I grew up a massive lover of the fallout and Skyrim game series. I love games that allow you to play them the way YOU want. Whether that be stealthy, passive, aggressive, evil, etc.

As my gaming taste matured overtime, I began searching for deeper hardcore survival experiences like DayZ, Escape From Tarkov, Arena Breakout, etc.

I’ve been curious for some time if Stalker/Stalker Gamma could potentially scratch that Hardcore survival itch while keeping me coming back?

Side note: I hear a lot of people compare Stalker to the Metro games. I’m not the biggest fan of Metro’s gameplay/gunplay, it felt like it lacked a certain grounded heaviness for me. Although I very much enjoyed the immersive ambiance in all of the Metro games.

This is not about whether or not I hate anomaly just pointing out what is it about anomaly and it’s mod packs that make it controversial even with it's popularity and it seems to mainly boil down to 3 things

1 How distant it is from Stalker

I think it’s pretty well known how much Anomaly and especially its mod packs like GAMMA and EFP stray from OG stalker economy, looting, crafting, difficulty etc. But is this really a bad thing? Is it wrong try something new and add a unique twist to Stalker? I think most people would agree that it’s not and in the case of GAMMA it’s supposedly pretty customizable. Perhaps this may not be such a huge issue if it wasn’t for the second thing

1. How it’s popularity SEEMINGLY affected modding and the image of the Stalker series

Something that Anomaly and its modpacks seemed to get blamed for is what the modding scene has supposedly changed into because of Anomaly. Because Anomaly and it’s modpacks are more hardcore, more scavenging focused and more difficult a lot of new mods have supposedly centered around that trying be some diet Tarkov and day Z hybrid rather than adding on to stalker and if you look at the YouTube a lot of it seems to focus on how harcore tacticool or difficult the mods are and how the modding landscape seems to be some contest on how difficult and punishing they can make stalker mods and overall the modding landscape does seem to heavily skewer towards anomaly. Now I say supposedly because I’m not here to say whether or not this is actually true as Stalker modding itself is it's own rabbit hole but it does seem that way with what people see. Are the creators of Anomaly and it’s modpacks to blame for this? Or are they are being scapegoated? This popularity has also seemed to have shaped the perception of stalker making people think it is a more sci fi Tarkov lite hardcore Milsim rather than stalker and that leads into the third point.

1. Anomaly fans themselves

Many people claim that anomaly fans and it’s offshoots like GAMMA and EFP are nothing but a bunch tourists from games like escape from Tarkov, Ready or not, Day Z etc who not only not played the Stalker games but discard them entirely. I’ve personally seen more people complaining about these people rather than these people themselves. But this mindset is not only a disservice to stalker but also a disservice to the mods they’re trying to brush off Stalker with because those mods were never there to replace the Stalker games but rather to add unique twist to Stalker.

That seems to largely be it from what I’ve seen do you think these are warranted? No hatred towards anomaly or it’s creator or the creators of the modpacks just wanted to see what people thought of three main things of what make anomaly so controversial.

I guess a tiger stripe camo? XD

Mono Akbar, Monou akbar

rock movie 1996 Not gonna lie I was luving the camo clad in an Urban-variant of the M81 reminds me either of Hecu for half life or Monolith 🤤, thinking about monolith patterns used by various police and tactical teams backthen not sure :/. Maybe to OMOH blue and white :/

I assume that the dlc patch will be huge and adress a lot of problems this game has, but is it worth jumping in now or should I wait. I just started my first playthrough and I am noticing some problems but I still think its kinda enjoyable, the world is just very beautiful and fun to explore

https://reddit.com/link/1v30ko0/video/48xkirxqfoeh1/player

Could it be an anomaly? HAHAHAHAHA

I mean I see a lot of suggestion for Steam games. But none seem to be on PS5. I have done a lot of looking for myself and can’t seem to find any i’m interested in so any help?

I just like different settings. I don’t care if it’s South Korea, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, etc. But so many of these games just have the same looking locations. So I was just curious.

Stalker help I'm trying to sneak into the bandit camp but the clap of my ass cheeks keeps alerting them

Going off of the lore of the old games, clear sky started September 10th, days after the second great psy-emission. The year prior on August 17th, the first artifacts were found. What im getting at obviously is a release date... both of those are still summer where I live, lol. Let me know what yall think

idk which mod it is but i have localization on a couple of mods that needed it but for some reason it still doin this

the mods are.

1.skip intro

2.shay's: qol changes- 50%

3give us more guns main/npc addon with localization

4:backpacks

5:no quest cooldown

6:bloodsucker glowing eyes

7:mcm

8:lootable zone with localization

9:more realistic forest

10:dynamic weather overhaul

11:powerful bright flashlight

12:enhanced combat vfx

13:better ballistics redux

Idk about you guys but I seen a gameranxs episode of games releasing in August and cost of hope was there set for August 31st.. not sure where he got the insider on that info but hopefully it happens sooner

EDIT: People are missing the point in the comments. I'm talking about real situations like a firefight where enemies are at a distance, behind cover and you're getting shot at, not to mention potential weather conditions or time of day making visibility even worse. I don't think most players can tell which specific armor a NPC is using at a glance, at best they can tell apart from armor categories like an Exo or the ones with "capes" or hoods. When enemies are dead on the ground of course it's easy to distinguish such details, it just won't save you from friendly firing a Corpsman and turning the whole Yanov station against you or making Gaffer hate you for killing a loner while defending Zalissya.

This never felt like a problem in the older games. We got visual fidelity at the cost of readability. UE being super weird and almost an impressionistic painting at range doesn't help, especially for lower end PCs like mine that have to run the game on low and get extra blurry. Granted, the OG games had much simpler environments, so less visual noise and the models were simpler, making distinction easier. Even Military and Freedom being both "green" they were distinct enough for me not to mix them up. Freedom and ISPF now look much more alike. I don't expect nor want S2 to be "more like Gamma", but that modpack shows you can have more visual fidelity and keep factions visually distinct. The identification it provides when aiming at a NPC also works as an accessibility feature for people like me that don't have perfect vision nor run the game at 8k in a monitor as big as a window at a million fps.

Left is a Corps soldier, right is a Monolithian. That firefight outside Yanov station when the Monolith attack it is a nightmare for knowing who the fuck I can shoot. Out in the woods good luck telling an IPSF soldier from a Freedomer. Even Loners and Bandits are too alike. Makes me wish I could see NPC names and factions like in the older games, because often I have to wait for them to shoot me so I don't kill friendlies by accident.

I'm not even sure how I would tackle this. Maybe with a lot of grenades, but they can just send those back at me.

I finally got through to playing the Ward storyline and I take back everything I previously said about Faust having the biggest bag of bollocks boss fight in the entire franchise.

In true STALKER tradition, this was utterly infuriating, pointless, added nothing intrinsic to the storyline and served only to annoy and demotivate.

I can't wait to see what rampant nonsense awaits me now.

For context: xrMPE (x-ray Multiplayer Extension) is a modpack for Call of Pripyat that lets you play through the game with a squad of up to 4 people.

So, I dropped off from Stalker for a while, saw xrMPE, and thought it seemed fun, so I conscripted my boyfriend to play it with me. It's my first time playing CoP, prior to that I had only played SoC, S2, and Anomaly. I had never gone to Zaton or Yanov or the Outskirts in Anomaly so the game is completely new to me, and man, it's so great to experience it the first time with him.

It somehow maintains that tense and lonely and threatening atmosphere even when you're playing with someone else. Also, the additions to gunplay and the animations are welcome, while I definitely love the old Stalker aesthetic it doesn't detract from the experience at all.

So yeah, this is a message from me to you telling you to play it. It's so fun.

Hello, as the title says, I am trying to install OP2.2 on Arch Linux with the English translation and Infiltrator 1.36 DLC as well. I am having trouble with this. I managed to use WINE to get it set up in the folders, but booting it up through the .lnk it provided gives an error and I can then no longer see anything. My goal is to be able to have it as a Steam executable so I can boot it up through Steam, similar to what I have done with osu. I am hoping I can get help on this, as I am completely lost. Thank you.

I’ve been playing stalker Shadow of chornobyl and I wanted to play around with mods in the menu but the list of mods they have is TERRIBLE. It’s through mod.io and the best mod I can find changes the weapon animations. All I ask is a mod that makes it to where I don’t have to stand still every 5 seconds coming back from a mission. Tried looking on other mod websites but the game only supports mod.io. Should I hang it up and admit defeat? Or could somebody with mod knowledge help me out and add one.

What are you waiting for the most?

Personally, I'd much rather have a working game with better performance, adding up promised missing functionality. That on it's own would be enough to make every playthrough unique.

All the focus seems to be on DLC and not just from GSC marketing though...

Your thoughts?

I visited the Field Radiobiology Base again today after a long time. When I tried to stash some items in the small safe sitting on a shelf in one of the rooms, the door which used to have a padlock was simply locked shut and wouldn't open, no matter what I tried.

The game also crashed several times there, shortly after I had left the building through the back door and thrown grenades through the window into the room with the locked door.

That didn't happen when I went out the front door and threw grenades.

In general, I feel like the game has been running worse and worse for me over the last few months, at least in terms of how often it crashes. 🫣

Hi guys.

I startet playing a few days ago and now im a bit stuck, on my way to SIRCAA i got an emission and i cant find a way into the nearest bunker does anybody know how to get in there.