There is a Stalker thread, but it's coming up on being 4 years since the last post, so I might as well make a thread that goes in depth of both of the games, and describes the modding scene for newer players as well.
NOTE: You can get SoC/CoP for $8.74 on Steam until November 1st on the Halloween sale.
Now, let me do a quick synopsis of the games. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. stands for Scavenger, Trespasser, Adventurer, Loner, Killer, Explorer, Robber. There are three games so far in the STALKER Trilogy. Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, and Call of the Pripyat. Shadow of Chernobyl is, by far, the best of the three. It has the most active modding community, the best mods by far on that note, and is the best Vanilla arguably with the best story without a doubt. Clear Sky is ass, don't even bother. There are some redeeming factors to it, but it honestly isn't worth the bandwith. Call of the Pripyat is pretty god damn good as well, some like it over SoC for legitimate reasons. Very stylistic.
I'll get into the meat and potatoes of this all in a moment, but I want to touch on this briefly. Stalker is a very hard game, with very little direction. In fact, the game can be so hard (especially with some mods which I will speak of later) that it is a major turning point for many new players for it to just outright quit. It is nothing you just pick up. That in addition to very little structure to it, makes it for a very overwhelming experience. The Zone is large, and it's basically all for yourself. I know friends whom have ~200 hours on SoC and they have done maybe five missions overall. I also know friends whom are doing every mission they can find with dozens of hours on it. There is a lot to do, or a lot not to do. The atmosphere and the world is in such detail, despite some of the "old" graphics, that any form of organized plot is really unnecessary if you don't want to do it.
I'll reiterate.
STALKER is a game about dying. STALKER is a game about shitting your pants because you are so scared because you are stuck outside in the middle of the night. If you are going to get pissed off because you are dying a lot and are forgetting to quicksave, or get scared easily, and don't like a challenge then this is not the game for you.
What is the point of STALKER you ask? Survive.
Now, let's get to the fun part.
The first installment to this epic trilogy. I won't spoil anything, but I will say this -- if you ever wanted an atmospheric and story-rich game with difficult gameplay this is the game for you. I recommend, like all games, playing this Vanilla your first time through. It is very fun as such. There are some shader mods and whatnot that you can get if you so wish if you really are going to nitpick over the graphics, but considering how many of you love Brood War or play SC2 on Low (like myself) -- I doubt graphics are of the top priority.
The main question about SoC is mods. There are a couple of main mods for the game. Some of the most notable would be LURK, AMK, and Complete 2009. So let me just tackle all of these one by one.
- Complete 2009 is fucking trash. Don't even bother. I know there's going to be one person who comes in here and tries to defend it, so I'll bust out all the facts about it preemptively. It increases accuracy of all guns by roughly 50% making all but the starting pistol a sniper rifle in essence, introduces fast travel, increases your health while reducing enemy health on all difficulties, increases carrying capacity, and even though it totes around as a "graphical mod that does nothing to gameplay", it makes the game somehow look WORSE than before. Just get some simple shader mods with some .config changes that you can find on a simple google search if you want the game to look better. Trust me, this mod is horrible and for most people it even makes the game literally unplayable with such dreadfully long load times.
- AMK is the most hardcore thing you will ever play in your god damn life. I have no other way to put it. There is some confusion, well, a lot of confusion when it comes to downloading it however. If you have the Steam version of SoC, you have version 1.0005. The AMK you get off the ol' Russians who made it themselves only works on 1.0004, and you would have to go through a crap ton of compatibility patches and all that fancy crap. Luckily, I come to save the day.
Get both of these, simply drag and drop into your game folder and AMK will work. Otherwise, if you are acquiring the game via various means or want to downpatch your game by yourself, I recommend using this installer:
Gives a little more variety to it, but don't worry, the filefronts I gave work just fine. They just use the standard settings. If you want to go through the loops for the extra customization and you got 1.0005, go ahead and use the .ru link above and use all the compability patches and whatnot. It's just a hassle I personally don't want to go through. If you use the above installer with no compatibility patches on 1.0005, the game will crash every time you talk to an NPC or try to finish a conversation with one if it doesnt the first time.
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Now, what does this mod do? Well, god damn where to start. The most notable feature is blowouts. Blowouts are recurring instances of "radiation storms." You need to get inside during one, and depending on the structure you are in depends on how safe you are. Fellow STALKERS will also seek shelter during these Blowouts. Another interesting feature, while we are talking about other STALKERS is how they work. STALKER NPC's will loot dead bodies, scavenge, buy and trade from vendors and all that -- even when you are not playing or around. Monsters hit harder, anomaly's are invisible and will fuck your shit up. After blowouts? Don't go outside STALKER, anomaly's are rising up everywhere. Oh yeah, pro tip, press "6" to take out a bolt. If you throw it, it will detect Anomaly's if you hit one.
This game is definitely recommended for players who want a challenge. I played my first time ever on STALKER with this mod, and I died dozens of times and I enjoyed every second of it. Also, keep in mind AMK 2.0 is coming out relatively soon (and by that, probably a few months?) and I'll make an edit to this post for that when it does.
- I know jack shit about LURK because, well, I've never gotten to using it. Here's a link to their website, though. I've read over it before, nothing really that made me want to try it out but maybe someone will like it.
The third installment to the trilogy. I love this game, not as much as the first but I know there are people who disagree with me which is perfectly fine. It takes a lot of aspects from the first one, and mods for that matter, and improves on them. Such as, anomaly's make a glorious return and are even explained, in detail during the game. A whole new world, with great new mechanics. There's a recently released "Complete 2011" for it. Much like 2009, it's complete shit and changes the same shit. Just play it Vanilla with some Shaders and whatnot if you want. There is no huge modding community that I know of, mainly because I play SoC the most, but most of what I got on it is just small-scale mods and whatnot that I scavenged from the internet. Just play vanilla the first time, as always and let your curiosity take over later.
On October 28 2011 12:00 Torte de Lini wrote: What makes the 2011 more shit than 2009 or equal? Do they change things or just update the graphics?
I'm thinking of getting this game if it's scary a la Amnesia, is it worth it? Can the game be played without mods?
I described how they changed the game in the post.
2011 makes similar changes as 2009.
And no, it is by no means an Amnesia game. It is not a pure horror game. The game is more creepy, per se, than scary. It is just the threat of always being fucked over by something, and that eerie silence that constant is around you when you are just wandering around that can make it terrifying. Especially at night.
I didn't go into detail of the 2011 changes because it's basically does the same shit that 2009 did, but for CoP.
This vitriol for the COMPLETE mods is completely unjustified. The graphics are vastly improved, and not everyone wants extreme hardcore survivalism. You knew "one guy would come to defend it" because its the most popular overhaul and that bothers you. A quick look at external ratings and feedback, the changelists and the huge amount of work put in by artistpavel should convince anyone to afford it more of a chance. Certainly anyone from an extensive FPS background will likely find complete 2009 a bit easy even on veteran (as I did) but I still had a fantastic time playing it, and anyone without that background (the weapon accuracy is still decidedly less than most modern titles) will likely be turned away playing either vanilla SoC (the graphics are beyond dated at this point) or the extreme difficulty of AMK. Part of the Beauty of the STALKER universe is the broad ranges of experiences people have on their own adventures and at their own pace.
I have no intention of entering into a futile argument over such matters, I simply urge people to decide for themselves which Mod/s if any suit their style.
I got call of pripyat with my HD 6850 expecting it to be terrible but it was actually awesome. Really enjoyed it, any good mods someone could recommend? I don't really want to change the gameplay I just want more of it.
On October 28 2011 12:36 Noradrenaline wrote: This vitriol for the COMPLETE mods is completely unjustified. The graphics are vastly improved, and not everyone wants extreme hardcore survivalism. You knew "one guy would come to defend it" because its the most popular overhaul and that bothers you. A quick look at external ratings and feedback, the changelists and the huge amount of work put in by artistpavel should convince anyone to afford it more of a chance. Certainly anyone from an extensive FPS background will likely find complete 2009 a bit easy even on veteran (as I did) but I still had a fantastic time playing it, and anyone without that background (the weapon accuracy is still decidedly less than most modern titles) will likely be turned away playing either vanilla SoC (the graphics are beyond dated at this point) or the extreme difficulty of AMK. Part of the Beauty of the STALKER universe is the broad ranges of experiences people have on their own adventures and at their own pace.
I have no intention of entering into a futile argument over such matters, I simply urge people to decide for themselves which Mod/s if any suit their style.
I hate to be confrontational (I secretly adore it), but how is it unjustified out of curiosity?
Everything I said about it was fact in terms of what it changed. When a game is created with every intention of being extremely difficult, and that's what the entire games story, atmosphere, and gameplay is based around from the bottom up; by taking measures to reduce the difficulty by the level that COMPLETE does, you are inherently making the game worse. I had literally no fun playing Complete because it was so easy. Playing Complete your first time is using a crutch that will make you unable to play SoC OR CoP normally or with other mods because you will be so used to the, ahem, "fixed" version.
I urge people to decide for themselves as well. However, I will do everything in my power to make sure they decide the correct decision. If you want an easy game, get another game. There are literally thousands more out there. I'll even recommend some, that are by no means bad and I enjoy very much. However, this is not a game that should be patched to be "easier" for the sacrifice of looking -slightly- better when you can do just as well a job with some very minor shader mods and config editing.
Perhaps this is the person in me who played AMK my first time talking, but I literally am flabbergasted that anyone can say anything good about Complete when it casualizes it to the level that it does.
I mean this with the best intents, I know I'm coming off as a confrontational douchebag but that's just how I talk when defending a game I have this much time invested in
I'll leave this discussion on that note, however. No point in us getting in a flame war this early on in the thread. Both of us got our opinions out, so let's leave it as such.
On October 28 2011 12:52 Coriolis wrote: I got call of pripyat with my HD 6850 expecting it to be terrible but it was actually awesome. Really enjoyed it, any good mods someone could recommend? I don't really want to change the gameplay I just want more of it.
Go look around on Moddb, in my opinion. They have some of the most helpful people in terms of finding mods for use, in my opinion.
I'll also be editing a lot more content tomorrow when I'm less tired. Got some more shit planned I want to throw in there.
Problem is, there aren't that many good mods for the Stalker games. Most of them just care about custom textures (like skinning in CS) and 'HD THIS OMG 20248x200101 RES' crap. No one cares if our cans of drink now have the pepsi logo. It's annoying as crap and is an immersion breaker, one of the reasons I hate the 'complete pack' etc etc. LURKER is the same thing, a huge pack of textures with minimal gameplay changes.
The other graphical mods are just weather changes. Impressive to look at 1/10th of the day, but graphical mods do not increase re-playability.
On the other hand, some of them add tons of custom weapons, which really also feel out of place (MOSIN SNIPER RIFLE < REALLY?, P90 etc etc). This is post-apocalyptic russia, not counter-strike USA. But then again, most of those crappy mods are from the US, kids porting their CS models to STALKER.
As for increasing accuracy, any increase also makes the AI more accurate, vanilla is the easiest of all the game modes, except for the fact the spread is much bigger so at long range with say, an AK-74 (mini), you won't hit crap. Still, crouching and aiming for the head, even with a pistol, is an instant kill compared to 6-10 to the body. Skill is a big part of STALKER. You literally can not die if you sit behind cover, loot all bodies for unlimited ammo, medpacks and bandages, there is literally no excuse to dying in this game if you are any FPS veteran of any level.
On to the last part, the OP really makes me cringe. 200 hrs in stalker and doing 5 quests? A huge problem with this game was it was made linear. This means you cannot move to the next 'fenced' area until you follow the main quest (with only 1-2 exceptions). If you move ahead, you can do the sidequests there, but you can't move to the final game zones until you follow the quest.
The AI is heavily scripted, wild dogs/boards/mutants roam within locked areas, only sometimes crossing roads or running in to NPC villages, they do not migrate or do anything new. Play it once, see the same thing twice. The game originally promised the entire zone would be free including the AI, but this is not the case, I have to repeat how linear it is. Not as linear as COD, it's on a whole other level, but it's still god damn linear.
CoP alleviates this by adding squads that travel around the larger maps, but there's very little purpose to this because the neutrality of your character is basically shoot all bandits or shoot everyone. You can go the whole game only killing quest enemies. Even worse you ARE the military, so you can't fight them either. Only mutants. Gah. Still, a huge improvement in many areas. I'd stil give this a 7.5/10 in hindsight. SoC a 8.0/10 (only due to the time difference as SoC was first and less developed).
Okay so half your post erronously detracts from the quality of the mod community and the second half complains that missing features from vanilla that are actually made available by mods.
Freeplay mods that unlock scripted AI movement simply breaks the game. And there's still nothing to do in the zone even if they were to move around. Want to spawn 20 militants in a base? Done. Now what? What about new areas? No mods have done it properly. S.M.R.T.E.R. Pripyat claims to have added a lot of old levels, but with one person working on it and no new release for over 2 years, I seriously doubt this will ever be released.
Dead city is a mod that boasts new levels, but like most Russian releases it's broken. No download links that work well, all Russian mirrors, half dead.
Narodnaya Soljanka, they added a bunch of new levels, almost all the old ones. Problem, you'll probably never see them all. There are known areas in certain levels that I've heard perma crash, and quests without directions so you need to translate Russian guides to find hidden things. Almost as bad as Priboi story..sigh. Not to mention, the mod is so large it instantly crashes a lot due to RAM barriers. I've only gotten in to this mod once, that was juggling 20 different updates ranging from 1-1000MB each and 3-4 translation zips, and only 50% of it was translated. And of course, they fucked it up with a story line. In the beginning, you get teleported to a 'cave, which is huge, and 2/3 levels high so the map is as confusing as hell - you get a minigun and have to deal with 50 burers, 50 giant things, 50 snorks etc. It's stupid as hell, I got through it eventually, but god damn. I am absolutely sick of all the crappy ideas the Russians have corrupted it with. Eventually I reached a mission on the first custom map. I needed an RPG or something. Then I needed to go talk to a commander. The quest broke at this point, leaving me stranded. Restarted from previous level, got up to the bar. Another fucked up thing. There were 2 controllers, which are over-powered. Even 5 direct grenade hits can't take down ONE, and you can't be in their line of sight at ANY range, forcing me to hide behind trees, of which I'm fucked once they walk up to me and I become a pawn between two queens, essentially. Ok, this was many months ago, it's probably changed about 20% since then, but I doubt the crappy over-powered mutants were ever changed. I would never go back. Game over man.
Fight them or side with them or follow them around until you're bored of it. Stalker games are imagination required.
System: Intel Pentium IV 2.0 GHz or equivalent RAM: 512 MB Video Memory: 128 MB Hard Drive Space: 10000 MB Other: nVIDIA® GeForce™ 5700 / ATI Radeon® 9600 An imagination..
Call Of Pripyat is one of the few (I breezed through DeusEx HR) games of it's genre I've finished in the last 10 years. Most I don't make it past 10 minutes.
On October 28 2011 12:00 Torte de Lini wrote: What makes the 2011 more shit than 2009 or equal? Do they change things or just update the graphics?
I'm thinking of getting this game if it's scary a la Amnesia, is it worth it? Can the game be played without mods?
I was actually more scared by STALKER than Amnesia at some points, but it's only when you go underground in the abandoned labs or when you're faced against those damn controllers, these guys mean business and I was really shook up the first time I saw one.
Here's one of them in video, don't watch it if you don't want to spoil the first encounter with them (it's part of the scare really) + Show Spoiler +
I bloody love the series but unfortunately Call of Pripyat stutters like hell on my machine for no reason, even on lower settings =( So I never finished it.
On October 28 2011 12:00 Torte de Lini wrote: What makes the 2011 more shit than 2009 or equal? Do they change things or just update the graphics?
I'm thinking of getting this game if it's scary a la Amnesia, is it worth it? Can the game be played without mods?
I was actually more scared by STALKER than Amnesia at some points, but it's only when you go underground in the abandoned labs or when you're faced against those damn controllers, these guys mean business and I was really shook up the first time I saw one.
Here's one of them in video, don't watch it if you don't want to spoil the first encounter with them (it's part of the scare really) + Show Spoiler +
Stalker, especially the first one, is in my top 5 games ever.
Also, whoever wants to play Stalker: shadow of chernobyl and get the full experience, download the Oblivion Lost mod. It introduces true night-time, new monsters, a tons of new weapons, improved ballistics and much much more. I have finished the mod like 3 times so far xD
Finally, there is a MEGA-MOD coming out: Lost Alpha
Stalker has been one of my favorite series of games ever. I've spent 42 hours playing call of pripyat, alone. I always recommend the series every time it goes on sale..Though I imagine it will probably be cheaper at Christmas. I think last Christmas the stalker pack was only $5 or something like that.
EPT![[image loading]](http://himynameiscalum.com/resources/stalker-shadow-of-chernobyl.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://himynameiscalum.com/resources/stalker-call-of-pripyat.jpg)
2011 makes similar changes as 2009.
