Game Recommendation - STALKER

[Tattaglia]

Alright, so I'm looking to buy a STALKER game for its punishing difficulty and realism - but I'm stumped on which STALKER to buy - Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl, or Stalker: Clear Sky.

The only superficial difference is that the original Stalker costs much less than Clear Sky on Steam. Basically, my question is - does Clear Sky offer superior gameplay (I don't care about graphics) to Shadow of Chernobyl? And sorry this isn't much of a topic, I just wanted an answer from people who aren't completely retarded I'm looking at you, GameFAQs.

 

[Syphonz]

Personally, it depends. Clear Sky has some things you might want. Things like Weapon, Armour, item repairs, more weapons, some of the maps are much better (the Red Forest and Swamps). Or IF you get Shadow of Chernobyl and plan on modding it with Oblivion lost: Then I most recommend that.

With Oblivion Lost Mod - Buy SoC
Ignore the Mod - Buy Clear Sky.

 

[Tattaglia]

Personally, it depends. Clear Sky has some things you might want. Things like Weapon, Armour, item repairs, more weapons, some of the maps are much better (the Red Forest and Swamps). Or IF you get Shadow of Chernobyl and plan on modding it with Oblivion lost: Then I most recommend that.

With Oblivion Lost Mod - Buy SoC
Ignore the Mod - Buy Clear Sky.

What's the Oblivion Lost mod? My fingers are far too lazy to type that into Google.

 

[aussiesniper]

stalker.....when i cant actaully shoot my target point blacnk range down the sigh WITH a shotgun im not impressed
Want a game with difficulty and realism? go buy Sniper

Could it be because your aim is off? I find it hard to avoid hitting people with the shotgun.

 

[Raptoricus]

stalker.....when i cant actaully shoot my target point blacnk range down the sigh WITH a shotgun im not impressed
Want a game with difficulty and realism? go buy Sniper

SNIPER ELITE - Seriously though awesome game .

Oh and on topic, I've played SoC and I enjoyed it quite a bit, I can't really comment on CS because I've never owned it, but yeah I would reccomend SoC.

 

[Syphonz]

Personally, it depends. Clear Sky has some things you might want. Things like Weapon, Armour, item repairs, more weapons, some of the maps are much better (the Red Forest and Swamps). Or IF you get Shadow of Chernobyl and plan on modding it with Oblivion lost: Then I most recommend that.

With Oblivion Lost Mod - Buy SoC
Ignore the Mod - Buy Clear Sky.

What's the Oblivion Lost mod? My fingers are far too lazy to type that into Google.

Oblivion Lost mod adds practically everything that ESRB made the developers remove from the game, While the content was still installed, it's not implemented in the game itself. So, some smart German guy actually dug around and fixed it, and added post ending senario called A-Life.

It basically makes the game 5x better than it was before. Its best if you download a thing called Smart Mod Manager to install the Mod for you.

 

[Tattaglia]

Personally, it depends. Clear Sky has some things you might want. Things like Weapon, Armour, item repairs, more weapons, some of the maps are much better (the Red Forest and Swamps). Or IF you get Shadow of Chernobyl and plan on modding it with Oblivion lost: Then I most recommend that.

With Oblivion Lost Mod - Buy SoC
Ignore the Mod - Buy Clear Sky.

What's the Oblivion Lost mod? My fingers are far too lazy to type that into Google.

Oblivion Lost mod adds practically everything that ESRB made the developers remove from the game, While the content was still installed, it's not implemented in the game itself. So, some smart German guy actually dug around and fixed it, and added post ending senario called A-Life.

It basically makes the game 5x better than it was before. Its best if you download a thing called Smart Mod Manager to install the Mod for you.

Great, thanks for the information.

Thanks to all, I'm definitely going to get Shadow of Chernobyl now. And maybe Sniper too!

 

[cherimoya]

clear sky has graphical add-ons, but the faction war is broken (without mods). this wouldn't be a bad thing if there were mods, but the stalker modding community has stayed almost exclusively with shadow of chernobyl and the mods for clear sky are few and far between.

oblivion lost is an interesting mod. oblivion lost with the arsenal mod and the english-language "clean-up" mod is a pretty great thing. find them @ http://stalker.filefront.com/ ABC inferno is an interesting mod (not realism based) too. its another total conversion type mod with some fascinating features... AMK 1.4eng is interesting too. (some members of the AMK team ended up working on parts of clear sky.)

stalker.....when i cant actaully shoot my target point blacnk range down the sigh WITH a shotgun im not impressed
Want a game with difficulty and realism? go buy Sniper

i'm guessing you were shooting a sawed off shotgun picked up from the body of a dead enemy, loaded with shot and aimed at his torso? because yes, in vanilla those things will not mean he's dead.

but sniper is a good game. the pace is entirely different from the stalker games, tho. and it doesn't really aim for immersion, which is stalker's greatest strength. in stalker you forget you're "playing a level", different from sniper. just a completely different kind of game.

as for the "realism" of either stalker games, once modded, xray's ballistics are pretty interesting. things like the condition of the weapon used, and the type of ammo you're using start to matter a lot (especially when playing with mods that have adjusted those settings).

in clear sky, GSC pretty much edited out the need to eat, which makes the vanilla game somewhat frustrating as the majority of loot-on-corpses is edible. clear sky redux put the need to eat back into the game, but there's no indicator (yet) to let you know that you are hungry (unlike in shadow of chernobyl). the ability to modify your weapons in clear sky is great, but you might find that the wealth of modded in weapons for SoC might be more to your taste.

if i had to pick ONE stalker game, i'd go with SoC because of how many mods of good quality there are already out. the only caveat about SoC modding is that a lot of the best mods for it i've played are in russian. the russian stalker mod community is *fierce* and talented, and not very concerned with translating their work out to english.

 

[RYjet911]

stalker.....when i cant actaully shoot my target point blacnk range down the sigh WITH a shotgun im not impressed
Want a game with difficulty and realism? go buy Sniper

Yeah, seriously, hitting with the shotgun is probably the easiest of weapons to hit with, aside from that massive laser beam thing... Guass Gun or something like that?

Anyway.

Shadow of Chernobyl and Clear Sky are two pretty different games...Yeah, the overall shooting part of it is pretty similar. Running around with breaking down guns, trying to combat a group of eight bandits, hoping to god the first one you manage to kill gives you a medkit.

Shadow of Chernobyl is probably being a little less realistic. Health is pretty easy to recover, just using bandages and medkits, or even eating a few portions of food, will do it. Bleeding is a nearly non-affective attribute unless you are majorly afflicted by it. Early guns have a tendency to do absolutely no damage to anywhere apart from the head, even to weak armoured enemies, where a point comes when it gets retardedly easy since the weapons you obtain easily wipe out hoards (Although only if you're efficient at taking cover).

Clear Sky seemed to be trying to be as realistic as possible, if that's your thing in a game. The health bar is still there, but I've had that taken from me in only two or three hits. Getting hit is also highly unrecommended, since bleeding can last for several minutes after only receiving a single shot, and that can make your life a nightmare... If you've played Metal Gear Solid and expect the bleeding to only go as far as making any hit you receive a one hit kill, meaning you have a chance to get something to heal, think again.

Personally, I prefered Clear Sky simply because of its difficulty. Being forced to take your time in the fire fights, waiting for that perfect moment to pop up and shoot two guys in the head before returning to your hiding hole feels so much better and more satisfying to accomplish than SoC's almost wannabe version of that.

 

[cherimoya]

Oblivion Lost mod adds practically everything that ESRB made the developers remove from the game, While the content was still installed, it's not implemented in the game itself. So, some smart German guy actually dug around and fixed it, and added post ending senario called A-Life.

It basically makes the game 5x better than it was before. Its best if you download a thing called Smart Mod Manager to install the Mod for you.

the game's a-life (the parameters that govern NPC behavior, objectives and pathing, etc) was clamped and cut-off for the vanilla release because it often makes scripted quests (including the main quest) impossible to complete.

all the variants of a-life's additions make the game a thousand times more fun to play, but not if you're trying to finish the main quest.

in many of the mods we're talking about, the AI will roam all of the different maps, hunt for loot, loot bodies before you can, talk to each other (via an SMS sort of system where NPCs tell each other about events happening "near them"), attempt to take positions, search for artifacts, etc. so yeah, it makes the game an entirely different experience.