Best S.T.A.L.K.E.R experience in 2017

After a dozen or so hours on this, i think i'm finally able to conclude that this is as close as i'm going to get to my perfect video game. And i decided to spread some knowledge for anyone looking for a open world post-apocalyptic masterpiece that is as deep as a black hole.

Call of Chernobyl is a highly polished, stand-alone mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat (you download it in a seperate folder, only requires CoP to be installed on your computer) that features all the best elements of the entire S.T.A.L.K.E.R franchise, combining and balancing them with vast improvements all around.

The game itself is a huge S.T.A.L.K.E.R sandbox/open-world that carefully merges all the maps from the games into one complete Zone with an endless amount of aditional, well placed content to play around with. As a huge fan of the original trilogy, i've been constantly surprised by just how much effort went into improving the core experience, even the engine itself is vastly more optimized.

Best part are the addons for it. There are mods for Call of Chernobyl. My favorite, and what i would recommend starting out with are:

• Arsenal Overhaul (more weapons, better animations/textures, better sounds, etc.)
• Structures Redux (better graphics)
• Absolute Nature Redux (better graphics)

Just keeping it simple; modern weapon animations that complements the brilliant gunplay and all around better graphics. Needless to say that the modding community surrounding the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series is huge, and there's always the change that something that comes out that blows everything away.

Now if you'll excuse me, i'll be in Chernobyl for a few hours. Gotta finish some killing contracts for Sidorovich, that bastard isn't paying me as much as i'd deserve.

sounds awesome, might have to check this out!

did you ever play Stalker: Lost Alpha? Quite buggy but some incredible environments and atmosphere, even by Stalker standards

It's pretty much the ultimate S.T.A.L.K.E.R experience.. well, for 'normal' gamers. There's also Call of Misery, which is sort of a port, or a transfer of sorts, of the well known Misery mod from Call of Pripyat, but in Call of Chernobyl.

It's good. It's perfect for what it's trying to do, incredibly atmospheric, but it's not for me. It's the ultimate, final stalker experience. It's where you go wen you digested everything els surrounding S.T.A.L.K.E.R. It's brutally difficult, and only meant for hardcore fans.

Anyway, nah, i never had the time to check out Shadow of Chernobyl's mods like Oblivion Lost, or Lost Alpha. I just stuck with graphics mods and patches.

Thanks for the heads up, wasn't aware of this thing's existence. The STALKER games are among my favourite.

I think the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series is highly overrated. I like the atmosphere and the combat, but the polish and presentation is lacking. The missions, story, and characters are boring and uninteresting. I only finished the first one and tried the sequels, but they didn't do it for me. The Metro games are much better IMO. I would love to see an open world Metro.

I have to download this. SoC is one of my favorite videogames to this day. I keep trying to get my friends to play it, but they have a hard time seeing past the outdated graphics.

Hell yeah. I've been wanting to play the STALKER games for years. Nice post.

If you want to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R, i highly recommend starting with the first one - Shadow of Chernobyl. It's, by far, the best one in the series and the best introduction to the Zone.

Just grab it off GOG, and get the essential STARTER PACK. That pack contains everything you need from bug fixes to better graphics making Shadow of Chernobyl a flawlessly polished piece of software ready to be enjoyed in 2017.

Never ever bother with the "Complete" mods. They are, at this point, extremely outdated in all respects.

@Lucianu: I don't know what you mean by "outdated," but complete for soc is updated to the latest patch of the game, and works fine.

@Lucianu: Cool. Thanks for the tips.

Just wish I have a good pc to play this, it really looks like my cup of tea.

I meant that "Complete" is an amalgam of very outdated mods. For example, it incorporates a much older version of ZRP (Zone Reclamation Project - it's the best pure bug fix mod), while the newest version is the best one. Same goes with its old texture assets. There are much better graphics mods out there these days.

If you wanna mod Shadow of Chernobyl, you might as well get the best, most up to date shit, lol. It's free, afterall.

@Lucianu: This sounds awesome dude. I gotta get back to Stalker.

I had no idea this was a thing.

I still prefer Shadow of Chernobyl with the complete mod. I just like the scenarios and overall feel better in that game. Call of Pripyat was good, but still a step down from that game. It just wasn't the hot mess that Clear Skies was.

Ye, not a fan of Clear Sky, don't outright hate it, but aside from the opening level which is pretty neat would happily skip it.

Yeah, me too. Shadow of Chernobyl is far more atmospheric, the monster encounters are far more memorable, and the world feels much more alive. More dangerous. More ambitious, i guess. It's rough around the edges, but you polish those rough edges with carefully, and passionately constructed mods that make SoC a true masterpiece. Call of Pripyat felt.. sterile in comparison, the Zone was fantastic, but.. toned down, felt more robotic, more predictable. Allthough it's the most polished out of the box. Apparently, the Misery mod is brilliant, but i'm not ready for that one.

Anyway, Call of Chernobyl has Shadow of Chernobyl's world in it, fatefully remade with a lot of additional exploration incentives.

Was thinking about returning to the franchise. Now I have more reasons to do so.