bring that old pre-ShoC content to a modern playable state, but it fails, I have played Oblivion Lost Remake which is a FAR more genuine state of what STALKER would be like before ShoC.
Oblivion Lost Remake, breaks less than Lost Alpha does and this should tell you something.
There too many bugs, the missions break in fact I had a main mission break no less than 4 times on me leaving me to quit the game so I never was able to finish it.

A lot of the side quests are also very badly designed in general, very repetitive, the A-life feels broken somehow its very janky and the game overall feels extremely empty for some reasons, there are people but there just something odd about it, all the STALKER games felt alive and full of STALKERS but Lost Alpha feels very empty, very linear at times, and the NPC's are alien like because there just no personality behind them, they all look and say the same **** over and over again.

I want to love this mod, I really do but seeing for how long its been in development, reading about the drama going on behind scenes and what not and the difficulties with the development makes me understand why the game is like it is in its final stage.

This is by no means a disrespect to the developers I personally think the devs have done an amazing job with what they had to work with, but the game itself just aint enjoyable at least the DC version not sure about the pre-DC version as when I first played the first release of the game, it broke too many times for my patient to venture further.

I know a lot of people are witch hunting critics of this mod, I seriously wish those people would find something else to do with their lives, the mod has potential but seeing how almost no one is bothering developing for it anymore and the dev team is just occasionally checking in on the messages being left, I just do not think it will ever be in a state that can be considered playable and enjoyable.

For those who did enjoy it, that is good but opinions are opinions and its surprising to see how hated the mod is outside the bubble that exists around, I personally did not think its THAT bad but it certainly has enough issues that unless fixed, it will never get rid of that reputation outside moddb.
Which is shameful because it can obviously be great if it wanted to.

I think it's a great concept and everything, but really it's just Vanilla with reskins and different voices. That's what I felt when playing it, though I am a Blitzkrieg follower I prefer my tanks to kill light armored personal cars in 1 shoot and not 4 shoots, I also experienced sligtly problems playing with infantry as PLA does a pretty bad job against Amerian infantry but when I get my tanks I dominate the Battlefield. It's like the AI never really deploys tanks but only light armored cars, even on hard difficulties. Also I took it pretty hard to my heart that Chinese speaks American, at least use French or anything but American, that would been more logical.