Recent reviews by Tronex

Immersive How-to-Skyrim guide:
1. get nostalgic, time to replay
2. spend days looking up mods
2. throw too much mods, half of them probably have "immersion" or "immersive" or both in their names
3. spend most of your time modding and testing rather than playing
4. start playing (for real)
5. oh what's this? more mods to try out??!!
6. keep modding until it breaks for good
7. repeat

Tips:
- don't use quick travel, walk the roads and mountains. You won't regret it because you will discover alot of things in your adventures
- don't ignore the dlcs, they are big and worthy
- have fun, this game won't die

This game brings back oooold memories, it was one of my fav childhood games
A fantasy version of the original Doom, and its still a blast to play even after all these years

I advice anyone to play it with ZDoom for stability & extra futures

Long review ahead:
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat (CoP) is the last game in stalker trilogy and a sequal to the first game's events Shadow of Chernobyl (ShoC).

While ShoC captures that creepy charming atmosphere & story, CoP captures the dynamic stalker experience.

CoP consists of 3 maps only unlike the plenty of maps in the previous games, but this time they are big, rich & meaningful.
There's no tutorial or anything, you need to find your way by yourself to meet stalkers & exploring the world around you.

Lets sum up the most important parts:

• Exploring in CoP is important cause almost every single part in every map contain something useful. You're gonna move forward & backward many times to get things done.
  The game forces you to explore in order to get better, it's one of the main features of this game.
  
  
• Choice making is an important aspect of CoP, now you have the choice to do some missions differently.
  You are not restricted to a specific formula. while this aspect exists in the previous games, it has been greatly expanded with CoP.
  Your actions will affect the ending.
  
  
• The zone feels alive & dynamic even more than before.
  You will see dogs & mutants attacking stalkers and dragging the dead bodies to their hideouts.
  you will see stalkers camping & talking about their stories, searching anomalies around for any artifacts, rushing to take cover from emissions, wondering around the place in search for goodies or looting corpses of other stalkers.
  That's the A-life system in stalker, it's impressive and non-scripted.
  
  
• A less buggy game than the previous games. you will get stable FPS with no crashes for the most part.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series known as a flewd gem for a reason, it introduces a great experience but suffers from many problems:

• AI system can be buggy & stupid at times. for example, enemies may stare at each others for long time without reacting.
  
• The visuals become worse, weapons models are total garbage & you'll see the grass growing wherever you move around (thump up for modding community)
  
• What were they thinking with the english voice acting? its like a bunch of drunk russians trying to throw jokes & shades around in english
  
• The story is short, the objective is small & clear. it's not as impressive as ShoC story.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series has one of most dedicated modding communities around, especially when we talk about a 10-years old series.
There're lots of mods out there for CoP, but i don't recommend installing any mod that alter the experience or balance in anyway for your first playthrough.

I will suggest simple textures replacing mods, here's my list.

• AtmosFear 3 greatly improves skybox, weather & emissions visuals.
  
• Absolute Nature high-res textures pack for nature-related visuals, a must-install.
  
• Absolute Structures same as above, this is for structures.
  
• Original Weapons Renewal 3 will replace all terrible vanilla weapon models with high-quality ones.

But what about Misery mod?!
Misery is a game changer, it touches all aspects in CoP to introduce hardcore gameplay (hence the name)
DO NOT touch it on your first playthrough!


S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series is a must-try for fps fans imo.
It doesn't offer groundbreaking visual effects or trying to act like a big budget overloaded game. it offers its own lore and sucks you inside its charming world.

If you're new to the series, play the 3 games in their release orders (ShoC > Clear Sky > CoP)
If you finished all of them, say hello to ModDB's Mod of the Year 2016: Call of Chernobyl (CoC)
CoC is a stalker sandbox built on CoP engine which includes all maps & factions from the 3 stalker games alongside with new maps and mechanics.
Not only that, but modders made tons of mods for it to enhance your experience.


Now get out of here stalker, enjoy your adventures.

Hmmm where to start?! first i'll let you know that this review includes some cheeki breeki spoilers
I continued my journey with STALKER series & here's a full list of S.T.A.L.K.E.R Clear Sky's pros & cons comparing to Shadow of Chernobyl:

> Improved, better looking UI
> Improved visuals, you got sun rays now for example.
> Upgradable weapons & armors with many cool futures.
> Improved map including new useful markers.
> Clear sky combines old maps with new interesting ones.
> Artifacts now are extremely rare and could only be found by using a detector, but they're quite profitable and worthy, which make a lot of sense based on S.T.A.L.K.E.R's lore. unlike ShoC where you can find cheap artifacts floating everywhere.
> Faction wars: you can join a faction and start a war against the enemy faction by helping your friends to occupy important checkpoints & bases with providing support along the way.

> Hit detection is broken: it suppose to be somehow "realistic" by using real-time bullet mechanics, the main problem is that weapons accuracy is garbage (you aim with the ironsight on something & click the trigger, bullets don't hit the exact point cause ♥♥♥♥ aiming) there're only few weapons that could hit accurately.
> Some weapons Upgrades are broken: i used an AK which moves up due to the high recoil, then upgraded it by reducing the recoil, the freakin gun now moves down on shooting.
> Try shooting a controller with a shotgun directly on his face, then come back to tell me how many shells it took you to kill him.
> Lots of Bugs, i had many CTD across the entire game, the X-Ray engine is not stable & you'll face a lot of problems especially on DX10 settings
> Quicksave, then hit a quickload: you'll see a different weather, whoa magic!!
> NPCs have huge ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ invisible walls, you'll constantly find yourself in situations where you want to take cover from enemies fire, then some smartass'll come to hide next to you & knock you out!
> NPCs can throw grenades right between your legs, protect your balls.
> Faction wars system is somehow broken, you may spend long time waiting for your teammates to come & take a point you've already cleaned. what makes it worse that you can't procceed without having the previous point occupied by your faction.
> Friendly factions will constantly ask you to lend a hand to defeat some enemy while you're minding your own business.
> the Duty leader feels like a marijuana dealer in clear sky (he's the DUTY leader ffs)
> The ending part is ♥♥♥♥: Monolith troops spawn right in your face while you're uncovered and the ending scene doesn't make a damn sense (unless if you google it).


The last thing i would like to say is that Clear Sky is still a nice game & worth to play if you're a fan of this series, the story is not the best but it introduce you to new mechanics & areas of the zone.
Clear Sky doesn't has that "unique personality" of Shadow of Chernobyl, the first game feels creepy, cold, sad, interesting & thrilling.
This one is easier & warmer.

Now get out of here stalker!

- Amazing atmosphere: check
- Awesome lore: check
- Hard & challenging gameplay: check
- Open world: check
- Cheeki breeki: check

Welcome to the zone, stalker.

Despite all the bad things happened since Meet your Match update, its still a very enjoyable experience.
Timeless game.