I happened to be browsing my RSS feeds between classes when I saw a headlines which seemed almost too good to be true:
O.L.D.E.R.: Alpha STALKER released for free.
I'm not going to bother summarizing the RPS article, you can read it yourself. For whatever reason, GSC (the guys behind STALKER for those of you who didn't know) decided to release the alpha of STALKER.
You can either download it straight off of
GSC's website , although due to limits they put on the number of files you can download at once and the lack of an incredibly useful readme, I'd recommend sticking with the torrent provided in the article.
The series is notoriously unstable, and the alpha is definitely no exception. Don't download this if you want an amazing completely finished and polished game. Don't even expect something that is very playable. You'll be disappointed.
I guess I'll start off by telling a few of the short adventures I had. (Long wall of text, if you don't care skip to the bottom of the post for more game information)
I started the game by running run_alife_s.bat. I was immediatley greeted by a big blank white screen. I was convinced that the game had already crashed, but no, it was quickly followed by a loading screen. After loading, I suddenly appeared on a road. I'm not sure what was behind me because I didn't live long enough to check it out. The road stretched far off into the distance in front of me, with what looked like several promising buildings to explore, were it not for the roaming herds of mutant dogs and pigs. Fortunately there was a group of stalkers in front of me. I approached them hoping I could follow them to wherever they were walking for safety - they could help fight off anything I met on the way. Unfortunately, they began shooting at me. I killed one of them, hid behind a tree, and began equipping the assault rifle he dropped. I was instantly murdered by a mob of 10 or 12 stalkers all armed with rifles. :(
In this game, death carries a harsh penalty: a lovely crash to the desktop. So don't die.
My second journey was somewhat more successful. I spawned in what I later assumed was a military outpost - from where I was it looked like a bunch of concrete. I walked into the building and everyone started shooting me. This time I was prepared. I knew everyone in the game had a vendetta against me and trying to fight back was a lost cause. Instead I ran off, hoping to explore some more before I was shot. I walked over to a boat sitting in the middle of a field. Unfortunately I couldn't find a way onto it while under light fire. I tried to find a quick escape route. Then I noticed a huge oil pipeline. It divided a field in half. One side was a large fenced of military compound which I can only assume is filled with tons of angry clones waiting to yell at me in Russian and kill me. On the other side was a huge herd of mutants. The pipeline had twisted fencing running parallel and occasionally crossing over it. I could use this as a sort of highway, running down it in relative safety with the fence protecting me from the mutant horde. As I approached it I noticed a strange beeping - which I soon recognized as a the anomaly detector. Due to a glitch in the shaders, I couldn't actually see the anomaly. All I could do was slowly rotate in circles while advancing and backtracking until the beeping slowed. All the while this idiot soldier is taking the occasional shot at me with his stuffty rifle from 500m away (the game features a handy little distance indicator). Of course they aren't landing anywhere near me, but it doesn't ease the tension. I can see the mutants running around in the distance too. I escape and make it onto the oil pipeline. After following it for a full minute and a half, my game crashes, with the end still not in sight.
[UPDATE: I just got to the end of the pipeline. There's what looks like a barracks full of more army goons waiting to kill me.]
[UPDATE2: I poked around the GSC forums and found out some people managed to spawn at the popper start of the game where they aren't surrounded by mobs of people itching to murder them with only a pistol and 20 bullets. I'm not sure how to do this.]
It's really a lot of fun, I hope to properly explore it later this week. I tried taking a screenshot of the pipeline with print screen but it didn't work so I'll have to go back to it and use fraps or something.
Saving DOES work, it was really my fault for not saving. I only lost a few minutes of progress.
Anyway, go download it and have some fun. All dialogue is in Russian so don't expect to do a lot of talking unless you can read it. And apparently the community is looking into making patches for it, so expect an unofficial patch that helps out with the crashes and bugs in the distant and unforeseeable future.
