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S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadows of Chernobyl is 10 years old today

I've never played this one and not even sure my PC can run it BUT I'm highly curious...

How does this game play overall exactly? Is it level-based, Half Life 2 style, open world? Obviously it's an FPS set in or around Pripyat, that's all I know really but the mention of a great atmosphere and the screens have me hooked already.
 

zma1013

Member
Since we're posting pictures, this happened to me one time.

ss_garren_08-28-07_18-02-34_l06_ros.jpg
 

Fevaweva

Member
The 'True' Ending to this game is fucking insane. It really goes off the deep end in a Fahrenheit-esque way that I really appreciated.

I've never played this one and not even sure my PC can run it BUT I'm highly curious...

How does this game play overall exactly? Is it level-based, Half Life 2 style, open world? Obviously it's an FPS set in or around Pripyat, that's all I know really but the mention of a great atmosphere and the screens have me hooked already.

More like an open-world first person shooter, like a hardcore Far Cry 2, 3 or 4. Although it is a bit more segmented.
 

zma1013

Member
I've never played this one and not even sure my PC can run it BUT I'm highly curious...

How does this game play overall exactly? Is it level-based, Half Life 2 style, open world? Obviously it's an FPS set in or around Pripyat, that's all I know really but the mention of a great atmosphere and the screens have me hooked already.

Decent sized segmented openworld-ish style areas. Within those segments, you can explore freely and go wherever you want. There are side quests and missions you can get from people and do but you can ignore them as well and just do the main story missions.
 
I've never played this one and not even sure my PC can run it BUT I'm highly curious...

How does this game play overall exactly? Is it level-based, Half Life 2 style, open world? Obviously it's an FPS set in or around Pripyat, that's all I know really but the mention of a great atmosphere and the screens have me hooked already.

Open world with several linked areas, and numerous "levels"--like underground research labs or enemy bases. So kind of a mix of the two forms.

I've just realized that, for all the times I've started SoC, I've never gotten anywhere near beating the game. Any dark buildings scared the shit out of me.
 

jabuseika

Member
Recently replayed it with Complete mod, since I got it in the Christmas sale for almost nothing.

It's amazing, and still holds up.

I pretty much finished it in one sitting.

The true ending still blows my mind.

wA8vGeB.png


The best moment in the game, is when you assault the Freedom base with Duty. Get that sniper rifle and go to town.

Now waiting to have some free time to replay Call of Pripyat.
 

TheBowen

Sat alone in a boggy marsh
Ive owned this game for i think about 7 years and its probably the only game ever ive never actually put into a disc tray and played or open

I know the game would be right up my ally as i enjoyed metro last light and 2033, i just dont have the time

One day.
 

Hypron

Member
In my opinion? The STALKER "Complete" mod is a must. You do not want to play this or any of the other STALKER games vanilla, there are just too many bugs, too many unfinished segments, too many things that need fixed or changed. The "Complete" mods, at least for the 1st and 3rd games, improve the experience quite dramatically. I haven't play the second game, Clear Sky, however so I can't specifically speak for it.

Nah, I played them all Vanilla and didn't have an issue. Great, great experiences.
 

Akronis

Member
In my opinion? The STALKER "Complete" mod is a must. You do not want to play this or any of the other STALKER games vanilla, there are just too many bugs, too many unfinished segments, too many things that need fixed or changed. The "Complete" mods, at least for the 1st and 3rd games, improve the experience quite dramatically. I haven't play the second game, Clear Sky, however so I can't specifically speak for it.

The Complete mod completely ruins the difficulty and makes everything incredibly easy. It also breaks the game for CoP.

Use ZRP. Bug fixes without gameplay changes. Complete is trash.
 

EGM1966

Member
GOAT hybrid FPS (with a few mods for stability).

The atmosphere and sense of immersion is something else. The zone feels real and consistent and when you descend into a dark bunker... or enter a deserted cluster of houses at night...

I still fire it up from time to time just to take in the ambiance, maybe gather some stuff to trade just to feel I'm in that world again and wonder when we'll get something that feels quite like it.

Although not nearly so tense the closest I've felt recently is in Horizon in some of the bunkers/labs exploring.
 

zma1013

Member
The Complete mod completely ruins the difficulty and makes everything incredibly easy. It also breaks the game for CoP.

Use ZRP. Bug fixes without gameplay changes. Complete is trash.

Yeah, I can understand not wanting to screw around with the difficulty and in that case ZRP certainly sounds like the way to go to retain the vanilla experience.

In any case, I still stress that you need some sort of bug fix mod applied to the game as it's really buggy.
 

Rex_DX

Gold Member
An incredible game. Haven't touched it since back in the day and this thread made me reinstall it.

A sidenote - I'm attempting to replay it with the Autumn Aurora 2.1 mod that's so highly praised.

Any idea why it's an alternate start location?
 
Was so damn good, especially atmosphere and i played without complete mod 5-6 years ago.

Thanks for remind me, need to play with complete mod!
 

aliengmr

Member
I've never played this one and not even sure my PC can run it BUT I'm highly curious...

How does this game play overall exactly? Is it level-based, Half Life 2 style, open world? Obviously it's an FPS set in or around Pripyat, that's all I know really but the mention of a great atmosphere and the screens have me hooked already.

The simplest way to describe the game is that it's like Bethesda's open world games. I do not think there are levels, just gear. (been awhile since I played it.) It's not hand-holdy so starting fresh can be a slog, but once you get the jist of it, it starts getting good.

There is a short story (which inspired the game) called Roadside Picnic, it's a great primer for the actual game. It sets the mood quite well.

Any modern PC should handle it fine, I mean it's still DX 9 era I think.

Personally, I think Call of Pripyat is the best, most stable, version of the game.
 
More developers should rip this game off. Long before every open world game claimed to have a living world, this game did it in 2007 and still hasn't been topped in my opinion. This game truly gave me the feeling of presence.

Exactly. You want to know how to make an open world survival fps work? STALKER will show you the way. People talk about AI in other games, but it's always aggressively bound to certain confines and is so player centric. It pains me so much that the genius STALKER approach goes unexplored.

One day we will get the trur STALKER successor we deserve.

I can't choose between SOC or COP, so I just say that STALKER in general is in my top 10 of all time.
 

Morat

Banned
One of the greatest, and most unappreciated, games ever made. Also of note is Call of Pripyat, for a somewhat more polished take on the same idea.

Time for a reinstall and a look at the mod scene, methinks.
 
Actually, thanks for reminding me about that. Development history of S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl is indeed very interesting, but unfortunately it almost unknown outside RU/CIS region. Originally project has Oblivion Lost title and wasn't related to Chernobyl in any way, it was typical sci-fi FPS with minigun and Aztec pyramids. Everything changed in 2002 when development team visited Prypiat and Chernobyl zone - after that project completely changed and was renamed to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Oblivion Lost. It was very ambitious project, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. supposed to be a huge openworld FPS/RPG hybrid without loading screens, and with vehicles and clan wars. But GSC was a small team and didn't had experience in creating projects with such large scope - people were leaving studio during development, X-Ray was a mess and was not supposed for using in openworld RPG games. But thankfully, GSC managed to finish development (by sacrificing and cutting some content) and it was still amazing game.

If you really interested in history of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. development, take a look at this wikia page - http://stalker.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Builds. Long after release of Shadow of Chernobyl, some ex-GSC devs started to upload and share old S.T.A.L.K.E.R. builds. There is literally dozens of alpha and beta builds from every year of Shadow of Chernobyl, and some of them are playable! If you know russian or don't mind using google translate, i strongly recommend you to visit this site, were you can read detailed info about every specific build and even download them - stalker-wiki. And even more, on this site you can find info about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. PSP (yes, there was prototype for PSP, for real) and source code of X-Ray 2.0 (code is horrible but some guys managed to build it and even run editor). Don't worry, all this is legal, GSC knows about those leaks but never tried to shut them down. And it's great, because i can remember any other game that have such detailed development history, we are usually very lucky to see at least one early build for canceled games, but here we have over 70 (!) builds from every stage of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. development. Later content from those builds were used by modders for their restoration projects, for example Lost Alpha mod used locations from 2003-2004 builds.

Edit: Oh, and there was also S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Mobile for Java ME phones.

I forgot that STALKER started out as a completely different game. But I do remember seeing a few of those 2002 - 2003 builds where they made the shift to Pripyat and started taking some cues from Roadside Picnic. I didn't really follow development on this one that much, but I remember the buzz that was created around this game at the shacknews forums (it was the place to go for PC game news) . I had no idea that they were working on a PSP port, that was interesting.

Shame it fell out of a lot of people's radars by the time it was released. It really was overshadowed by games like Crysis. But honestly, this is one of those games that I would like to see get a remake.
 

Braag

Member
I remember having a serious love/hate relationship with this game.
There were days all I wanted to do was play STALKER cause I loved it so much and days when I wanted to throw my PC out the window and curse the devs who created this game.
 

smisk

Member
Still love this game. It's been years since I played it and I know new mods have come out since, I need to reinstall one of these days.
 

Samikaze

Member
One of my all time favorite games, and still my most played PC game at around 150-200 hours.

I remember playing this on a shitty laptop when it came out, on absolute minimum settings. It never got night, I never had the amazing weather effects, but the atmosphere still engrossed me.

When I went back with a more modern PC, it blew me away all over again.
 
Didn't THQ have to send a senior staff member to Ukraine to embed with GSC to get them to get a version to retail after all the delays.

I swear I remember reading about that back in the day. That this guy was basically THQ's "fixer".
 

RedSwirl

Junior Member
Played it for the first time maybe a couple years ago. It's one of those games the industry at large should have learned from but didn't.

To me, STALKER, along with Crysis 1, kind of represents the apex of the evolution of the first person shooter or the first person action game, which includes "immersive sims."

2007 really was a turning point for the FPS. From 1992 up until that point you can sort of see this evolution of first person games getting more three-dimensional, more complex, with more dynamic things going on around the player. You could see the evolution from Underworld to Doom to System Shock to Quake to Elder Scrolls to Rainbow Six to GoldenEye to Half-Life to Thief to Deus Ex to Ghost Recon to Far Cry 1, and it kid inf ended at STALKER and Crysis 1. In terms of the range of the possibility space and the attempt to create an immersive, sensible world around the player, no first person game in the last decade has surpassed those two, except perhaps Skyrim. Some action games like Dishonored, new Hitman, Metal Gear Solid V, Breath of the Wild, and hopefully Prey are starting to get back to where STALKER and Crysis 1 were, but the fact that they had to retrace those steps to me feels like a decade of lost progress for action games.

And of course we know what happened in 2007 -- COD4 came out. That game pretty much took over everything and led to several years of designers trying to copy its apparently super-scripted format. It's a great game on its own but sometimes I feel like it led to about seven years of FPS stagnation. It even affected the sequels to Crysis. And the main reason STALKER and Crysis 1 got ignored is likely because they didn't come out on consoles. That same year BioShock got a lot of credit for things System Shock 2 had done eight years earlier. It's as if the popular mainstream sector got wind PC games had been doing a while further back, and has spent the lats 10 years working its way up to where PC action game development was at in 2007. You can even see that with Team Fortress 2 getting big on PC over the last decade and Overwatch doing a similar thing on PC and consoles today but to much more popular acclaim.

Anyway, when playing STALKER itself I was shocked at how well it balanced features open-world games with features of more linear games. 10 years ago STALKER basically solved a lot of problems people have with open-world games today. It has big, open-ended environments but also splits up those environments to feel more like a traditional linear game. There are sections that are sort of like "dungeons." There are scripted action sequences that to me rank among the best segments of Resident Evil 4. STALKER is a rather amazing hodgepodge of components from different types of game.

Possibly what I like the most about STALKER is how it combines action and RPG elements in a way I'd long wanted to see a game do but never actually saw anyone attempt. Combat is straight-up action -- even feeling a bit similar to tactical shooters, but STALKER works in elements more common to RPGs like inventories, interactive dialogue, complex quest logic, and complex NPC AI. To anyone who hasn't played STALKER or can't because they only play console games, imagine if someone combined bits of Fallout 3, Resident Evil, and maybe DayZ, or the gunplay from Countr-Strike. It's the game Far Cry 2 was trying to be. It is such a smooth action/RPG mix that people struggle to define it.
 

Oreoleo

Member
Just popping in to reiterate that Zone Reclamation Project is the only mod needed to play STALKER, just to clean up some of the bugs. Anything else like the "Complete" mod is unnecessary and down to personal taste, rather than anything fundamentally wrong with the game. That kind of info seems to get passed around like a bad game internet telephone where each person blows it more and more out of proportion. Just like 4A games being mostly ex-Stalker devs. In reality, 4A was founded by two people who left GSC before STALKER was even released. It's not like a majority of that studio worked on STALKER like some would have you believe.

Anyway, STALKER is one of my favorite series of all time. Always glad to see it get some love on GAF :)
 
One of the greatest, and most unappreciated, games ever made.


Untrue. The game sold millions on PC and continues to do so to this day. I consider it the pinnacle of the PC golden age.


As far as mods go Call of Chernobyl won best mod of 2016. It combines all the games maps into one huge area to explore.

Autumn Aurora 2 is an excellent mod and worth checking out.

Stalker Lost Alpha is flawed, bugged reimagining for the original. Still quite good but needs a beefy system if you play with max graphics. The developer is working on a Directors Cut. Progress has been extremely slow but I see updates from time to time. Lost Alpha is standalone and completely free.

This is from Lost Alpha with a small photoshop blur.
TpC2bz8.png


This was from Lost Alpha unedited.
UibCqJ1.png
 

jambo

Member
Since we're posting pictures, this happened to me one time.

ss_garren_08-28-07_18-02-34_l06_ros.jpg

I've been replaying SoC again recently and had this happen to me. The first time I got destroyed in seconds, but after reloading my save I legged it to a ladder and then just shot them all. Took a shit load of ammo.

It was also the middle of the night, so even scarier.
 
Played it for the first time maybe a couple years ago. It's one of those games the industry at large should have learned from but didn't.

To me, STALKER, along with Crysis 1, kind of represents the apex of the evolution of the first person shooter or the first person action game, which includes "immersive sims."

2007 really was a turning point for the FPS. From 1992 up until that point you can sort of see this evolution of first person games getting more three-dimensional, more complex, with more dynamic things going on around the player. You could see the evolution from Underworld to Doom to System Shock to Quake to Elder Scrolls to Rainbow Six to GoldenEye to Half-Life to Thief to Deus Ex to Ghost Recon to Far Cry 1, and it kid inf ended at STALKER and Crysis 1. In terms of the range of the possibility space and the attempt to create an immersive, sensible world around the player, no first person game in the last decade has surpassed those two, except perhaps Skyrim. Some action games like Dishonored, new Hitman, Metal Gear Solid V, Breath of the Wild, and hopefully Prey are starting to get back to where STALKER and Crysis 1 were, but the fact that they had to retrace those steps to me feels like a decade of lost progress for action games.

And of course we know what happened in 2007 -- COD4 came out. That game pretty much took over everything and led to several years of designers trying to copy its apparently super-scripted format. It's a great game on its own but sometimes I feel like it led to about seven years of FPS stagnation. It even affected the sequels to Crysis. And the main reason STALKER and Crysis 1 got ignored is likely because they didn't come out on consoles. That same year BioShock got a lot of credit for things System Shock 2 had done eight years earlier. It's as if the popular mainstream sector got wind PC games had been doing a while further back, and has spent the lats 10 years working its way up to where PC action game development was at in 2007. You can even see that with Team Fortress 2 getting big on PC over the last decade and Overwatch doing a similar thing on PC and consoles today but to much more popular acclaim.

Anyway, when playing STALKER itself I was shocked at how well it balanced features open-world games with features of more linear games. 10 years ago STALKER basically solved a lot of problems people have with open-world games today. It has big, open-ended environments but also splits up those environments to feel more like a traditional linear game. There are sections that are sort of like "dungeons." There are scripted action sequences that to me rank among the best segments of Resident Evil 4. STALKER is a rather amazing hodgepodge of components from different types of game.

Possibly what I like the most about STALKER is how it combines action and RPG elements in a way I'd long wanted to see a game do but never actually saw anyone attempt. Combat is straight-up action -- even feeling a bit similar to tactical shooters, but STALKER works in elements more common to RPGs like inventories, interactive dialogue, complex quest logic, and complex NPC AI. To anyone who hasn't played STALKER or can't because they only play console games, imagine if someone combined bits of Fallout 3, Resident Evil, and maybe DayZ, or the gunplay from Countr-Strike. It's the game Far Cry 2 was trying to be. It is such a smooth action/RPG mix that people struggle to define it.

A+++ post, couldn't have said it better. It pains me deeply that we're still waiting on a spiritual successor to the STALKER series, even all these years later.
 

poodaddy

Gold Member
I've owned all the games for a while but haven't played them simply because I didn't know where to start. What's the order of the games, chronologically speaking, so that I don't miss any story.
 

Sinatar

Official GAF Bottom Feeder
I've owned all the games for a while but haven't played them simply because I didn't know where to start. What's the order of the games, chronologically speaking, so that I don't miss any story.

- Chronologically it's Clear Skies, Shadows of Chernobyl and then Call of Pripyat.
- The release order is Shadows of Chernobyl, Clear Skies, Call of Pripyat.

Clear skies is honestly skippable, play Shadows and then Call.
 

Jackpot

Banned
I remember on its first release, the fancy lighting system they showcased was completely disabled. You could edit some files to get it back in but your FPS tanked.
 

Chumley

Banned
Hoping Lost Alpha directors cut comes out soon.

OGSE is an overloaded trash fire. Autumn Aurora 2 is insanely unstable but gorgeous looking.
 

pa22word

Member
Did you just treat Doom as though it was some spiritual successor to Painkiller?
Doom 4 is a lot closer to painkiller in design than the og doom, to be fair.

You can see the game mechanics break down when they forced them into standard doom encounter design with the classic levels you can unlock.
 

eot

Banned
One of my favourite games ever. I think it's the best one in the series. So amazingly atmospheric.

And so pretty too, even though it's filled with broken down soviet era architecture, it still manages to look beautiful.
 
Hoping Lost Alpha directors cut comes out soon.

OGSE is an overloaded trash fire. Autumn Aurora 2 is insanely unstable but gorgeous looking.

I'm actually pretty fond of Misery 2. I know a lot of people don't like it, but it made my experience feel that much more punishing and gruelling hehe.
 

Kayhan

Member
I still think that, modded, it is one of the most beautiful games ever made.

The style was so, so different from whatever Western AAA-developers were churning out.
 
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