I’ll be breaking with my usual review format due to a summary of my tech problems for Stalker: Call of Pripyat (CoP). It is very unfortunate that I must not recommend this game due to the plethora of technical issues I experienced.

Some quick background, I played Shadow of Chernobyl (SoC) and it wasn’t great, lots of bugs and jankyness, but I got through it. I played Clear Sky(CS) next and thoroughly enjoyed the game. It was such an improvement over SoC that I was engrossed the entire time for my playthrough. Coming into CoP, I was even more excited to start up my playthrough before STALKER 2 comes out. Unfortunately, right out of the gate I was met with seemingly endless tech hurdles that made me give up trying CoP. Just for reference, here is my system:
i9-13900KF | RTX 4090 | 64GB RAM | 1440p @ 240hz | installed on SSD | Windows 11

I modded both SoC and CS, so I started looking into mods for CoP. I landed on only using a single one: Arsenal Overhaul. This mod was a package that bundled multiple mods together, but I ended up using Arsenal, Atmosfear, and Absolute Nature.

I ended up crashing and unable to load any save game. I then reinstalled the game and attempted the mods again.

Game seemed more stable, but I was then unable to move or open menus, it was like my keyboard wasn’t working. From googling, I then tried to put “-i” in the launch options, this worked for my keyboard.

After that I ended up playing for about 30 minutes only to have the game unable to play because despite being full screen my mouse cursor would leave the screen. This made the game literally unplayable because of my 2nd monitor to my right, every time I looked far enough to the right my cursor would go off screen and I’d try to shoot but the game would close. I ended up fixing this by moving my 2nd monitor diagonal to my main monitor to prevent the cursor from minimizing my window when I was looking horizontally.

It wasn’t too much longer after that I crashed when I tried to loot a mutant dog. I then installed a patch from Arsenal that allowed me to loot mutants. No more crashing from that.

Next crash occurred when I was moving items to my personal box, this caused me to lose a good 30 minutes. I was getting sick of the game at this point and was ready to call it quits, but I really wanted to play CoP, so I gave it one last chance.

I did another fresh install, removed Arsenal, but kept only the visual upgrade mods - Atmosfear and Absolute Nature. I made it about another 30 minutes before I crashed again.

I did yet another fresh install, no mods, and played for another 30 minutes before a crash.

Due to the performance issues of CoP on newer tech/operating systems, I cannot recommend this game.


You can find my curator page here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Synik_GR

I’ll be breaking with my usual review format due to a summary of my tech problems for Stalker: Call of Pripyat (CoP). It is very unfortunate that I must not recommend this game due to the plethora of technical issues I experienced. Some quick background, I played Shadow of Chernobyl (SoC) and it wasn’t great, lots of bugs and jankyness, but I got through it. I played Clear Sky(CS) next and thoroughly enjoyed the game. It was such an improvement over SoC that I was engrossed the entire time for my playthrough. Coming into CoP, I was even more excited to start up my playthrough before STALKER 2 comes out. Unfortunately, right out of the gate I was met with seemingly endless tech hurdles that made me give up trying CoP. Just for reference, here is my system: i9-13900KF | RTX 4090 | 64GB RAM | 1440p @ 240hz | installed on SSD | Windows 11 I modded both SoC and CS, so I started looking into mods for CoP. I landed on only using a single one: Arsenal Overhaul. This mod was a package that bundled multiple mods together, but I ended up using Arsenal, Atmosfear, and Absolute Nature. I ended up crashing and unable to load any save game. I then reinstalled the game and attempted the mods again. Game seemed more stable, but I was then unable to move or open menus, it was like my keyboard wasn’t working. From googling, I then tried to put “-i” in the launch options, this worked for my keyboard. After that I ended up playing for about 30 minutes only to have the game unable to play because despite being full screen my mouse cursor would leave the screen. This made the game literally unplayable because of my 2nd monitor to my right, every time I looked far enough to the right my cursor would go off screen and I’d try to shoot but the game would close. I ended up fixing this by moving my 2nd monitor diagonal to my main monitor to prevent the cursor from minimizing my window when I was looking horizontally. It wasn’t too much longer after that I crashed when I tried to loot a mutant dog. I then installed a patch from Arsenal that allowed me to loot mutants. No more crashing from that. Next crash occurred when I was moving items to my personal box, this caused me to lose a good 30 minutes. I was getting sick of the game at this point and was ready to call it quits, but I really wanted to play CoP, so I gave it one last chance. I did another fresh install, removed Arsenal, but kept only the visual upgrade mods - Atmosfear and Absolute Nature. I made it about another 30 minutes before I crashed again. I did yet another fresh install, no mods, and played for another 30 minutes before a crash. Due to the performance issues of CoP on newer tech/operating systems, I cannot recommend this game. [h1] [b] Recommend? [Y/N] [/b] [/h1] [h1]No[/h1] You can find my curator page here: https://steamcommunity.com/groups/Synik_GR