Source and Unreal engine look nowhere near as good as the x-ray engine does. The x-ray engine is really only surpassed by the CryEngine.
I'll take performance and modability (moddability, modifiability?) over looks any day of the week. I don't think we're going to see Garry's Mod using a Crytek engine or the X-Ray engine, and the mod tournaments for UT2k3 and UT2k4 showed how good
those engines were at doing different things. Someone made a top-down alien shooter using the 2k4 engine... can't remember what it was called, but damn if it wasn't fun.
I'm most of the way through Stalker at maximum difficulty and it's still too easy. You can't exactly Rambo large groups of enemies, but the AI is so freaking pathetic that you can just pile the corpses (which will fall through the floor and be beyond looting range, which can break some jobs and force a quickload) in a doorway. I did the military base in Cordon that way. Dropped down through the attic, grabbed the intel, and just crouched and gunned them down as they all ran into the doorway one at a time. Headshot, dead, headshot, dead, headshot, dead... meh.
The labs have been
hugely disappointing. Snorks are more annoying than dangerous (though I like their design), and Psuedogiants have a way of announcing their presence before you're ever in danger of running into one. Feeding them rockets is very easy. The zombies are just like normal humans, except even stupider... if you can't kill them in one or two shots to the head, your aim is terrible.
Maybe the X-Ray engine isn't complete suck, but unless someone wants to optimize it so it doesn't run like shit (as compared to a Crytek engine, Unreal engine, or Source) and make some really good out of it... I'll just regard Stalker as a too-ambitious Deus Ex wannabe.
Also, KOTOR is seconded. Every gamer must meet HK-44.
