Author Topic: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.  (Read 63332 times)

Offline |7th|Nighthawk

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Re: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
« Reply #465 on: 26-05-2018, 17:05:01 »
Yes, for all of it's faults it's still a gem. The only one I am not too keen on replaying is Clear Sky though. The faction wars were a nice idea but it was such a hassle to keep up with. Apparently Fallout 4 has a similar problem ;D
I remember getting to the final mission with the sunrise suit because that part where they explained to you how to get artifacts I apparently missed. Since everything else was dirt cheap to sell and extremely expensive to buy, I could not afford much and thus the game became super hard. I also had trouble to stop Strelok in time because every hit by the Monolith guys nearly killed me and had me patching me up instead of shooting him.
It's a bit peculiar that I won this game only by Strelok falling through those gangways which had him get stuck so that it was an easy kill for me.

The third one was the most well rounded one in my opinion. It had generally more freedom, explanation and polish but the world lost a bit of that dense melancholic atmosphere that especially Shadow of Chernobyl had in my book.

It's a bit funny that none of the characters in the game really stand out except for their meme lines that everyone knows.
"I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that..."

Offline :| Hi

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Re: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
« Reply #466 on: 25-06-2018, 10:06:31 »
The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 announcement was a day to remember. I don't think I've ever had Tor blow my steam up so much  ;D

[2:06:54 PM] Tolga: cant use tha shit underwater -Tolga on the G3

Offline Torenico

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Re: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
« Reply #467 on: 26-06-2018, 04:06:31 »
Anyone played Dead Air?. It looks very cool, but I'll take your experiences before playing it myself.

Just when I finished downloading Anomaly.



Man, there are so many mods for Stalker right now. Back in the day there used to be like, 3. Complete, stuff like Oblivion Lost, AMK, and so on. The STALKER modding community looks stronger than ever!


Offline |7th|Nighthawk

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Re: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
« Reply #468 on: 26-06-2018, 10:06:39 »
I've discovered it and it does look great. I will wait till they say something about gun mods though because I was very happy with StCOP and don't want to play without it on my next playthrough.

Yes, and the stuff is still quite high quality and even the visuals are amazing for a game of that age.
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Re: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
« Reply #469 on: 29-06-2018, 04:06:31 »
That feel when S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 will probably be out before Gunslinger is   ;)

[2:06:54 PM] Tolga: cant use tha shit underwater -Tolga on the G3

Offline |7th|Nighthawk

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Re: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
« Reply #470 on: 29-06-2018, 12:06:40 »
Hah, true, but if S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 stays true to it's tradition, it will have awful animations which will make Gunslinger look great still.
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Offline Torenico

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Re: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
« Reply #471 on: 09-07-2018, 17:07:18 »
I have been playing some ANOMALY for the last couple of hours, very recommended indeed!

The author keeps the mod up to date and releases patches very often, and even listens to people at the Moddb site.

The game?, well it looks very good and it plays very good. It's very similar to Misery and Call of Misery.




And even after all of this I'm still trying to clean up the car park in Cordon from bandits... the game just took a big dump in my almost decade long STALKER experience... I'm just having one of the most intense firefights I ever had in my Stalker experience. I'm getting schooled by them, I'm not entirely sure if they're using actual tactics or what but I often find myself engaging a big group of bandits and one of them sneaks up from behind and fills my back with lead...

I tried sneaking into the Car park, but in the firefight I was attacked literally from all sides, completely pinned down behind a rock.
« Last Edit: 09-07-2018, 17:07:27 by Torenico »


Offline Flippy Warbear

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Re: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
« Reply #472 on: 09-07-2018, 18:07:57 »
What is ANOMALY about? Can you link it?

Offline Torenico

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Re: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
« Reply #473 on: 09-07-2018, 18:07:25 »
What is ANOMALY about? Can you link it?

Sure thing:

https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly

It's completely standalone as far as I can tell, I don't have a CoC copy installed but I do have a CoP copy installed.

Try it out, I think it'll be worth it.


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Re: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
« Reply #474 on: 09-07-2018, 19:07:02 »
I'll have to wait until the autumn in order to have the time to sink into STALKER again, so I'll put this behind my ear until then. Looks interesting.  :)

Offline Torenico

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Re: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
« Reply #475 on: 13-08-2018, 06:08:43 »


Oh you Stalker...

I think CoC/Anomaly/Last Day/Whatever offer the most realistic experience. It has nothing to do with shooting mechanics, the survival aspect, the AI, no. You're just a stalker, pretty much on your own. You're no hero, you're no Strelok, you're no Merc or Major disabling powerful Psi-emitters, taking down pretty much the entire Monolith faction or making your way to a ghost city taking down hordes of Monolith fags.

You're (INSERT YOUR NAME HERE), a lone guy trying to make a living in the zone. It's open to you, you don't have an actual goal, you just go around talking to other stalkers, asking them if they need help.

If the Zone was real, it would probably be like that. Common loners doing various missions, earning their cash working pretty hard. You'll have factions fighting for territory and mutants hunting down the remains or lone stalkers. And you fit into any of those, maybe you'll like to be a cheeki breeki adidas lover robbing loners or some rock fanatic helping your faction take over the entire zone...

Well, you can be the hero and disable the "Miracle Machine", you have some sort of "Story Mode" but it's optional.

Still, I had a mission at the Truck Cemetery, a new area. I had two contracts to kill two stalkers right there. As soon as I got there, under the rain, one of my targets was killed in a firefight with the military. I still had one guy left to kill, so I slowly made my way into the cemetery. It was filled with old trucks and vehicles, some of them with radiation. I encountered a party of Zombified stalkers chilling around, all armed with shitty sawed-off shotguns and Makarovs. I dispatched them with my near broken silenced AEK-971. I looked around for a good place to stay while the storm passes.

I saw a big tower, you know the very same towers that you'll find scattered around in the Great Swamps. So I sneaked into one of those, avoiding another party of zombified stalkers mixed with actual zombies. I had a fantastic view from up there, scanning the horizon I quickly spotted the glow of a campfire about 250 meters from my position, a pack of Boars, a group of Fleshes and two creatures.

These guys are called Lurkers I think, they're a chimera-like monster, they run very fast, they jump but unlike a chimera, they don't deal a lot of damage nor have a lot of health. These two guys were chasing off a boar, from the safety of my tower I was able to watch the new mutant working, I'm not sure if he killed the boar or not, but he passed twice next to my tower without seeing me, or maybe he did, I dunno, I don't have any indicators in my HUD anymore. While watching the local mutants do shit, my target was killed by a flesh. Damn.

Well, that was enough for me. I decided to pack my things up and leave before the emission that was going to happen in a few hours, according to the PDA. When I got to the stairs I heard that dreadful sound. I couldn't see him, but that's always his intention.

I rushed back upstairs and took out my MP-133 shotgun, and the waiting game began. A few minutes after, the monster ran into some anomaly and died. Welp. That was my very first encounter with a Bloodsucker in Anomaly so far, good thing it ended in a spectacular way for me. I haven't had the chance to meet more still, I've been to Cordon, Great Swamps, Dark Valley (Apparently a bandit killed one according to PDA messages), Meadows (new area, very small but fun imo), Garbage (saw a Lurker, a Snork and a Burer, pretty high tier for a southern area), Rostok, Truck Cemetery and Army Warehouses so far... I wonder how many high tier mutants would you encounter up north, in places like Pripyat.




I like Anomaly. It's not super hardcore, yet it's still a challenge. It's a good mix between realism and fun.


I haven't played much of Dead Air yet, it seems that it needs a lot of work, especially because the mod is confused on what the developers are trying to achieve...
« Last Edit: 13-08-2018, 07:08:32 by Torenico »


Offline |7th|Nighthawk

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Re: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
« Reply #476 on: 13-08-2018, 10:08:46 »
Hey Torenico,

since you've played them all, which one do you recommend to play? I've enjoyed CoM quite a bit so far and I've been thinking of picking up Last Day next. Is it as free? I've heared that Dead Air e.g. takes away quite a bit of choice when it comes to faction and balancing which is something I find a bit frustrating to say the least. I dislike degrading artifacts and they stated it was a hard factor in their mod.
Maybe I should consider Anomaly as well.

If you look up the Dead Air Mod DB site, you'll find a lot of comments about bugs. That and the aforementioned cutbacks on customization kinda put me off of it and it's too bad that they stopped working on CoM.
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Offline Torenico

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Re: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
« Reply #477 on: 13-08-2018, 17:08:51 »
I actually haven't played any of those. I did play CoC with addons but it kept crashing, gave up and moved into something else..

Sometime after I found the news about Dead Air in r/Stalker, when I was looking at it I also saw a post about Anomaly.

I downloaded both of them. Played anomaly, loved it at first sight, played Dead Air but I fucked up the translation, never bothered to fix it and I was conditioned by the negative reviews and critics of shitty gameplay elements...

When they get their shit together I will give it a go. So far, Anomaly is all I want. It's stable (it's actually 64bit), crashes once every week (human weeks..!) and it's a lot of fun, the mod author is very present (he's taking a break right now) and keeps the mod updated.

I've had only two crashes so far, no big bugs either. I can't speak for the other mods. Anomaly is the one to go if you want a more "hardcore" Misery-like experience with sandbox gameplay.


Offline |7th|Nighthawk

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Re: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
« Reply #478 on: 15-08-2018, 09:08:47 »
Ah alright. Odd, CoM has been running very stable for me and it is based on CoC. Alas my laptop sometimes dislike when there's too much stuff to load (like in the truck cemetery or the swamps) and I get the occasional frame drops.

I think I'll also skip Dead Air for a bit for the very same reasons as you. I would argue that the dev, while having a vision for that mod, kinda dropped what made CoC/CoM intriguing in the first place.

Do you have as much choice in Anomaly? I read your description of the events and also saw that new mutant. Now I have to wonder: Almost every mod that added new mutants felt unfinished to me. The zombies and even the Izhloms are cut content and mostly fine but already the cats feel highly unfinished and break the immersion (oh and they are OP as hell in a lot of mods. I think OGSE made them the grim reaper of the zone) for an example. That lurker thing at least does not look too wonky but are there other new mutants?

I could not find a content description on the ModdB site, do you happen to know if one exists? I would love to compare it to CoM.

I think my most respected mutant will always be the bloodsucker. There are way more dangerous ones like the Chimera and the Controller but the bloodsucker was the first scary one I encountered in Shadow of Chernobyl and to this day it's combat technique makes you dart around anxiously while trying to predict it's next angle of attack.

[video]https://puu.sh/y7tIS.flv[/video]


Well that did not work. Don't know how to embed it so there you go instead:

https://puu.sh/y7tIS.flv

Video of last year, recorded on a 2012 HP business laptop. I apologize for the low quality video and shitty FPS - it also made the fight way harder :D

EDIT: Yes, I know, I'm a crosshair using noob. Bear in mind that a lot of the times, when I ADS in the areas I mentioned before, I get bigger lag. I'm building a desktop computer finally now so that that will hopefully be history now.
« Last Edit: 15-08-2018, 09:08:12 by |7th|Nighthawk »
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Offline Torenico

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Re: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
« Reply #479 on: 18-08-2018, 16:08:04 »
You can try Dead Air, maybe with the correct tweaks (which you can find in the addons page at moddb) it'll become "tolerable" or whatever. But it doesn't seem to have the same freedom of choice as the other mods. There's some BS like a pack of mutants rushing at you from the other side of the map just to kill you, making the game a bit artificially difficult.

As for the choice in Anomaly, well, yes, it's a Sandbox game. You can travel around the zone while being part of any faction you want (except zombified of course heh), except all the areas to the north of Yantar-Radar, someone turned the Miracle Machine and the Brain Scorcher on again, you can choose to deactivate them if you play in in "Story Mode". But as for freedom yes, it's very sandbox-ish.

The new mutant I saw was pretty convincing, it did blend in with the zone quite well IMO, the animations seem to be borrowed from the Chimera, as I kinda consider the Lurker a "baby Chimera" of some sort. As for the other ones, well, they remain unchanged, Animations are not Stalker's strongest point, while the gun reload animations are much much better now (you know how AWFUL vanilla's reload anims are..., too fast and completely out of sync), the other animations, especially those regarding mutants, other stalkers and 3rd person, are still the same.

As for the description, well, I couldn't find one either. It's like a heavily modded vanilla CoC running on a 64bit engine. I haven't played COM (My only experience was with Misery a couple of years ago), but I suspect it's pretty hardcore-ish. While Anomaly has some hardcore elements, it's a bit more arcadey. I'm sitting on a decent amount of rubles and I have one week in the zone so far, so I can pay for my food without problems and I can afford a Sunrise suit to replace with totally destroyed Overcoat. You can turn on things like Hardcore Economy (which I haven't had enough time to test, I had it turned off for the most part of my playthrough) and stuff like Hardcore AI Aim which would attempt to fix the horrendous AI aiming..

As for the Bloodsucker, I agree. I shit my pants whenever I hear one, it may not be the strongest (I like how CoP buffed them with that "kiss" they do) but it is certainly the most scary.

Chimeras might be the strongest, a lot of health and a lot of damage, combined with the ability to ambush you out of nowhere.

I must say I love the variety of mutants in Stalker. You have the invisible guy, the dwarf guy that shoots heat, throws stuff at you and created a barrier which stops bullets, the flying electricity ball that throws shit at you, the guy that fries your brain and has that very unique attack which literally blows your mind and so on...