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

[JONJONAUG]

So let's talk about the best FPS franchise to come out of the last decade.

Shadow of Chernobyl

Shadow of Chernobyl is a very interesting, very atmospheric shooter which places you in the role of a Stalker in "the Zone", the irradiated area around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Due to being in a video game and based on the same book the Andrei Tarkovsky movie "Stalker" was based on, the Zone is quite a bit different than how you would find it in real life. It's inhabited by various other Stalkers like yourself, has a strong military presence (who spend most of their time either being bribed by Stalkers or shooting Stalkers for target practice when they aren't being bribed), and is filled to the brim with mutants that will make you shit out a brick house.

With stellar gameplay (this is probably the most "realistic" shooter I've ever played), amazing graphics, a completely open world, and the most atmosphere you'll ever see in a game STALKER: SoC is a definite must-play. It is also amazingly difficult, but there's very few portions of the game where the difficulty feels unfair. The game isn't all shooting either, much of your time will be spent exploring the zone for artifacts (items that give you unique powerups that you can also sell for large amounts of cash), getting better weapons and armor, and making your way around anomalies (small areas where the laws of physics do not apply, screwing up around these usually leads you you being lifted into a whirlwind then exploding). All this for only 20 dollars on Steam.

There's quite a few great mods for it, which we'll get to later.

Clear Sky

Now let's talk about Clear Sky. I'm going to come right out and say that I didn't enjoy this game as much as SoC. There are a lot of great improvements here, such as upgradable guns and armor, the enemy works a lot better in squads, the world is more active, and the faction wars are pretty cool. However, a lot of this came at the exclusion of what made the first game so great. While the game still feels like the Zone there aren't enough levels that carry the same creepy, foreboding atmosphere that the first game had. In addition, the game becomes ludicrously difficult towards the end, to the point where I nearly stopped playing altogether.

Overall though, it's worth picking up. It's currently 35 dollars on Steam.


Mods

Let's talk mods for SoC. Before trying the game modded, I would recommend at least one playthrough without any mods just to get a feel for the game how it's supposed to be played first.

Now there are a LOT of mods for this game. One of the most popular is called "Oblivion Lost", which is a merger of several mods. I'm not a big fan of Oblivion Lost, as it sucks a lot of the realism and difficulty out of the game, giving it the feel of a more standard shooter like Quake or Half-Life. The mod I'm really looking forward to is L.U.R.K., which started out as an idea for a mod compilation on 4chan and has since blossomed out into the biggest mod project yet for SoC. It promises a wealth of new features, such as improvements in lighting and graphics, stealth being a much more viable option, new and rebalanced weapons, and much much more. Go and check it out. Release date is set for September 20th.

 

[AshburnerX]

My only problem with the original STALKER was the difficult curve ramps up in the final areas to absurd levels. After having to run through a zone in less than 3 minutes to avoid another Anomaly Wave, my armor was reduced to nothing in the final zone. This meant that if I got hit ONCE, with ANYTHING, I would die, because I couldn't go back and get new armor. That's when the game stopped being fun and became tedious.

 

[Shegokigo]

Never played the series, though I heard good things. Should I add this to my que and which one should I start with?

 

[AshburnerX]

If you can get them cheap, then get them both. They aren't bad games, just ball-bustingly hard due to poor design decisions, like Armor damage. Grenades are basically worthless in the later levels and you basically need to ALWAYS get head shots in the last area or your fucked. Still, there ARE lots of real-world weapons to choose from and the inventory/weight system is an interesting addition for this kind of realistic FPS.

There is another game in the works too, so you could just wait for that if you wanted too.

 

[Shegokigo]

If you can get them cheap, then get them both. They aren't bad games, just ball-bustingly hard due to poor design decisions, like Armor damage. Grenades are basically worthless in the later levels and you basically need to ALWAYS get head shots in the last area or your fucked. Still, there ARE lots of real-world weapons to choose from and the inventory/weight system is an interesting addition for this kind of realistic FPS.

There is another game in the works too, so you could just wait for that if you wanted too.

Why would I wait for third part instead of playing the first two before that?

Also, head shots? I don't believe that will be a problem.

 

[AshburnerX]

If you can get them cheap, then get them both. They aren't bad games, just ball-bustingly hard due to poor design decisions, like Armor damage. Grenades are basically worthless in the later levels and you basically need to ALWAYS get head shots in the last area or your fucked. Still, there ARE lots of real-world weapons to choose from and the inventory/weight system is an interesting addition for this kind of realistic FPS.

There is another game in the works too, so you could just wait for that if you wanted too.

Why would I wait for third part instead of playing the first two before that?

Also, head shots? I don't believe that will be a problem. [/QUOTE]

Just watch out for the ones in Power Armor. I don't remember if Headshots matter to them.

 

[JONJONAUG]

My only problem with the original STALKER was the difficult curve ramps up in the final areas to absurd levels. After having to run through a zone in less than 3 minutes to avoid another Anomaly Wave, my armor was reduced to nothing in the final zone. This meant that if I got hit ONCE, with ANYTHING, I would die, because I couldn't go back and get new armor. That's when the game stopped being fun and became tedious.

There are exoskeletons (in the plural sense!) literally just lying around in the last few areas if you bother to look.

Now Clear Sky, that's where it gets ridiculous. Fighting against 20 heavily armed enemies all at once with any cover that hides you from half the enemies exposes you to the other half? Fucking BULLSHIT.

 

[AshburnerX]

My only problem with the original STALKER was the difficult curve ramps up in the final areas to absurd levels. After having to run through a zone in less than 3 minutes to avoid another Anomaly Wave, my armor was reduced to nothing in the final zone. This meant that if I got hit ONCE, with ANYTHING, I would die, because I couldn't go back and get new armor. That's when the game stopped being fun and became tedious.

There are exoskeletons (in the plural sense!) literally just lying around in the last few areas if you bother to look.

Now Clear Sky, that's where it gets ridiculous. Fighting against 20 heavily armed enemies all at once with any cover that hides you from half the enemies exposes you to the other half? Fucking BULLSHIT.[/QUOTE]

I never came across a single Exo-skeleton in the area I was able to get through. They may start popping up eventually, but they weren't around when I needed them.