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

Why after many years this game is still so good?
How could such solid game even made?
Despite dark atmosphere it still manages to have coziness.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Thread

Other urls found in this thread:

moddb.com/mods/call-of-chernobyl
nexusmods.com/stalkercallofchernobyl/mods/1/?
stalker.wikia.com/wiki/"bread"
mega.nz/#F!Z7RjwaBS!PYNDw9ugMSojbpUDgIACHQ
youtube.com/watch?v=Xd1LstoEm8U
youtube.com/watch?v=1QH4zNmu2yI&
youtube.com/watch?v=GB7bi12VStw
moddb.com/mods/zone-of-alienation-mod
twitter.com/AnonBabble

>Why after many years this game is still so good?
Good games don't age.
>How could such solid game even made?
Same way sooo many old classics were born: small team, no big AAA console-publisher breathing down their neck, no strict system limitations caused by console platforms, and desire & love to make something beautiful, immersive and impressive.
The players obviously felt this love through the game, even if it wasn't quite as finished as many would've liked, but it all did help spawn one of THE most hottest modding communities this side of the DooM.

Now, if there's still some rookies who've not experienced the Zone's wonders, but would like to give STALKER a try, Consult this Starting Guide,
then see the /vg/'s huge Stalker General for more tips and links: Play in the release order. Start with no mods - only latest patch, OR get the full "Starter Pack" first; these contain bug-fixers and light visual mods that can help performance as well.
Leave big overhauls for later playthrougs. Avoid the "Complete" -mods. Always play on MASTER difficulty for best realism and atmosphere, and disable crosshair.

Don't give up in the beginning! The starting gear sucks ass and first area can be a bit boring.

>STALKER 2 literally never
just fucking kill me

I know that feel bro.
Such an amazing setting and no sequel.
WTF?
Metro doesn't feel right to me

How do i make the Call of Chernobyl scopes work with my 2560x1080p display?

Don't know.
I only played vanilla

STALKER 2 was in development for years, and was over 50% done, when Sergei pulled the plug in late 2012, kicked everyone else out, and kept the IP all by himself.

what an asshole.
Why did he do that?
What will happen with ip?

>Why did he do that?
Nobody knows.
There's rumors about some corrupted slavic politicians starting to circle around the big sum of money the series had created, and that he'd played the tragic hero by destroying the studio before they got their hands on it, but even that sounds a bit fishy. Even more so as he spent years gathering up a new team, who just recently released the new Cossacks game. Sergei himself has now left the nu-GSC as well, but his brother works as the CEO now.

Sergei is a complete faggot. He pulled the plug out of no where for no apparent reason.

He may be a scizho who knows

I imagine a lot of ukranians turned schizo after Donbass war and crisis striked down

I think it's mostly the lighting and sound design.
I started a new game recently and went through x18 today for probably the fifth or sixth time and I was still thoroughly spooked.

Around the time it happened people were speculating that he got shut down by the Ukrainian government, apparently something along the lines of bringing attention to the Chernobyl tragedy, which Ukraine isn't exactly proud of.

I think I fucked up by not giving this game a real chance. I sort of felt like exploration wasn't really rewarding at the time. I'm gonna reinstall and give it another shot.

I put an unreasonable amount of time into all three games and mods for them and I can attest that it's good, even if it's difficult to articulate why.

I suppose you have to be into shooters, light inventory management, general atmosphere of post-soviet misery and decay and some light sci-fi with a bit of horror.

I play it with the winter mod and reminisce my army service time. One of the comfiest games I play.

Depends on which game/with what mods your playing with. Exploration in vanilla CoP is extremely useful, as stash contents are static, (they don't spontaneously appear once you get the location).

You can get one of the best sniper rifles and get 2/3rds to the achievement that lets you survive emissions in the open within 20 minutes of starting the game.

A shame that the rest of CoP's world is static too and lacks the atmosphere of its predecessors because of it.

Especially since it could've been so easily fixed. The CoP zones in Call of Chernobyl are fucking incredible simply because they were fleshed out with factions, quests, and mutants

bump

Is it bad if people in the camp at the beginning of SoC get murdered? I literally walked out of the basement and the military was slaughtering everyone in the camp.

That's stalker, baby

It isn't.
You're delusional.
Need consider suicide.

Nah. You get two quests from Wolf and I one more from the guy you rescue in the first quest from Wolf who then moves there but other than that you only need the bunker.

>Using bandages from dead enemies make the game crash
Is this a bug or an hard mode feature?

Any of y'all Cheekybreekys playing Call of Chernobyl?

Its fucking amazing.
Its basically SoC,CS and CoP combined into 1 game using the CoP engine , but without the main story and it also included map parts that where not in the original parts such as limansk , dead city and a few others.
It has "infinite" missions (assassinate,fetch,collect and defend nothing too special) and a few "big missions" (turn off brain scorcher , investigate all labs)

Its HUGE , and has lots of faction wars going on with monolith in the north , military in the south , CS in the swamp , Bandits from Dark valley.

And you can put on extra mods (i have extra weapons and graphics).

>middle of the map.

I've been meaning to for a while but assembling this shit and finding links to it is a drag, so I keep endlessly postponing it. Spoonfeed me the links pls

This. There were some issues with the government so he shut down shop for a bit.

But I want to play the main story too :(

Honestly I don't even care about them tying it together or making it make sense with the obvious continuity errors, I just want to be able to plonk down and play all 3 games at once

slavs with an unlimited supply of vodka

negro please shit is easy.
moddb.com/mods/call-of-chernobyl

Bam literally top hit of google.
What you want another one nigga?
BOOM 4th hit on google

nexusmods.com/stalkercallofchernobyl/mods/1/?

Also when adding addons , do watch yourself for the Mod version (1.4) because they don't work with dated one's.

Its as good as you can get , with all 3 games at once.
And it has parts from the main story , just not as big.
See this as STALKER : Sandbox mode , where you can go as you want and explore for days.

Thanks senpai. Will give it a spin.

>solid game
>requires community patches to run
>requires mods to not be a piece of shit

What kind of additional mods can you throw on it? Ones like AMK? I can't play Stalker anymore without AMK and no HUD.

Perhaps the same could be said of any popular game, Todd

WHY AFTER MANY YEARS THIS GAME STILL HAS NO SEQUEL?

BECAUSE THERE IS NO GOD THAT'S WHY

THERE IS FUCKING NOTHING BUT SHIT AND MISERY IN THIS STUPID WORLD AND YOU CAN BLAME ANGLOS AND KIKES FOR IT

Give Pepsi first.

Probably a bug.
I had bread in my inventory and I couldn't use it. The description just said "bread", literally in quotes and lowercase. I don't know how that happened, but it was fun.

We just can't have nice things, user. Once you have accepted it, your standards will be lowered and you'll feel less disappointment. I haven't played video games since 2011, to be completely frank.

It was too good for this world, that's why.

stalker.wikia.com/wiki/"bread"

cheeky

Why can't people from old studio form a new studio and make a spiritual successor to Stalker in anything but name.

Didn't they try it with Metro and Survarium?

Can anyone spoonfeed me a proper link to the AMK mod?

Want to play stalker again

mega.nz/#F!Z7RjwaBS!PYNDw9ugMSojbpUDgIACHQ

Mate, all ex-stalker devs do is make stalker knockoffs, but only metro has done well

I need a proper gameplay showing what the game is about.

I'm trying to beat the first stalker game because I never finished any of these games (metro included) but I swear this shit's exactly like playing Blighttown from dark souls. Radiation, suit slowly getting wrecked, equip load, ghosts, instagram filters and suit whining at you. Don't get me wrong I like Blighttown, but at least dark souls wasn't scary ON TOP OF ALL THAT.

I'm not even playing on hard mode.

youtube.com/watch?v=Xd1LstoEm8U

youtube.com/watch?v=1QH4zNmu2yI&

Here you go senpai

youtube.com/watch?v=GB7bi12VStw

It's a very shitty game but there is nothing better or even like it. Like windows.

>I'm not even playing on hard mode.
Shit nigga what are you doing? The games are not worth playing on anything other than Master difficulty. They are broken messes on everything else.

Thanks for reminding me to seed ZoA

I'm not trying to shitpost, Stalker is one of my favorite games, but I'm not a blind fanatic who thinks that it's good on a technical level. A-life is completely cut, leaving fixed spawn monsters in their little "gulags" like we like to call them in the slav modding community, because they can't leave those, even when chasing you. Story is cut to hell and back, lots of important characters like the Doctor missing because reasons. Weapon handling is shit. Even while completely still, crouched and scoped you will only hit in a huge ass pre-programmed circle randomly. Bullet disappear sometimes, etc. Gun models and animations are terrible. CoP fixed the weapons at least but it lacks in atmosphere and spookiness.
But still, there is literally nothing like it and probably never will be.

Post the magnet please user. ZoA was the most fun I have had with Stalker even with the ctds every other minute.

>tfw the perfect game will never ever exist because video games are bound to be clunky pieces of unresponsible shit
>still can't leave all this crap behind and take up a better hobby

because the zone is better than many AAA characters

moddb.com/mods/zone-of-alienation-mod
close enough

i found the games' world lacking charm and imagination desu, almost felt like a generic shooter if it weren't for the monsters, Fallout and Metro universes are far more charming and lovable.
i also hated how spongey the enemies are even on the master difficulty.

It makes me very sad they did not complete this mod.

im thinking of trying STALKER games again fellas, but i didnt really enjoy shadow of chernobyl. i could try clear skies or call of pripyat; which is better?

What was your problem with SoC? It's the best game of the series.

CS has more shootan
CoP has more exploran
Take your pick.

zone is not about 'charm and love'
but the games aren't for everyone
something like fallout probably works for lot wider audience

You really think so? I thought the atmosphere was interesting but I found it incredibly difficult to be intrigued into its story or politics, i also played it vanilla, which was probably a mistake too. I have tried the MISERY mod for pripyat a long time ago and I really thought it was cool, so im thinking of maybe doing it on pripyat first.
ALso not to be pretentious but shadow of chernobyl im either fighting dogs or bandits majority of the time that may or may not one hit me, felt more diverse or something with enemies in pripyat

>I sort of felt like exploration wasn't really rewarding at the time.
it's sorta is and sorta isn't
if you expect to find some big shiny new gun for venturing somewhere new, it's not a game for you
if you enjoy the journey itself and discovering new area, it might be up your alley

i think that is what drew me to pripyat more than cerhnobyl's one, just felt like some kind of true essence to a fallout game

it still didn't seem like there wasn't anything interesting to discover in it.

Anomaly of a zone, mostly harmless though

Vanilla S.T.A.L.K.E.R. sucks sweaty nigger balls and everyone who says "play vanilla first" does too.
It's like cold potatoes without any spices.

the zone itself
like I said, it's not for everyone, it's lot less about watching damage numbers going up and having constant moments of satisfaction as it is about taking in the atmosphere and the world, enjoying the journey more or less

>I found it incredibly difficult to be intrigued into its story or politics
I do not think these are the games for you.

yeah you are probably right, im only intrigued by the setting, but i can barely enjoy games like metro for this shit

Always love to say this in every stalker thread I see.

Stalker amk 1.4 was the best fps experience I've ever had.

On my 3rd playthrough right now, got to chernobyl but forgot to bring enough anti-rad meds. Going to have to load an earlier save because I'm literally melting inside my suit.

have fun

can the game be as scary as the webms and videos make it seem?
I think I got around to the point where you enter the zone for the first time and stopped there for some reason, didn't like how it was going

I've played it like a year ago with "shitloads of new weapons" kind of mod. It's nice, but isn't it empty as hell? Some new locations have literally nothing to do on them. Or did they update it recently?

Soul, I guess.

Pretty impressive that it went this well with Grigorovich in charge, because this hack clearly gives 0 fucks about videogames and Stalker.

>does the game actually feature what I see in gameplay videos?
You're looking at a finished game and not some early alpha game video about empty promises.

I meant more as without too much modding

Anyway. The labs are pretty spooky, even after your 100th playthrough. I don't know about vanilla, haven't played it since way back then.
And there's never enough modding or tweaking.

I for the life of me cannot enjoy SoC and CS. The only STALKER game i like/love is CoP because it doesn't have the godawful linear map of the first two, despite its map being smaller than SoC's and CS'.

Which is also why I don't enjoy CoC as much as everybody else.

One thing I didn't like was that barkeeper had no quests for you. It was a really good middle point in the map and would be nice to not have to do a quest all the way up in Jupiter with a return in Cordon.

>I enjoyed CoP for not being linear
>but not CoC
These two statements seem horribly contradictory.

ah alright then, I guess I'll go with that picture guide for the beginner mods. I enjoyed vanilla but it felt like it could definitely be better

Nah, it has something to it,
can not really enjoy the bigger levels of CoP if they are literally getting bottlenecked by the linear ones from CS and SoC.

It's because the CoP map in CoC seems to be empty as fuck (prolly a bug and i guess it gets populated after disabling the brain scorcher, iirc, but i dont feel like disabling the brain scorcher every goddamn time i start a new game), so I would just have to go back to the SoC or CS maps, which are a chore to go through because the way to go through them is by holding W most of the time, avoiding anomalies or bandits here and there, not that big of a sense of exploration unlike in CoP.

Personally I fucking hated CoP. I thought the areas were extremely boring and restriritction and made artifact collecting a chore, I enjoyed SoC more across the board.

You could try Autumn Aurora, it's basically vanilla but with updated (Misery tier) graphics and new items and gunplay.
Or maybe even AMK. There's also AMK Autumn, using all the graphics and guns from Autumn Aurora.
My personal favorite is OGSE 0692 with some tweaks and updates.

>I haven't played video games since 2011
What are you even doing here, then?

The A.I.

The NPC/Creature A.I MADE this franchise, especially when modded. The NPCs could, and would, get on with their lives do things completely independent of the player.

To this day only Stalker and Oblivion gave this kind of thing a good attempt, and that's a shame. I'll take a dynamic, interactive world over a fixed storyline any day of the year.

Why does Autumn Aurora make the game so dark? I played with it before but gave up since it was nighttime 90% of my play through. I tried cranking up the gamma but it just made it washed out.

What about Gothic?

Gothic had some nice little elements to the AI but was pretty limited.

With stalker you could meet NPCs early in the game, then find them way later in the game deeper inside the zone, with different gear, as they've went off on their own adventure & killed/looted. It's not a triggered event, it's just the AI driving things.

They probably were inspired by the Misery mod for CoP and made everything brown and gray. It kinda fits into the Zone, this murky and grimy look, but they just overdid it.
Even the items and menu windows are completely unsaturated.

However, you can always use the deautumnizer which turns everything back to a lush and green Zone. Make sure to delete both files in gamedata/levels/*levelname*/terrain.
This will take care of the hilarious neon green ground texture. Items and windows will still be brown/gray though.

>Start with no mods
Can't stress this enough. I didn't listen to /sg/ and am currently using mods in SoC. Shit's hard.

The first thing I did when playing SoC was go to the military camp and kill everyone with my shit pistol

Russia didn't do enough.