THQ Delays - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Slips Again

[Kefkataran]

Eurogamer (http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=61456) has the scoop on a bevy of delays from THQ. Of special note is yet another delay to much-hyped PC title S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, now set to be released "October 2006 at the earliest".

Action adventure Saint's Row, originally expected in time for Christmas, is now slated for a release some time between April and June. Motorbike racer Moto GP 2006: Ultimate Racing Technology and WWII shooter The Outfit will be released in the first half of next year.
Also of note is their decision on how they will split development for the next gen:

THQ has a further ten next-generation titles in development, and has revealed that 80 per cent of its development resources will be split equally between PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 games. The remaining 20 per cent will be allocated to Nintendo Revolution titles.
About what I'd expect for the development split, although I wonder how PC fits into that. Only crappy ports? Anyways, it's a shame about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. After all the good I've heard about it, I just hope it makes it out eventually.

[bapenguin]

ya know...I totally forgot about STALKER...and now it looks like i'll forget about it even more as it's a year away.

[doubtingthomas]

Wow. Did info about STALKER come out way too quick, and it was always years off? Or is it in some developmental hell, like Starcraft Ghost?

[Taco]

HL2 and FEAR have set the bar real high. I haven't played Quake 4 yet.

[H.Bogard]

I haven't played Quake 4 yet.

Give it a shot, the SP is awesome.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. forever?

[Murtaug]

Well, I was going to say "A shame? I'd rather see something delayed then released to fast." but then I noticed it has been delayed until October 2006? Jesus, how bad is the game in its current state that it needs that much work? It seems like I have been hearing about it for ages now.

[KarmaGhost]

I didn't think Quake 4 had a good feel to it.

That's a shame about STALKER. It's the new DNF.

[Heretic Machine]

Bleh, fuck it. You can keep the game.

[Nerv]

I'm pretty sure we know more about stalker than we do about DNF :P
I hope for the sake of the publishers, developers and countless excited journalists that this doesn't turn out to be a load of crap.

Also, I really want to play it.

[dead]

Of special note is yet another delay to much-hyped PC title S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, now set to be released "October 2006 at the earliest".

why am i not surprised?

[ezra]

Damnit, this game looked really cool a year and a half ago.

[F3nyx]

I guess they're waiting another year because they don't want to saturate the market with acronymic titles.

[fitbabits]

F.U.C.K. :mad:

[Ernst_Jager]

This game was on my most wanted list about a year back. Delay after delay has really lowered my interest in it. If it does actually ever come out the odds are I will pick it up sometime if I find it cheap. I remember downloading and looking at the leak of it and thinking wow....of course after FEAR and HL2 I doubt it will have that effect again.

[Cupelix]

F.U.C.K. :mad:
I can not explain how loudly that made me laugh.

Its just as well, we've already got one game with lots of periods in the title on the shelves. I think there's a one title per 12 month span limit on that sort of thing.

[Draft]

So I guess we can now safely write off STALKER. Oh well, sure seemed like a cool concept.

[KarmaGhost]

STALKER looked so cool and high tech back in the day, I was incredibly excited. Now... not so much.

[Kefkataran]

Damnit, this game looked really cool a year and a half ago.

Sentiments: shared.

[Klade]

STALKER is supposed to have the greatest AI of any FPS ever made. Or at least thats how they kept billing it. I think they found out that really great AI is hard to make. At this point the game which a year ago looked real good is going to need a graphics overhall before it can be released.

I think STALKER was actually announced before HL2?

[mpsmith]

Even if it isn't graphically current the gameplay it promises will more than make up for it. If it is as they say it'll be a revolutionary game.

And you people saying you wont be excited for it when it comes out (presumably it will) are full of shit.

[Nighthold]

You know, every time I see this game it looks pretty and shiny, but the videos show the framerate running like absolute crap. I am not suprised it's getting delayed.

[baz]

I seem to one of the few people who doesn't really care when a game comes out. There are no end of good games that I haven't played yet, so it doesn't come out for another year and is a better game because of it then cool, go for it.

[megaman]

Anyone remember when THQ had delayed stalker last holiday season and said it was cuz of competition from other big name titles like hl2, doom 3 et al...

Anyways, this game always sounded cool compared to the other crappy on the rails FPSs(yea all of them) that dominate the shelves and makes every1 and their fathers 12 year old fanboys...
But this title Boiling Point too seems a bit like stalker..never heard many ppl talkin abt it tho...

[Taco]

Give it a shot, the SP is awesome.

Most definitely will. I've had my hands full with FEAR and Civ4.

[if76]

The way the PC market works, having a game with less than cutting age graphics might actually boost sales. I've definitely been too intimidated to buy a game because of its system requirements and it's pretty obvious that at this point, better graphics aren't gonna make the game much better. It used to be the difference between having 1 enemy onscreen at once or 10 but now it's the difference between clear textures and superclear 4xAA textures.

[01010]

Anyone remember when THQ had delayed stalker last holiday season and said it was cuz of competition from other big name titles like hl2, doom 3 et al...

Anyways, this game always sounded cool compared to the other crappy on the rails FPSs(yea all of them) that dominate the shelves and makes every1 and their fathers 12 year old fanboys...
But this title Boiling Point too seems a bit like stalker..never heard many ppl talkin abt it tho...


Boiling point was both a great game and a total letdown. It needed some massive work to finish it but what was there (when it worked) was awesome. I had to give up on it as my system just couldn't cope with it. Maybe when I upgrade.

[MrPoo]

I had been looking forward to this, even more than HL2, in some respects.

A friend of mine totally had given up on PC games. I managed to renew his interest in this title.

Long ago somehow he managed to download some kind of alpha of this game, or something. Back then he had a p4/2.6 GHz and a Radeon 9700 Pro.

I drove many, many, many miles to see it.

One word: WOW.

Scare factor was insane. Atmosphere was unparalleled. Weapons sounded.. real, not tinny. Holy crap, this looked to be an amazing title.

And now...

<sigh>

With this, and the continuous delays/lack of updates of OpFlash2, he's looking at consoles again.

Oh well... I'm not holding my breath, mind you, but the alpha was freaking amazing. Of course, by the time this actually is released, maybe DNF will have beaten it to EBGames/Gamestop :)

[Captain Awesome]

Stalker got a bad case of feature-creep, bummer.

[emjoi]

The game got as far as getting fake boxes put in the "Coming Soon" section of the local EB. Oh well.
Better a good late game than a crappy buggy disaster now.

[Qoz]

"Stalker got a bad case of feature-creep, bummer."

I don't think so. It didn't creep up on them - they made plans from the beginning to have all these great features. They under-estimated how long it takes to implement.

The worst thing a game can have now-a-days is a dull moment or bugs
More features could easily mean bad gameplay and more bugs (BW2??).

Making a game is like cooking or painting - you need to keep it simple to get good results. When you are more experinced you can make more advanced food or pictures.
They went out and used all the spices available and the game is probably one smelly pot of goo right now.
All (good) game developers introduce new features after doing some hard thinking - like how will this fit in the context, is it hard to do, will bugs arrive, is it fun. They just threw alot of cool features on the table and they had to be the prodigy-kids of future gamedevelopment to make a decent game from it. The difficulty on this project is very high and any decent game-developer would have spotted that. They are in-experienced russians!

I think they made all these bold claims to get a decent publisher (like the crap game Devastation). I have never seen a really good game come from Russia. Its always a very nice tech display, but the games never seem to get published. And if they do, they are in a serious need of polish-work.

I guess what they really need is some decent game-designer to go along with the brilliant (and cheap) coders.
And a decent producer to keep an eye on the game-developer.
And a decent publisher to keep an eye on the producer.
And less vodka and more "get the fucking game finished".

[slink-jadranko]

I'm saddened to see another delay, but there were things from the videos I've seen that made me wonder if it needed longer. So I guess I'm glad they're getting the chance to spend more time on it. I kepe forgetting about it as well, but, I'll check it out when it does eventually come out. It looked cool.

[Bumbuliuz]

I loved F.E.A.R :) Thought Q4 was ok, but to evolution from older games :( But ID havent been know for doing many things outside the box. I feel that the game is still better because raven made it than if ID would have. Im still dissapointed with Doom3. I loved the concept of Stalker when I saw it first. I am now getting the feeling that the title is heading into Duke Nukem Forever country! And that´s not a good thing :(

[screwtape]

I have never seen a really good game come from Russia.
Operation: Flashpoint. Made by a bunch of Russkies at Bohemia Interactive Studio. They proved it's possible to make a huge, wide-open game with great AI and well-polished gameplay.

I'm saddened that Stalker has been delayed so much. I've been keeping my eye on this game for years.

[Paranoia]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R is just an overhype vaporware.

[Kefkataran]

And you people saying you wont be excited for it when it comes out (presumably it will) are full of shit.

I'll still potentially be excited, assuming it still looks as impressive, but holy crap this is a lot of delays.

[Schnoogs]

This is too bad....I've been watching this game for years now.

To me the main emphasis in the game was the AI so I'm not too concerned with it becoming tecnically obsolete in the next year. Heck I still play the original Unreal and Half-Life and I still get goosebumps.

[Kefkataran]

Heck I still play the original Unreal and Half-Life and I still get goosebumps.

Good point. Although this won't matter much to all the graphix fiends out there.

[F3nyx]

If they spent a teensy bit of the time between now and next October adding some new shader effects, this game would probably be able to complete graphically with anything else out there.

I found an interview from last month with one of the developers, where he describes the current state of STALKER:
http://www.stalker-game.com/index.php?t=news&id=178&s=news&page=0

[Kefkataran]

Okay, that interview gets me hyped up again. Damn. :p

[H.Bogard]

I think STALKER was actually announced before HL2?

It started in 2001

[Bumbuliuz]

The guys that made Flashpoint af Czech not Russian. Big diffrence ;) I so hope this game doesnt end out bad. It looked so good at E3 04

[screwtape]

The guys that made Flashpoint af Czech not Russian. Big diffrence ;) I so hope this game doesnt end out bad. It looked so good at E3 04
Ah, thanks for the correction.

If these guys can pull off even half the stuff they've promised, it's going to be an incredible game. At least it's not being rushed out the door, right? A few of the best games I've played were delayed and revamped multiple times - Half Life 1 and Resident Evil 4 come to mind.

I'm not sure why, but I love seeing games from developers outside America, Japan or the UK.

[mpsmith]

Yes, and if it's as the developers claim, this game should have tons of replay value.

[Qoz]

My experience tell me, that great (innovative) games are announced after years of silence with max. 1 year of dev. time left (Hl1, HL2, F.E.A.R., Civ4, Prey).

Games that announce plenty innovative features, when the game-development has just started (or only has tech) always fail, come out heavily feature-cut and/or is delayed heavily due to re-doing the game again. Just like Daikatana, Fable, DukeNukem 4ever, Breed, Devastation, Republic: The Revolution.

Most of these blunders are due to ego-developers like George Broussard, Peter M. and Romero. These are from the west and they already have plenty money.

Now we have poor russian unknown developers trying to get attention.
Combine this with some brilliant coder making a great tech-demo with screenshots for the web and horrid management and you have a train wreck happening.

[Dag-Sabot]

:D Id say its safe to assume that "s.t.a.l.k.e.r" is now "v.a.p.o.u.r. w.a.r.e"