I just picked up the three stalker games on steam sale yesterday...

I just picked up the three stalker games on steam sale yesterday. Ive heard its a 10/10 classic but i know fuck all else about it

what am i in for Sup Forums? no spoilers pls

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youtube.com/watch?v=V_-fba2hBG4
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

have fun

Shadow of Chernobyl is structured like a RPG where your starting weapons are absolute garbage that cant hit anything outside of 20 feet, then you get nice machine guns in the next area and gradually just get stronger and stronger. dont be like this retard and give up in the first hour like a retarded casual

I tried completing Shadow of Chernobyl twice. No spoilers, there's gonna be bugs, bugs and more bugs. This piece of shit is so broken you can't even complete it without running into a few broken quests. Save early and save often, you'll probably need it. Both of my runs ended in a main quest soft-lock. I'd recommend to search for mods, but since most of them are made by degenerate Russian underages (don't ask me how I know that), they're probably even more bugged, or expect you to know where you can softlock.

There are popular, easy to find mods that will fix up most of the bugs of the games, but don't buy into the memes that the game is absolutely broken without them because I beat the first one without even knowing they existed. Play on the hardest difficulty because it's the most fun and fair.

Make sure you download either the starter pack mod or zrp. Both fix the game, vanilla isn't worth it

slav pseudo open world, pseudo rpg, pseudo realistic shootan game
can be frustrating and it's not fair at all but if you stick with it, it will grow on you
play on master difficulty difficulty balancing is dumb it makes enemies deadlier but you are also deadlier rather an inaccurate and doing no damage
you can also get the lost alpha version for free which is a kind of fan restored version of what the game would have been without all the cut content and re-worked areas
It's kind of rough until you get a rifle with a scope but it also shows just how low you are on the food chain

Some of the most unique and atmospheric PC exclusives of the modern days, that will be challenging but not artificially difficult per se. The huge and still hot modding community will provide tons of variety and replay value once you're done with vanilla games.

If this is your first time playing the games, 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.

>I tried completing Shadow of Chernobyl twice. No spoilers, there's gonna be bugs, bugs and more bugs
lemme guess, your last attempts were in 2007?
The patched games are smooth as butter nowadays without any further fixes, and the starter-pack stuff is always there if you need extra goodies.

No idea what you mean by "softlock"; you can literally beat the game just fine, even if everyone else in the game would die.

>the starter pack mod or zrp
Starter Pack is NOT a mod. It's a compilation OF mods, one of its key mods being the ZRP.
And no, the patched vanilla is fucking fine. Steam and GOG both auto-patch their games to latest, so no need to fear the ancient v1.0 boogeymen.

I used the GOG version last time.
No, main quest objective marker got stuck pointing to an area transition, except going to that area made it point to the area i just came from. If that's not a soft lock, i don't know what is.

I know the Misery mod is supposed to be bullshit but how the fuck am I supposed to know who to shoot without the radar during a major firefight?

you are strelok

>No, main quest objective marker got stuck pointing to an area transition
...and?
Are you seriously so mentally limited that you need to follow markers?

>using the radar
Ever heard of, you know... Binoculars?
Or checking your PDA for close-by contacts?
Or just memorizing the fucking uniforms and yells of NPC factions?

Not to mention surviving inna Zone is not exactly rocket science: if they shoot at you, you can shoot them.

I played F.E.A.R and I absolutely hated it. It was trying to be a fast paced game like DOOM, but it used shitty "realistic" mechanics. It was dead boring and if there was any challenge it came from how nonsensical the basic design of the game was. It was just another reason for me to hate modern shooters. Later on I played (vanilla)Shadow of Chernobyl, and to this day it's the only "realistic" fps that I actually like. Kind of weird at first, but I loved every second of the game. I'm actually not sure how to describe the difference between stalker and fear. To put it simply they're both meant to be atmospheric fps games that switch between spooky shit and shootouts. Stalker does it better in every way. As far as the atmosphere is concerned you're constantly hearing the wailing of mutants. Some might sound like cats, some like crying babies. This shit really gets to you when you're sprinting through a forest at night barely able to see a few feet in front of you even with a flashlight, trading bullets with random dudes and trying to dodge angry monstrosities and anomalies that you likely can't even see until it's too late. Then you'll finally get out of that forest, lose or kill whatever is following you, and find a friendly russian man sitting at a campfire in a concrete tunnel jamming out on his acoustic guitar and you feel calm and safe for a short while before you head back out again.
As far as the gameplay is concerned fighting humans can seem a bit dated especially at the beginning of the game because your guns can't hit shit. However it's done very well if you ask me. You learn very early on that this shit is dangerous. In a deus-ex-like fashion you ought to rely on stealth, ambushing, flanking, and some creativity to defeat your opponents. It may be relatively basic and simple but it's very well done if you ask me. Fighting mutants is different, it isn't just well done it's actually really fucking good. Post limit. Don't feel like continuing. Have fun.

People like to post memes more than actually playing the games. Its very appealing to a certain kind of person though. If you like eastern aesthetics, guns, and themes of solitude you will like it. I have 100 hours on every game in the series.

>pic unrelated

>People like to post memes more than actually playing the games.
>I have 100 hours on every game in the series.
that's cute.
I've got THOUSANDS of hours on all 3 games, with and without mods, but I have no idea of the exact time spent with them as I got the legit DVD copies of all three of them.

best armor

Share your wisdom. What have you learned from the zone?

What sells me on the atmosphere is what you said coupled with being unable to stop the progression of action while checking your map or objectives, which you end up doing often. It can get pretty intense when you don't know what's coming up on you

In all honesty I didn't enjoy them much, I think they're overhyped by a few die-hard fans

I'm not here to make a dick measuring contest, I am just showing user it can be a game that you invest time in to varying degrees, as your post continues to prove.

Have you considered playing the fucking games you already bought?

look up and install some mods, i'd say avoid any major gameplay overhauls but stuff like the absolute nature/structure mods and the gun visuals/sound overhaul mods are nice.

anything that improves the skybox is great too. nothing like the whole sky lighting up during a blowout in CoP.

personally i also like using a mod that increases my carry weight a bit, having to constantly micromanage that shit is annoying

otherwise amazing game series user have fun, the engine they used for SoC kinda sucks ass so crashes and issues are pretty normal sorry.

oh. and play SoC on realistic difficulty as they fucked the scaling up for everything in the other difficulties.

Not sure about CS and CoP but i played those on realistic too.

>What have you learned from the zone?
Never eat "Bread", with suspicious quote marks.

>personally i also like using a mod that increases my carry weight a bit, having to constantly micromanage that shit is annoying
It seems like hoard-fags never die out.
If you got more than 35kg in your pockets when heading out to new areas / missions... you're doing it wrong.

I just like the option to pick up interesting guns that the ai might have so i can go back to town and repair them.

Being able to carry a rifle and shotgun at the same time for humans and mutants is nice too.

OKAY HERES WHAT YOU DO

>Installation and first playthrough
NO MODS except for that one mod that just patches all the million bugs and gives you a way to change the FOV
Play on MASTER difficulty

>Actually playing
Flashlight is L
Anomaly detector is O
PDA is P
Bolts are on 6

CROUCH and stand still when aiming/shooting
LOW CROUCH for even more accuracy
Go exclusively for headshots
UTILIZE the lean system


Don't listen to ANYONE ELSE IN THIS THREAD
THIS IS THE WAY TO PLAY IT
FUCK

Have you tried not being retarded?

Find me a thread with more misinformation. You can't.

why

>People like to post memes more than actually playing the games.
literally this.
>cheeki breeki xD fellow stalkers

See Everyone's always spewing centuries old bullshit in these threads. People who actually know their shit don't even bother visiting Sup Forums STALKER threads anymore.

well then educate us, high one

>I just like the option to pick up interesting guns that the ai might have so i can go back to town and repair them.
as if you couldn't do that already.
Except the repairing in SoC.

>being able to carry a rifle and shotgun at the same time
you literally can. You just need to manually switch between 'em in SoC & CS, unless you use mods like AMK1.4

Still, none of what you just described REQUIRES an inventory size increase.

>People who actually know their shit don't even bother visiting Sup Forums STALKER threads anymore.
Speak for yourself, nufag.
I've been here for... wew, 13 years soon. It still warms my jaded heart to see some 10 year old pics and copypastas.

I'm being forced to play misery
is it going to ruin my stalker experience?

You played Stalker two years before it was released?

The game is really shit. I had to uninstall 10 minutes into the game, because it was simply that bad.

>less than 600 ammunitions
Are you for real ?

That's because you're a girl and girls are not good at video games.

>animeposter hungry for attention
Here, now leave

The time of me discovering this site and time of starting to play the game(s) are obviously separated things, matey. I am lucky that I got to see the rise and end of the great Stalkan' boom.

>needing more than 1 shot for 1 kill
gb2/Cordon

jesus that webm is looped perfectly

I've got this problem in the game right now, and can't find an online fix. I've gotten to the part where the scientist tells you to go into that hazardous area past the lab right after zombies are introduced, that gives you constant health drain in the area you have to go to, and I've read online you need a helmet to ignore the damage but I rescued the scientist who apparently hands it to you and never got a helmet, and I searched the Wild Zone or whatever for hours to find it with no luck except for finding some crazy loot.
Am I softlocked or retarded?

Yes, quite the achievement. And aside from old pics, copypastas and memes, what do you actually know about the game mechanics?
What different factors does impair connect to and how do they all relate to each other? How does the outcome of that affect gameplay as a whole but also just in certain situations? And what are those certain situations?

No it isn't

>what do you actually know about the game mechanics?
Practically everything.

Killing everyone is the only answer.

Install ZRP

Despite loving the game, I was never able to beat Shadow of Chernobyl. I just stop playing it, and then restart in an attempt to finish it again. On the contrary I've been able to beat Call of Pripyat many times, with and without mods, and managed to get through Clear Sky despite its shortcomings. So I don't know, if you didn't like one, try the others.

Retarded. You need to go to Professor Sakhorav...i think

>Despite loving the game, I was never able to beat Shadow of Chernobyl.
Such a bizarre concept.

And yet you didn't even bother to answer my questions, which would have taken one single word with seven letters.
I think it's save to say that you don't know shit, except century old memes.

>And yet you didn't even bother to answer my questions
Oh, those were questions?
Seemed like rhetorical and vague mumbling.

and he's in the lab, right? If he's the guy, then he's also the guy who gave me the quest to go there, and he hasn't mentioned the helmet at all.

desu I cheated to beat the final part of SoC. I have no idea how to do that one.
When you're right outside the reactor and there's the helicopter flying around and shooting your ass? I have no fucking idea how you're supposed to get through that. I played on the hardest difficulty up until then and didn't have any problems, but then this helicopter just completely tore my ass apart without me being able to fight back at all. Even hiding inside of a container did nothing as it just shot through. I didn't see a way to cross that huge field of nothing to get into cover so I just got a trainer.

I don't know who told me the voice acting in Call of Pripyat was going to be shit, but holy hell you're were not joking!

You're not supposed to play the STALKER games with English voices. Play on Ruski and turn subtitles on.

youtube.com/watch?v=V_-fba2hBG4

There always has to be some fucker who recommends mods for first time players goddammit

don't you like dodgy voice acting in vidya? it's fun spill da beans

You can either just run from cover to cover, until the Blowout starts, or just shoot the thing down.

wassap negr

>have a 5.56 and a 9x39
>completely run out of ammo because all the bad guys have switched back to obokans
brain scorcher a shit, maybe it turned them all into retards

I'm 6 hours late to the party and it's already probably been answered but I will throw in my 2 cents.

Shadow of Chernobyl is my favorite shooter game, but it's an acquired taste. Play patched vanilla first, then try some of the other mods out-I'm not up to date on what the good mods are nowadays.

Clear Sky everyone unanimously hates, so feel free to skip it unless you want to play it - I personally liked it. It introduced weapon/armor repair.

Call of Pripyat is the most polished and optimized game. The mods for this one are great. Misery is an unforgivable asshole of a game, but that's what appeals to me.

I hate when this shit happens late game. Now i've actually just stockpiled a gud gun with ammo to get me thru red forest all the way to CNPP without having to worry at all.

mfw just made it to the plant area and have maybe 20 bullets and 3 medkits

Strelok is gay for bloodsucker D

In Garbage there's a tower with a box, shoot it

so uh

is complete (2009) kind of okay or what?

>Garbage
nigga I'm at cnpp, if it's even possible to backtrack it would be to the army warehouses

oh well

SoC and CS have the worst late-game areas in the series, at least in vanilla

this especially bothers me in CS, because that area seems to have been modeled and lit with great care, but playing through the section is worse than any call of dooky game I've ever played

>is complete (2009) kind of okay or what?
No. It really is not. And we've been saying this for a literal decade soon.

Complete mods are totally obsolete, casual as fuck, total overhaul mods. If you want a true "vanilla 2.0" experience, use Starter Packs' mods.

pic related for more info

CS was rushed as fuck release. A lot of things were shrunk, cut out, and overall downgraded. It's because of that why the game's still so buggy AF on top of it all.

Xrayengine crashing.

...

>why complete sucks.jpg
>80% of the things listed sound like great changes

...

none of those should sound great to you

The shooting in these games is clunky as fuck and plain out garbage, there is no balance whatsoever and all dificulty settings suck.

wgat movie

...

Why wouldn't QoL improvements sound great to me? I'm not a masochist.

this
gameplay could be better

if you aren't a day 1 babby you should realise that making the game easier isn't making the game better

I agree with him. These games have nuisances like, even if you finally arrive to some crowded place, the guns and ammo don't sell there, or you can't repair your shit, or the faggots don't accept your wares

the only thing that would bother me so far are the decreased AI (which seems like a dealbreaker) and whatever retarded overlays they put on masks and NV

Cheeki Breeki iv Damke

>That quicksave

>a day 1 babby
What does that even mean?
The game is a broken piece of unbalanced shit in its default state. You don't have to pretend to be "le h4rDKKK0rEEEEE sniperELITE xXxstrel0kxXx" to have fun with video games. You should've grown out of that long ago.

100% of those changes are terrible as fuck, and it does not change the fact that you'd still be using a random modpack of 2007 era alpha-stage mods.

Complete mods are literally for modern nu-gaymers who don't want to LEARN how to play the game, but CHANGE it so that they can just walk through it instead.

It's not. And games like this don't need any kind of balance.

If you want a bugfix then get the ZRP, the problem with complete is that it changes the core gameplay.

>AMK
Why did you make me remember electrochimeras user

>The shooting in these games is clunky as fuck and plain out garbage
Literally false.
>there is no balance whatsoever and all dificulty settings suck.
more false claims. The vanilla SoC is perhaps one of the most clearly balanced shooter games of all time, with each weapon falling to quite clear tiers and performing at least somewhat differently.

playing the game unmodded and it's fine except the view bobbing around giving me a headache

The first time this happened to me I pretty much made a straight dash for the entrance to the plant while everyone else was shooting eachother. Once you're inside you'll be fine since most of the enemies will have 5.56 and medkits and shit just make sure you shoot the RPG guys or else you'll just keep dying