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S.T.A.L.K.E.R does open world so right.

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Omega Kirby

Member
I'm close to death. After a surviving a mutant ambush, I make my way back to the village but I'm slowly bleeding out and also radiation poisoning has done a number on me, I probably wouldn't make it. I quickly look at my map and see there's a stash left by someone in an abandoned farm. It was my only hope. I quickly made my way to the stash inside the farm, it was a cloudy afternoon.

I found the stash, inside was a medpack and some bullets for my shotgun, good. Then I heard a growl[, I quickly look behind but nothings there, but its getting louder.. Shotgun prepared I stand my ground and out of fucking nowhere

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I picked up the Stalker series a few months ago, and the game clicked with me instantly. It shot up right into my top 5 series of all times. The maps are not huge but they're alive.

The Ai feel like they live each day, searching for artifacts, fighting mutants, ambushing other humans, looting their corpses before returning back to their campfires to play guitar and harmonica music all night till the sun rises. This game really immerses you in a bleak and mysterious world where walking down the same path twice is never the same. You could get ambushed by blind dogs, meet friendly stalkers passing by, get in a firefight with bandits.

You could be searching for artifacts before a blaring siren goes off warning you of an incoming emission. You panic and quickly dash for the closest cover. The AI also make their way to cover. Anybody unfortunate to make it are shredded to pieces. Its always fills you with curiosity what you will find out there, a friendly npc could end up on the other side of the map . But he could die on his journey by god knows what. Every event seems to be non scripted and its just amazing and funny,

Nature is also alive where you can witness packs of dogs attacking a herd of herbivores. Some die others run into an anomaly and implode into a bloody pulp.

Combat is tactical and you never feel powerful, sure you have better armor and guns but the enemy is still relentless, guerrilla warfare wins the day.
Night time is creepy, the howling in the distance, the gush of winds, and those damn anomalies just waiting for you to fall into their rat traps.


The stalker series is really something special
 
Yes, yes it does, STALKER is the objectively best game of all time.

Every time one of those threads pop up where the premise is like, Best night protrayal, Best atmosphere, best shooting mechanics, best gunplay, best AI, best w/e, STALKER is fucking constant.
 
Yep, the STALKER trilogy is incredible. Just amazing atmosphere and a real feeling that the world is alive and functioning without you. You don't feel like the star of the show, you're just another sorry soul stuck in this radioactive hell.

I hope someday a developer has the balls to make something half as interesting.
 
One thing (of many) I loved about the STALKER games is that sometimes a location genuinely has nothing in it. It's weird to call that a virtue, but sometimes exploring just gives you some scenery and some enemies. Sometimes it gives you loot. Many open world games try too hard to make everything matter to the point where there are no highs or lows, just a kind of dull medium. In STALKER I felt like I was just one of hundreds of people exploring and scavenging, and that's good sometimes.
 
Back in the days, this was the game that I hyped the living shit out (along with Doom 3, UT2004, Far Cry and Half-Life 2) - but this was the only game out of those that I never actually played - mostly because people said it was insanely glitchy.

I remember watching those pre-alpha videos of the AI system in action. God damn, that was a long time ago.
 
Unique atmosphere. Never been bested.

Provided me with the most protracted, tense and engrossing fights of any game ever.
 
Yoshichan said:
Back in the days, this was the game that I hyped the living shit out (along with Doom 3, UT2004, Far Cry and Half-Life 2) - but this was the only game out of those that I never actually played - mostly because people said it was insanely glitchy.

I remember watching those pre-alpha videos of the AI system in action. God damn, that was a long time ago.
Click to expand...

You should correct this terrible mistake. Install the STALKER Complete mods and have at it.
 
I agree. In S.T.A.L.K.E.R the world feels dynamic, while in Fallout and Skyrim it feels more like the world is waiting for you.
 
I always meant to play more of these, but never got more than a few hours into any of the entries. Perhaps this is the perfect time to give it another go.
 
Love an open world where the things in it feel like they were not just put there waiting for you, the master of this place, to take them. This is not amusement park catered to you, you are encouraged to run away and leave things behind, rather than to "clean" every room there is.
 
afternoon delight said:
Would you all advise a first playthrough of SoC with the 2009 Complete Mod?
Click to expand...

Yea the Complete mods are like a directors cut. It's not trying to change the experience, just fix some bugs and touch up the visuals a bit. Playing Complete will give you the proper STALKER experience.

Some of the other popular mods, while excellent, change the experience so much that they may as well be entirely new games.
 
Completely agreed, it' a top 5 franchise of mine. The atmosphere of the game is phenomenal too. I love the combination of a FPS game with an RPG layer and open world and it's the only series of games that have done that combination right. Also I've always loved the setting of The Zone/Chernobyl, been planning on actually taking a trip with those guides that take you into the Zone IRL. IMO it's quite underrated, you also need to get past the initial area in Shadow of Chernobyl to start experiencing what the series is really about, I feel the initial area of the game doesn't give a good impression of what the game is like.

I also like how the bandits, stalkers and general AI work. There are great moments where you are sneaking around in the dark, thunderstorm, seeping atmosphere, and you hear a gun fight break out in the distance, not knowing if some bandits/stalkers are being mauled by mutants or if they're fighting each other. It's very "life-like", things are happening "naturally". Also when you clear out maybe a little camp of bandits that have taken over, I've noticed that maybe other bandits or stalkers will populate it, maybe get murdered by mutants and find that mutants now have settled the area and kill people passing by, etc. I've played Shadow of Chernobyl and Call of Pripyat multiple times, so many different things happen. The game is so well designed where things "organically" happen. I just love the series so much, the atmosphere is what drives this game though. It seeps with it.

I also love delving in the underground labs and shit, always so tense for me.

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Also gotta love the guitar players at camps...
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afternoon delight said:
Would you all advise a first playthrough of SoC with the 2009 Complete Mod?
Click to expand...

A lot of people recommend the complete mods but I do realise that it adds two things I don't like. Firstly, guns are rebalanced, the game was kind of made for weapons to degrade and also not always be "good", i.e they can get jammed, accuracy can be bad on some guns if bad stats/damaged, etc. With the complete mod I find it has made that too easy with how it rebalanced it BUT a lot of people prefer it. Also, the complete mod adds a sleeping bag, when I played the complete mod I found myself using the sleeping bag to get out of night time... but that's when the best gameplay happens, night time is tense and atmospheric, using the sleeping bag was ruining that for me. So if you do play the complete mod, the only thing I recommend is do not use it! Also I HIGHLY RECOMMEND "The Zone Reclamation Project", it's a community mod that fixes tons of bugs.

Refer to my post here about what I recommend for mods. It also includes the 90 FoV modifier.

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=161433160&postcount=14
 
I only played the game when it was nighttime in-game. Darkness in the game is ACTUAL darkness.

It's great that the A.I didn't just magically know where you were if you alerted them. It made for a lot of tense gunfights where I was hiding right next to the enemy.
 
Yup, one of the very few open-worlds I was truly immersed in. It felt real in its own sense.

I only played SoC, however. I should maybe consider playing CoP, too.
 
I really liked how dark the night was when playing Call of Pripyat. Adding night vision to your gear made such a huge difference.

It also felt fair that the AI didn't seem to function without any hindrance at all at night while you couldn't see anything. Which is one of the things that bothered me when playing MGSV for example, you can turn down the brightness enough that the nights are about as dark as you expect but the game becomes unplayable as the AI is designed with the expectations that the environment is still super bright and you can see everything.
 
I want to say that i love these games, but i've never gotten past the first main missions in soc and i lost my pripyat disc. Currently using autumn aurora in shadow of chernobyl. Should i play vanilla first? I love aurora but apparently vanilla is way better than i remember.
 
Lostconfused said:
I really liked how dark the night was when playing Call of Pripyat. Adding night vision to your gear made such a huge difference.

It also felt fair that the AI didn't seem to function without any hindrance at all at night while you couldn't see anything. Which is one of the things that bothered me when playing MGSV for example, you can turn down the brightness enough that the nights are about as dark as you expect but the game becomes unplayable as the AI is designed with the expectations that the environment is still super bright and you can see everything.
Click to expand...

Agreed, it's one of the few complaints I have about the AI (even though it is great in many other areas). I've always wanted to see a mod that can rebalance that, making it harder to detect you if it's darker. Unfortunately it's a trap a lot of games fall in, but I still love the darkness due to the atmosphere.

Inkvoterad said:
I want to say that i love these games, but i've never gotten past the first main missions in soc and i lost my pripyat disc. Currently using autumn aurora in shadow of chernobyl. Should i play vanilla first? I love aurora but apparently vanilla is way better than i remember.
Click to expand...

Yeah the early part of SoC is an issue, it's a bit boring, once you start moving a bit forward in the game it opens up so much like exploring the labs, etc. All I can recommend is push through it, I know a few people that gave up a few times with SoC because they struggled with the beginning part, but once they got through it gets better and better and gives that STALKER experience. Call of Pripyat fortunately doesn't have that issue and is solid all the way through. In SoC the lull is in the beginning, rest is great.
 
I gave this game several tries but never finished it. I absolutely love the atmosphere and the sense of dread you feel while playing, but the gameplay just felt so bland. A real shame since I really wanted to like it.

Are there any mods that make the game better? :P
 
Yup, probably my favorite open world(s). With Pripyat and that global lighting in lightning storms at night, just amazing atmosphere. Really feels like a world full of a batshit insane menagerie of mutants roaming around waiting to kill any and everything. Really wish more devs tried to replicate that dynamic feeling of its world. Metro LL had moments in the gated outdoor sections but it just made me want the whole enchilada.
 
The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series are an absolute masterpiece, despite the many hurdles it encountered. It may have not lived up to all the bold statements that were promised, but this game was a panacea to the bland world of tried and tested AAA titles, and ventured bravely to new territory. Along with Crysis, this series was a validation to PC gaming during a dark time, when it seemed the world was stacked against it. Not to mention it was the poster-boy for sweet, sweet parallax mapping.
 
RyudBoy said:
I gave this game several tries but never finished it. I absolutely love the atmosphere and the sense of dread you feel while playing, but the gameplay just felt so bland. A real shame since I really wanted to like it.

Are there any mods that make the game better? :P
Click to expand...

If you tried vanilla, give the complete mod a shot.
 
Yeah, STALKER trilogy is the best and my gamer heart broke when GSC closed and people there went to make free to play game next :(

Call of Pripyat especially, huge areas, unique anomalies, amazing quests...one of the best games ever made. Now that GSC opened again, I really hope they will contract Vostok games for another STALKER..
 
They are a very special brand of open-world that no one else has done. Exploring the zone feels how you would expect it to feel. Just the right scope and attention to detail.

And it's certainly in the top 3 best gaming atmospheres ever.

Still praying for a STALKER 2 someday.
 
Best series of all time, with the best mod community of all time.
Misery, complete, Arsenal Overhaul, Stalker soup, and upcoming Ray of Hope and Gunslinger.
Great stuff.
 
Really good game. It's not even really open world, not in the totally free-form since anyway. It's sort of takes the hand-crafted large environment design style (like a lot of PS2 JRPGs actually) to a technical level that hasn't been surpassed yet.

Judging by this thread I think that's why some people consider it a GOAT. Along with Crysis 1 in 2007 it's one of the last PC games to try to push gameplay systems like level design and emergent worlds into truly uncharted waters. First person games were always moving forward technologically from Ultima Underworld to DOOM to Quake to Half-Life to Deus Ex and so-on until progress sort of stopped after 2007. Call of Duty 4 came out that year and the whole industry -- including the PC developers that switched to consoles, decided to move in that direction (or the Ubisoft direction) without really advancing beyond it. Crysis 1 and STALKER ended up representing a sort of zenith of the old progression, or perhaps a possible alternate path for singleplayer FPSs. Today the last FPS you have pushing any further is ArmA.

From all I'd heard about STALKER I assumed it to be some kind of entirely systemic open-world game, but when I finally played it I was surprised at how linear and heavily scripted it was at times (talking about Shadow of Chernobyl), and how well it accomplished this. A lot of the time it honestly reminded me of Resident Evil 4 in terms of pacing. Its world design is a really interesting middle ground between linear and open-world. In some ways it accomplished what Far Cry 2 was attempting.

Aside from that STALKER provides a sort of specific FPS-RPG mix I like that you don't get in other shooters. Combat feels really lethal and tactical like a good action-oriented FPS, but the inventory and story progression are more like a CRPG. I wish a lot more action games did that.

I've only had time to play SoC and Call of Pripyat once, and mostly vanilla at that, but if I can I'll try to go back to a heavily modded SoC.
 
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