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

Chumley

Banned
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.

I love the look and fell of it but it's way, way too difficult and annoying. They need a vanilla version, as is even on rookie mode it's unplayable to me.
 

bleaker

Member
Always wanted to play these games, I bought the first one and played it for a few hours back in like 2012. The game was too hard for my young mind though. Hope to get back and finish it one day. Also from what I remember, this game scared the shit out of me.
 
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.

Agree with the post and your sentiment.

I knew the writing on the wall with FPS back in 2008 or 2009-ish. I was listening to a 1up podcast - I wanna say it was 1upFM but I forget, where they did a Let's Play of STALKER.

One of the guys didn't even bother playing it because he was a console gamer only. Two others had grown up playing FPS on consoles and were complaining about the hardcore difficulty level and the one guy who had experience with PC games kept on having to defend the game's mechanics.

It was pretty much at that point that I knew the gaming industry didn't really have a place for games like STALKER or Crysis anymore. I honestly haven't been excited for any major FPS releases since. I have enjoyed a few - Bioshock series for one, the recent Doom and Wolfenstein games but those are games I wait for to go on sale. STALKER and Crysis I bought day one and thought they were the future of the FPS.
 
Another thing that I've realised about the STALKER games... they basically ruined open world games for me. I'm playing Zelda BOTW at the moment, about 20 hours in, and I'm getting sort of bored.

Why is that? Because in STALKER there is ever present danger. Even during "down time" death can come quickly. But more importantly... it's the unpredictability from the AI. Sometimes I'd just perch atop a hill, pull out the binoculars and watch beasts going about their business. Sometimes I'd load up old saves to see how scenarios play out differently. Maybe I'd arrive at a bandit camp and have a full blown fire fight, maybe I'd arrive and find them fighting a pack of dogs. Maybe they would all be dead!

Even a game that's widely praised for feeling "alive" like BOTW... feels pretty dead to me compared to STALKER.
 

Oreoleo

Member
Is there an essential or popular mod for a replay in 2017?

The only mod you "NEED" is Zone Reclamation Project for the bug fixes. Complete mod changes the game a little too much for my tastes. It streamlines things though so if you found the game a tough nut to crack initially it might not be a bad idea. Any other mod is either mostly to pretty up the graphics or change the game so substantially that I can't recommend them unless you've already played the original game to death (Lost Alpha, Oblivion Lost, Stalker Soup etc).

Whats everyones favorite stalker game?
I don't think I could pick between Chernobyl and Pripyat. I find myself returning to Chernobyl more often for whatever that's worth, but they are basically two sides of the same coin.
 

RedSwirl

Junior Member
Agree with the post and your sentiment.

I knew the writing on the wall with FPS back in 2008 or 2009-ish. I was listening to a 1up podcast - I wanna say it was 1upFM but I forget, where they did a Let's Play of STALKER.

One of the guys didn't even bother playing it because he was a console gamer only. Two others had grown up playing FPS on consoles and were complaining about the hardcore difficulty level and the one guy who had experience with PC games kept on having to defend the game's mechanics.

It was pretty much at that point that I knew the gaming industry didn't really have a place for games like STALKER or Crysis anymore. I honestly haven't been excited for any major FPS releases since. I have enjoyed a few - Bioshock series for one, the recent Doom and Wolfenstein games but those are games I wait for to go on sale. STALKER and Crysis I bought day one and thought they were the future of the FPS.

That discussion has been going back and forth. I don't think you can claim to be a big authority on gaming in general while completely ignoring PC. I totally accept that consoles are just more accessible, but if you're going to be someone who is paid to be an authority on games, you can't write off PC. I could understand people in 2008 or 2009 criticizing STALKER's jankiness, in fact I remember someone from GSC being quoted saying STALKER was "too hardcore for American gamers," but it isn't fair to count it out for being a PC game. So much of what we're playing today has its roots in PC, and so much of the innovation mainstream success is happening on PC.
 

fester

Banned
You just have to know that Complete Mod does make the game easier.

And some fights get broken because of how strong your weapons might be.

The only mod you "NEED" is Zone Reclamation Project for the bug fixes. Complete mod changes the game a little too much for my tastes. It streamlines things though so if you found the game a tough nut to crack initially it might not be a bad idea. Any other mod is either mostly to pretty up the graphics or change the game so substantially that I can't recommend them unless you've already played the original game to death (Lost Alpha, Oblivion Lost, Stalker Soup etc).

Is there an optimal way to combine the pure bug fixes of ZRP with updated graphics (while preserving the original difficulty)? This game has been on my backlog for the full decade and I need to remedy that, especially with a recently upgraded PC.
 
That discussion has been going back and forth. I don't think you can claim to be a big authority on gaming in general while completely ignoring PC. I totally accept that consoles are just more accessible, but if you're going to be someone who is paid to be an authority on games, you can't write off PC. I could understand people in 2008 or 2009 criticizing STALKER's jankiness, in fact I remember someone from GSC being quoted saying STALKER was "too hardcore for American gamers," but it isn't fair to count it out for being a PC game. So much of what we're playing today has its roots in PC, and so much of the innovation mainstream success is happening on PC.

I think it was excusable for people in the gaming industry at the time to not know much about PC gaming; that was the very tail end of the era where PC and console gaming were separate entities. It wasn't that uncommon for someone to be a grow up without any knowledge of PC gaming.
 
The AI systems felt amazing. Knowing you could search around and run into a firefight between other people, or animals... or monsters.
 

Northeastmonk

Gold Member
One thing that always got to me was having no crosshair.

I enjoyed SoC. I did pitch my copy of Clear Sky. 2 out of 3 great games if you ask me.

Stalker was one of the few games I wanted when I first got my gaming PC.

Edit: clear sky felt like walking around while everyone was sitting down at a camp fire. It didn't feel as flush and well rounded as the other two games.

I loved going out as far as I could go without getting slaughtered. I enjoyed he fear of not knowing what was located beyond a certain point.
 

HotHamBoy

Member
I just watched the movie Stalker for the first time.

It was inspired by Roadside Picnic, too.

I think maybe the game is a totally different take on the source material, lol...
 

Akronis

Member
I just watched the movie Stalker for the first time.

It was inspired by Roadside Picnic, too.

I think maybe the game is a totally different take on the source material, lol...

Completely. Just some of the pieces from Roadside Picnic like artifacts.
 

Oreoleo

Member
Is there an optimal way to combine the pure bug fixes of ZRP with updated graphics (while preserving the original difficulty)? This game has been on my backlog for the full decade and I need to remedy that, especially with a recently upgraded PC.

The two that come to mind are AtmosFear for the weather and sky boxes and Photo Realistic Zone for the textures.

There's also Autumn Aurora which uses ZRP and AtmosFear but I've heard enough complaints about how it changes damage values for weapons (grenades specifically) to the point that I've never bothered to give it a spin. There are some other gameplay changes that don't seem too egregious judging by the list on the mod page, but if you want that Vanilla experience it's probably best to look elsewhere. It looks gorgeous though and is fairly popular so it seemed worth at least mentioning.
 

beelzebozo

Jealous Bastard
i have never played this.

but ten years ago i did listen to a ton of GFW Radio podcast, and shawn would talk in such a convincing way about it that i've always wanted to. i've just never had the PC horsepower to run the damn thing.

i miss GFW.
 

HotHamBoy

Member
Completely. Just some of the pieces from Roadside Picnic like artifacts.

I've never played STALKER but I'd like to try it one day. I'm not great at shooters or horror games, though.

As for the 1978 movie Stalker, highly recommended.

Tarkovsky’s Stalker is about man’s search for meaning and how all searches for meaning are doomed to failure. The world is a beautiful place, filled with bliss and horror but the meaning we place on these experiences are ours and ours alone.
 
i have never played this.

but ten years ago i did listen to a ton of GFW Radio podcast, and shawn would talk in such a convincing way about it that i've always wanted to. i've just never had the PC horsepower to run the damn thing.

i miss GFW.

Game still holds up if you wanna give it a shot. Nothing else is quite like it on the market. Far Cry 2 and Crysis 1 are close-ish. Far Cry 3 and onwards are bastardizations of the genre.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
One of the best survivor horror games ever. The mood, aesthetic, and atmosphere hasn't been emulated successfully anywhere else. And I'll extend that to the game design, basically neglected by every other publisher in the market. There is a total sense of focused individuality and uniqueness to STALKER, and that goes a long way to making it so special.

I distinct memories purchasing Shadow of Chernobyl. Specifically, I was unemployed and living in a Balwyn (Melbourne eastern suburb), sharehousing with two good friends and unemployed. I was relying intently on welfare payments to cover my expenses and, on the day STALKER came out, I found myself at JB HiFi on Elizabeth Street scrounging literally every single last cent I had to my name to buy the collector's edition tin. I had to live off whatever I had in the pantry for about a week. I'd deferred school that year too, so I went full vidya NEET. I still have that tin, too.

I can imagine making a modern STALKER would be an expensive endeavor. Doable, but expensive. It's also fascinating to read what an up and down nightmare the development behind STALKER was. So much content cut.

For anybody interested in a thematically similar game, I highly recommend Cryostasis: Sleep of Reason. It's not an open world ARPG at all, instead linear and narrative based, but reminiscent of STALKER's exceedingly bleak Eastern European survival horror, with a nice supernatural surrealist twist.

EDIT: Regarding Metro, I've long been a bit soured by people talking it up as a STALKER-like game. It plays almost nothing like STALKER at all, even if it finds a similar mood. And I've long argued that 2033 in particular has stretches of fucking tragically terrible gameplay, easily critiqued for the exact same reasons modern Call of Duty cops a bad wrap; follow-the-NPC pacing, talk-at-you narrative, and some dreadfully dull encounters. Last Light, while more accessible, was a far better constructed game in my opinion, finding its own quality identity over 2033 lingering in STALKER's shadow.
 

RedSwirl

Junior Member
Another thing that I've realised about the STALKER games... they basically ruined open world games for me. I'm playing Zelda BOTW at the moment, about 20 hours in, and I'm getting sort of bored.

Why is that? Because in STALKER there is ever present danger. Even during "down time" death can come quickly. But more importantly... it's the unpredictability from the AI. Sometimes I'd just perch atop a hill, pull out the binoculars and watch beasts going about their business. Sometimes I'd load up old saves to see how scenarios play out differently. Maybe I'd arrive at a bandit camp and have a full blown fire fight, maybe I'd arrive and find them fighting a pack of dogs. Maybe they would all be dead!

Even a game that's widely praised for feeling "alive" like BOTW... feels pretty dead to me compared to STALKER.

I'm gonna go ahead and make a bold claim: Breath of the Wild to me feels like the closest thing to STALKER in a long time.

Like I said: it's like some developers in the mainstream space are slowly creeping back there. Any guesses as to what developer/game will be taking the next step?
 
I really wouldn't recommend the Complete mod because it makes the game a bit too easy in a way that it is not balanced for. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. might seem harsh, but for the most part it is fair. The Zone Reclamation Project mod includes all of the bugfixes used in Complete and more while keeping the gameplay vanilla.

Here's a handy starting guide:
BHEfe.jpg
 
I'm gonna go ahead and make a bold claim: Breath of the Wild to me feels like the closest thing to STALKER in a long time.

Like I said: it's like some developers in the mainstream space are slowly creeping back there. Any guesses as to what developer/game will be taking the next step?

There's probably a reason why BOTW bought STALKER to mind for me. I just really really want a game that tries to go for the STALKER AI approach.
 

TheSeks

Blinded by the luminous glory that is David Bowie's physical manifestation.
I've never played this one and not even sure my PC can run it BUT I'm highly curious...

If your computer or laptop is within like the past... 4-5 years, it should easily run it. It's a 2007 title.

If you have any sort of desktop, throwing in a budget GPU should get it to run easily.
---

Anyway, I've played the series completely vanilla just because of /v/ hype and while the game has atmosphere, I couldn't get into the gunplay at all. I had to use Cheat Engine to get around that to finish the story stuff/main-quest up. Maybe mods fix that, but the base game left a sour taste in my mouth 3 times with that gunplay to where I'm not over enthused to try the mods.
 

kittoo

Cretinously credulous
What a game! Dripping with atmosphere, great mechanics and graphics, if a little buggy. And it was truly dreadful at times. Really felt as if I was exploring a wasteland. One of my favorites.
Those were the days, days of good singplayer games. You could loose hours without any multiplayer aspects pushed down your throat. Just you and the world. So many good games came out from 2003-08 or so.
 

dogen

Member
Actually I've been meaning to ask this: Is there a way to play STALKER in Russian with English subtitles?

Would this be for a first time playthrough? If so, just play it in english. You get the funny english lines and the funny russian lines that way.

Ah, nvm.
 

pa22word

Member
Would this be for a first time playthrough? If so, just play it in english. You get the funny english lines and the funny russian lines that way.

Ah, nvm.

Yeah, it's like a right of passage for stalker players to suffer through that hilarious dub as a sort of comedic ease of tension for the absolute brutality that the core of the game throws at you from moment to moment. It's one of those so bad it's good dubs that it kind of has a legacy in and of its self due to how beloved it is.
 

keraj37

Member
Thanks for this thread.

What a game! I still admire complex AI - fighting with omon officer was big challenge not because of superior gear of his, but just how smart they were.
 
Probably my most re-installed game, utterly captivating world and unrivaled atmosphere. The mod scene has been wonderful to it as well, have had many more hours of enjoyment thanks to Autumn Aurora and more recently Call of Chernobyl. Would give left nut for a proper sequel with ample budget behind it.
 
Was this the one with invisible enemies? Those, and the random directions bullets took, put me off, kinda.


There is one type of enemy that can turn invisible, among his other talents. One enemy type of many. Bullets dont go in random directions exactly, they're just cheap and bad at first, since you're a nobody in the game. They have multiple characteristics, accuracy, damage, handling, rate of fire, bullet types that they use, condition. You'll get many, many weapons as you progress along. The way weapons are made in this game is one of the highlights.
 

bathsalts

Member
Was this the one with invisible enemies? Those, and the random directions bullets took, put me off, kinda.
Why yes it is.

There's a screenshot out there somewhere of someone at the first Bloodsucker encounter who gets snuck up on and the bloodsucker that gets behind him is visible as a reflection in his scope before it mauls him, wish I could find it.
 

Logsi

Member
This game was the beginning of the end for me with PC gaming. Remember having a Pentium D clocked up to 4.2Ghz, 16GB RAM and a X1900XT-X and just barely got 10fps at 1680x1050...
 
Tried to play it and the world is just... Empty?


must've played a different game


Buggiest game I've ever played. Wish it wasn't released in such a shit state so I could look back on it fondly like everyone else. :(


Shadow of Cernobil was never a broken, unplayable mess as the internet and parts of this topic seems to have stabilized on. You can install right this minute the very first version of the game without anything else and it will be playable from start to finish. The bugs that it has are the usual collision ones, bodies may dissapear, some physics engine bugs, but thats about it. They're in a bit higher amount than ussual, but thats it. The way the bugs are repeated just wasnt the reality with Shadow of Cernobil. I mean, dont play vanilla? Unplayable mess? Buggiest game ive ever played? Eurojank at its finnest? No such thing.

I feel the state Clear Sky launched may have switched to the other games as time went on in the general perception ? I mean Call of Pripyat doesnt even have any patches because everything works, its has no issues. And i've been replaying Autumn Aurora now, with this mod i struggle to find even the smallest of bugs. Everything is tighter than its ever been.
 

Vintage

Member
Damn, I guess I'll need to replay it. Should I go with Complete mod of Autumn Aurora 2?

I loved how the game's world has little player agency. I seems the zone is living it's own life even without the player. You're just an intruder and unlike most of the other games, SoC doesn't cater to you to feel good. You can automatically get quests that are on the timer and you'll fail them if you don't finish in time. It can be annoying for some, but if felt so fresh and real after all these games where npcs just stand there forever waiting for you.
 

bati

Member
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.

Misery 2.xx is the GOAT. One of the finest gaming experiences I've ever had. Been looking for something like it for a while now but nothing measures up, not even remotely. There is one mod that somewhat captures that same feeling and that's Requiem for Skyrim (along with other mods to introduce hazardous environments). I love how I have to prepare for short trips in Misery, and it was all based on time of day and what my target was gonna be. JA2 1.13, even though it's a completely different genre and camera angle, also manages to capture that same essence.

I'd love to hear what other games/mods you consider to be worthy of even being mentioned in the same sentence as Misery, it's not often that I see people on this forum with preference for such experiences.

cheeki breeki
 

horkrux

Member
Vanilla Stalker is the best.
I also really enjoyed Clear Skies, unlike everyone else heh.

CS starts out well enough, but surely you didn't enjoy how it ended? I mean it turned into a completely linear corridor, with the last section being blatantly unfinished.
 
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.

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.

Thanks guys, sounds sick. Are retail copies of this still widely available? Hoping there's a demo so I can see how it runs on my shitty work desktop. Not even sure what the specs are.

Also, I'm going to start with Shadows..., what mod do you recommend, if any at all, to simply 'fix' whatever may be broken as I'm reading here. I don't really care so much about graphics and cosmetics in general since I'm worried that my desktop sucks too hard anyway.
 
This thread has made me upset that we don't have more games like STALKER. One of the most memorable, potent gaming experiences I've ever had. That the industry learned nothing from it is disheartening.
 

derFeef

Member
CS starts out well enough, but surely you didn't enjoy how it ended? I mean it turned into a completely linear corridor, with the last section being blatantly unfinished.

That is a total possibility. I can't remember anything about linear corridors.
But then I always played this games without actual goal and just try to survive, explore.
 
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