Yo! The Metro and Stalker series are both on sale over at good old games right now! What are you waiting for??!?!? Here's the link - www.gog.com/partner/Avalanche_Reviews
Thank you for showing so many people what great games all stalker and clear sky n call to pripyat are. My go too anytime I'm bored of newer games. I have hundreds of hours playing stalker and its Awsome mods.
Despite gog's user reviews, I prefer Clear Sky over SOC. Mainly for ditching the annoying hunger-thirst system and having different factions you can link up with.
@@paulsmecker2778 goddamn right, i forget how i even found out about it years ago... i think i was just researching "old game mods" or something, and omg. i wish i had a better pc. finished SoC and went straight for the full anomaly 3.0. so much stuff, brain hurts. so rough. so fun. EfT would be another for no horror etc, ehh.
I decided to buy the entire series on Steam the other day thanks to the summer sale. I started this morning before work, played for three hours, died for the first time, and realized there was no auto save, or at least I didn't turn it on. I cried when I respawned in the first room. And then got right back to it. Fantastic game
@@martinadamek7016how did you like COP, I’m barely reaching the endgame portion of CS and I’ve been loving it so far. I’m really excited for COP so what would your honest opinion be on it
@@martinadamek7016I did, and I loved every minute. Few games have made me feel as immersed and scared for my own life. Amazing series, even with it's few issues
Stalker reminds me a lot of TES: Morrowind. It is an older style of game design. The game doesn't hold your hand, it doesn't tell you what to think about the questions it raises, it just asks questions and allows the player to find their own answer. The plot is reasonably important, but it is only half of the equation.
Morrowind is brutal if you are playing the first time without any prior knowledge of old school dice roll mechanics. I remember when it came out on Xbox and I died repeatedly trying to fight the 3 slavers in the cave outside of Sanda neen. Magic was the only surefire way to deal damage in early game. As you move almost a foot every 5 seconds and Your fatigue restores at a rate of -1000 every second. Good memories.
@@jeraminvidalez5334 I remember the first time I played, I wandered into a Daedric ruin at really low level and got clapped so hard! I think the difficulty is what made me love it so much.
Other games: - Adventurer, this prophecy can only be fulfill by a strong and brave hero like you. Stalkers: - Can I do it? - *silence* - I did it. It's a good thing, right? - *silence* - Okay, I guess.
Right? I didn't play the originals yet but I've been completely immersed in the Anomaly mod with the Expedition add-on. Never been more addicted to a single player open world game before. Which is saying something since I usually can't sit down for more than an hour or two with these modern open world games, but something about STALKER has me playing for hours at a time and ruining my sleep schedule lol. Sad that an old game like this is still leagues above any game these giant companies with millions in funding can put out.
@@mamory3791 development is halted till further notice due to the war. But they offering a free real experience... Just go to Ukraine, grab a gun and Gear. Welcome to The Zone S.T.A.L.K.E.R
I’ve only played “Call of Pripyat”, but I do remember it being one of my favorite games of my youth. Along with Metro 2033, Fallout 3, and Fallout New Vegas.
@@ibelieveingaming3562everybody likes to look down on fallout? it’s one of the most acclaimed franchises of all time and new vegas is very often recognised as one of the best games of all time
@@ibelieveingaming3562Everyone looks down on the new ones, New Vegas is literally one of the greatest games ever. And 3 has some of the best settings in any game ever.
I really enjoy these longer linked together reviews of a game series, they're perfect for just hanging on the couch with chip and dip without having to worry about getting your mouse nasty with your sticky fingers :D
@@AC-hj9tv The classic one here in Sweden probably would be sourcream and onion chips, as for dip there's a couple variants available but my favorite is probably the one called Holiday, not sure what it is but it's good.
That blue explosion in the sky in Anomaly is the "pulse" anomaly. If you stand beneath it, it can 1 shot you when it hits. However it doesn't appear often above you and if it does you still usually have enough time to move away.
Roadside Picnic is such an underrated book. A classic imo. Has the perfect blend of mystery, cosmic horror and science fantasy. Still my favorite take on the first contact scenario too.
I wish for the English audiobook they would've gotten the Metro 2033 narrator. That guy was amazing, but meanwhile the Roadside Picnic narrator sounds like he's a streetwise detective from Chicago or something. (If you haven't listened to Metro 2033 you should. That guy is really good at acting out voices for Russian tunnel dwellers or stalkers, and it makes it such a nice creepy listen, in the dark, before bed.)
Master difficulty is a misconception (response to 0:41:00). Master difficulty doesn't, in any way, benefit the player -- in *any* of the titles. In SoC Novice gives you a 20% damage boost, a 50% additional damage resistance, and higher loot probability. That's it, there are no additional effects. Notably *enemy weapon damage is always pinned at 100% in all three titles, it does not change from difficulty at all*. There was a bug in very early SoC builds that had enemies use the player data for weapon damage and hit probability, but that hasn't been relevant for a long time.
he actually addresses this during the 2nd game's review! i think he's just combined his 3 videos on the franchise together because even the timestamps and such are a little bit off.
@@matthewjones39 google it, it's easier, but some guys actually checked the code and master difficulty doesn't actually make the game easier. Never did, what actually started this claim is the fact that the original animations are terrible, combined that with the fact that all guns do little damage and the game have bulletdrop it gave the impression that harder difficulty made the game easier when in reality was the player that replayed the game and having more experience found better equipment faster giving the impression that harder difficulty was easier.
Stalker series is one of those games, where you know that it's so unique, so one in a million, that you won't find another games like this. The feeling of being alone most of the time with a thought that any person you meet may be your enemy, walking at night being catious of mutants hiding in the shadows and even fighting with the Zone itself makes for such a special atmosphere. Legendary series, that's all.
The first Stalker game was released when i was 14 and i played it soon after. Im so very glad i got to play all these games when i was a young adult who was able to be fully engrossed and absorbed by the incredible athmosphere of these games. Its amazing to see other people having similar and positive experiences with these games. They just dont make them like this anymore and i know its not just because of nostalgia i say that.
The easiest way to test someone who might be into the STALKER games is tell them two things: In the game, if you shoot an enemy in the bare head, they will die. If THEY shoot you in the bare head, you will die.
@@windshieldwasher6919 I feel like the fact anyone can die with one headshot including you sells that without droning on about rpg mechanics and sci-fi. I've gotten many a Arma or Battlefield player into it just by saying that.
I've been playing Into The Radius recently, and because vr can sometimes be a bit displeasing to play for more than 2 hours due to the toll it takes on the legs and how unpleasant it is to do anything seated, I've been wanting to play something that was what that game was but played on desktop. Never played a STALKER game, but I seen that Anomaly is free and that there was a good modpack called Gamma going around for it so I think I'm going to start there. And before it is said, no I will not play the 15 year old games and never will, I've heard STALKER vets can be pretty ailing when it comes to preaching about purity.
Not gonna lie bro I have severe fibromyalgia so I’m in pain constantly. I get about 4-6 hours of sleep, if I’m lucky. Every day for the past 3 years. So falling asleep to this good content is the biggest complement I can give someone. Thanks my friend.
STALKER is (rightly or wrongly) what piqued my interest in the Chernobly disaster and what eventually led me to book a day trip to Pripyat and the surrounding area. An eye opening experience and reminded me how an amazing job GSC did in replicating it virtually. No other game has had the same pull that STALKER has had. I normally don't like sandboxy-esque games but I can't imagine how many hours I've sunk into the the various STALKER games/flavours. Must be 1500+
These have been my exact feelings and experience with Stalker series and it's more than pleasing to hear someone talking thoroughly about it for hours. I couldn't do it better myself, and I somehow doubt that someone else could at this point. This is a truly beautiful video that only a die-hard fan could make. Congratulations.
I wanted to play stalker for ten years finslly got a pc last month and crushed soc, going through the series in order and i think it might be one of the greatest ever. Its so perfect for sharing your stories with other stalkers no wonder the communjty is so passionate
YES!!!!!!!! Some of the most fun you can have is just talking to other Stalkers about a mutant suddenly spawning into Cordon, or some other crazy stories.
As for the difficulty, a quick little addition. In SoC, MOST of the weapons actually do decent damage, from around the Bar up to the finale. Hell, even SMGs in the Garbage do decent damage at closer ranges, vaporizing your (or your enemies') HP in seconds. Apart from the bottom-of-the-barrel starter weapons, almost every one is deadly. It's MOSTLY only their accuracy and range which actually improves as the game progresses (except the Big Ben pistol, some snipers and maybe some shotguns). This is why it remains dangerous to rush in balls-to-the-wall into the starter areas even in endgame gear. And I think it's beautiful! Of course, endgame armor negates MUCH more damage than the beginner leather coat and its peers, but still, weapon damage overall kind of remains deadly.
It seems your wish will soon come true, ( Stalker introduced to the masses) due to Stalker 2 being an xbox gamepass exclusive. It will finally get the attention and awareness of a bigger audience that the first few Stalker games missed due to not being a triple A game. Personally I'm happy for GSC getting to showcase their work on the world stage and can't wait to give Stalker 2 many hours of my life
These long reviews are really appreciated. I can't begin to imagine the amount of work it must take to undertake such a massive piece (rough drafts , editing videos etc). It is quite a stunning piece of work.
As i've said before I love all your reviews whether I've played the game or not. Stalker blew me away when i played it for the first time. Every time I get a new PC, Stalker is the bottle of Champagne i smash across it's bow. Have an amazing new year for yourself and your channel.
Fun Fact: several of the cast and crew in Roadside Picnic had their lifespans shortened due to toxic exposure since they were filming in a restricted chemical hazard area.
It was 2008.. i was in the army I thought that the game has nothing to offer to me Then i had a day off and i decided to go to an internet cafe I saw the game in the library and decided to check it out MAN... it was love at first sight Next day i ordered it ( pirated) 2020 i ordered all three games from ebay Today 2024 i saw that they released the trilogy on ps4( i immediately bought it) Other than that i read roadside picnic saw the stalker movie spent many hours on videos and wikis and built 3 Airsoft loadouts inspired of this game.... You can say that i am a big fan
That part about Master difficulty is NOT TRUE AT ALL. It's a complete myth. Setting difficulty to master makes you die faster. It does nothing for the enemies because the bullet damage doesn't change. It's the same for all difficulty levels. It's just that the players resistance is lowered. I recommend stalker difficulty for new comers
I started playing Anomaly based on this review (I think a lot of people did judging by recent chatter) but I wanted to make a post about it from the viewpoint of "casual stalker fan": My experience with Stalker is 1 mostly vanilla playthrough of SoC that I sort of bounced off of. I finished the main story, but I didn't engage too much with the side content or open world and while I enjoyed it, it wasn't my favorite. I've been meaning to try again with CoC but while I was looking I stumbled on this video and anomaly and decided on that instead. First thing I'd do, look up some extensive guides. -Put in a good 2 hours into researching before you start, because the game doesn't tutorialize pretty much anything. Blondefire has excellent videos for getting started. -Don't give up on the tutorial quest, the game isn't as hard as that task makes it out to be, boars are the most dangerous enemy you'll encounter in the starting area. -Ignore the main quest for now, just take one side quest with objectives in Cordon at a time and turn them in for cash. -Dismantle low quality guns for parts and sell them. -Once you've got a stack of cash, buy or pay a technician to fix some decent weapons and armor. -It'll probably take 2 or 3 characters to get to a point where you know how to make money efficiently and gear yourself appropriately. -Don't engage with the repair system at first, just use gun oil and glue tubes to keep your gear above 80%. I'm sure people have their own tips for starting out, but these really helped me get going to a point where I could leave the starting area within 5 hours of starting a playthrough. If you're a fan of survival mods, I wouldn't call this game hard. I had a much harder time with Fallout Dust and Fallout Frost, and they were also much less polished.
Are you planning on making an edit about the SoC Master difficulty. I mean ultimately, it doesn't matter so much as some people might find it more rewarding, but the damage changes are a myth. The stat adjusted is how much damage YOU take (1.00 or 100% damage, lower difficulties do things like 0.75 or only 75% of the damage) and not the damage of weapons. Enemies receive no changes to their damage resistances across all difficulties and player weapon damage is actually lowered, making enemies spongier and more likely to survive headshots.
The ACOG thing in Anomoly could be chalked up to how far the rail mount is from your eye, and how they scale to the weapons size itself. Basically, its changing cause its distance/size relative to your eye is changing
40:08 lol😂 just as you said you'd only had one crash to desktop my UA-cam app completely crashed in a way I'd never seen before. Must have been the zone 😂
Finally in all of its glory and befitting of a series like STALKER. I can't wait what the sequel brings us. Haven't been this excited for a new release since Witcher 3. Thank your sincerely for your efforts.
yeah except for all the inaccuracies and him talking like some pro when he clerly sucks at the game like his comments about being " constantly low on ammo". Bitch by 1/3 of the game you usually have more russian ammo then u need for the entire game, by the time you unlock bar and further areas you will also start being flooded by more then enough other types. Fun challenge, only buy ammo and don't loot any more then whats in an enemies weapon. Also stalker is and was always intended to be survival lite so it could focus on FPS/horror elements. Don't know where this weaksauce obsession with survival comes but its unfaithful to the series core
I started with Anomaly, and I really liked the way I was essentially absorbing the plot points of the previous games through rumor-fueled osmosis on top of trying to piece together just what the zone is, who all these different outfits are, and how to survive it all with money and artefacts in hand. The idea of being in the role of some guy who's just recently come to the zone after all this madness has already taken place was something that was really intoxicating to me. From the hunt for Strelok, to seeing rumors on the PDA about some mystery man called "Scar" who vanished without a trace, to high ranking people dropping the name "Alexander" more than a couple times, to picking up on stories from the returning npcs about where they were before and how they ended up where they are now. I'm not sure if I would have taken to it quite as much if I had started with SoC.
Aw man, although that will feel incredible, i felt much more satisfied seeing those names in Anomaly after i finished the original games, i won't spoil anything for you, but i highly suggest you play the originals (with mods if you want too), never seen anyone regret doing so.
Super glad I found this channel thanks to this amazing video. I'm getting back into S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and this was just the refresher/retrospective discussion I needed. Always love long form vids like this so I'm super excited to watch more!
when I first played SOC in 2007 at its launch, it was so immersive, my brain could smell the sun bleached ground and the swamps and garbage.. it was just that good.
Be warned, he talks about damage and accuracy being tied to the difficulty in the stalker games, but that's a myth. It's been disproven multiple times. Just an old forum myth. Play on whatever difficulty is most fun for ya!
I wish they would make games like these now cuz the games of today are missing something but I really like the old look and things they added to these kinds of games like fallout 1 and 2 (yes I know they are different but they have that really good gritty rpg feel).
Wow. You my friend have gained a well earned sub A great Review of one of my Favorite Game series of all time, Thanks for spreading this hidden gem to others!
For anyone coming to this a couple years later like me, playing Anomaly is fine and fun, but the GAMMA modpack for it changes it to a completely different game, to the point that I am absolutely in love. Don't get me wrong, I had fun with base(d) Anomaly, but GAMMA's (at the time of writing) 443 mods included AND finely tuned to work together JUST right by the modpack author and their team just feels like the Stalker masterpiece Ive always wanted
Yo dude, as a big fan of the series I want to thank you for this! Sooooo much details, stamps, spoilers, and not to mention your voice and the way you talk, because as someone who's native language is not English (it's Croatian tho) sometimes I have problem with understanding pronunciation. Video is top notch, and again, thank you! It's been a pleasure watching this! You earned subscribe for sure! EDIT: could you please post link to the mods you are using? Thanks man, stay awesome!
@@cropathfinder How exactly is it unfaithful to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.? I found the experience to be far better than the original games, regardless of "fixes" brought to vanilla. For my experience so far, Anomaly and M.I.S.E.R.Y. were by far the best S.T.A.L.K.E.R. experience I've had. I enjoy watching Provak videos on youtube but so far, all my attempts to make S.T.A.L.K.E.R. work with Provak have resulted in massive failure as the game is buggy and crashy as hell.
@@bicualexandru246 Misery, added a lot of things but It feels like that the modders never thought about if they should. A quick note, I played Misery 2.1(i think) at max difficulty, as recon, on black road but no other modifiers and I quit because the game got easy, more on that later. So time to essay starting with shooty gamplay. Overall, I felt the game did not know the difference between hard, and borderline unfair. It added so much flavor text to items that it was legit not possible to show all of it on certain resolutions. Tooltips were also not updated (like fireball providing less protection than bloodsucker skin, you had to check it in the files to confirm it) which is kinda bad when you want a "punishing" game but you end up lying. It also had item bloat, constant back and forth between traders to check what item is worth more to whom. Economy that was shit (but in fact made to be broken by the player, like just maining shotguns for their high damage and cheap ammo, using shit double barrels to hunt for meat which has a higher selling price than actually mutated tissue sold to the eggheads?). Most stuff is not worth anything but loot you must and kinda have to abuse the fact that NPC's do not play by the rules as you, they have limitless ammo, but even with headshots you come out even on ammo and never gain anything(unless you use the surrender mechanic in which case you get a perfect weapon...suspension of disbelief anyone?) So the gameplay encourages shadowing neutral NPC's so you can loot bodies for...explosives? Mutants are borked. Switching stuff around like, boars take reduced damage to the head and more on the ass (this is beyond my ability suspension of disbelief and is just being annoying). Or the cat that makes literally no noise, which is totally a mutation and not just missing sound files. Or that the pychic mutants just kill you unless you use consumables. So lets get to that. Consumables basically became a thing that you must use. Imagine a person who spends 16 hours, every day on adrenaline shots so he can move (recon having 30kg carry limit made this an obligation), an annoying drain on resources, and hard to believe. Said psychic mutants above? Just use some weed and you are immune to them. The game also had an unhealthy fetish for explosives. Pseudogiant? Just use a single RGD-1, ded. 3 chimeras, 10 cats and 2 poltergheists at Iron Forest or Jupiter? Just use an anti tank warhead rigged up to be a mine that kills basically anything in one hit that you got from dead NPC's who had it for...reasons? Mutant packs are too big but curiously hard to spawn later on (this was the reason why I stopped, there was no longer anything to kill) but a single rifle grenade fixes it so well, that due to the animation most of the bodies rot. The staple of the game, artifact hunting, was barely profitable and made harder by making artefacts out of depleted uranium(weight) and adding containers that are literally lead(just on case one wants to...move). Fire/chemical anomalies cook you in any armour but in science gear, but once you have it, you can have a piknik in the field. The Misery mod is big, but it is big in the sense the picture of the model they added to Yanov station is big. Takes up a lot of space, and hampers performance and the gameplay flows like a river of bricks. The mod gave you items that are just better than we had (recon gets a bonus to artifact usage? sorrly, using a carry frame+kevlar is better than these supposedly priceless artifacts). The animations were jank, eating while moving? impossible. Using a medical kit? The game wants you to think medkits take time to use, but time does not move during the fade out and fade in, so it is a trap to use injectors considering the cost. And this is just gameplay, the story is bad too for my liking. This partially comes from their inspirations of which 1 is okay, 1 is meh, and 1 is shite. In order, Metro 2033(game version), I am Legend and the worst.....The Road (HRUUH). Metro 2033 is the better one but MUCH MUCH more bleak than S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Stalker (the film), or Roadside Picknick, but it has that Eastern Slav mentality of going ahead and just adapting(a thing people did a lot of during and after Soviet times). I am Legend I just do not get, the only inspiration I can see is the fetish for RDX. And the worst....The Road.... I had to read that horriblely out of touch idea of survivalism(it has cannibals with humans kept alive as food, some catastrophe that is never explained and can not be explained in any way other than "God did it", the father has the survival instinct of a brain damaged deer in headlights who does not know what concealment is, who gets saved by a bunker full of food and the ending is horribly american and Deus Ex machina like). The Road is bleak, just like the mod, it is bleak to be bleak, but that makes it tiresome and in several cases, illogical whithin the work. The Misery team had a lot of skill with photoshop to make depressing pictures but believable setting it does not make (especially in Eastern Europe). Stalkers complaining how The Zone is hell(with gameplay mechanics like this sure, but you guys never pay for ammo like I do) but they do not leave cause the outside world is also hell(this is the modding team trying to justify why 5.45x39mm ammo is this expensive even tho the socialist machine churned out so much of it they armed the third world and still had a ton left over, also try not to figure out why the fucking XM8 rifle ,which was never adopted large scale, is in the zone) and people spend money on artifacts instead of...food, water, fuel for the oven....like people do when economy is shit. They also never laugh, ever, even tho black comedy is the cornerstone of Eastern Europe, I know, I live here. Basically, ideas are thrown in that make no sense(bandits eat snork hands to establish dominance over other factions...and get radiation poisoning from it due to low calories and high radiation per hand? why not bloodsuckers? those are also human mutants) and makes the game world feel dead, and illogical. One can imagine living in the Zone as portrayed by GSC, the Misery team made it too edgy and suffers for it. This turned the experience gamey, in more ways than one. It also does not help that the game operates on grey and brown that is not only ugly to look at(and kinda unreal) when the Stalker games showed decrepit grey soviet buildings taken over by the greenery of nature but twisted by The Zone giving it a somewhat unearthly element as the mundane and old has now things that do not belong there while also making those things valuable but in a place that is recognized by people. One has contrast which is interesting, the other is muddy and over time, boring and uniform. TLDR: the gameplay is bloated, gives alternatives to the unique gameplay elements that are better turning those into gimicks at best and traps at worst, mucks up the balance of the game to just make the game hard, while having writing that feels like was made from elements that are "cool" by themselves but put together in ways that creates conflict and not something greater than the whole. I hope you had as much fun reading this essay as I did writing it.
No idea if you will see this man but TY for so much great content that has lead to me finding so many interesting games to play or revisit, just over the last 6 days I finally got into Metro 2033 after having it since it released but never finishing it (played every STALKER on day 1) anywho I Finished 2033, Yesterday beat Last Light (eehhhh) lol and right now working on Exodus, keep up the great work.
I think I have "rewatched," all of the videos in this channel like at least 500 times each over the last year. Idk why these are so damn great to put on to go to sleep with but it is
This video series you have made on Stalker and Metro are amazing video and very detailed. I have honestly watched this exact video 4 times now start to finish. I enjoyed them so much I have started my own playthrough for the first time. Thank you for the amazing content!
A friend of mine suggested your channel when I told him that I was looking for an excuse to get into Stalker series. Lucky me, you had started doing the reviews of Stalker games and I started watching them. I have to add though, I am not much fan of survival horror games in the slighest. I hate any kind of jump scare or anything that resembles it. I stay away from these games as I have no reason to torture myself by scaring myself. So, this game was in that genre for me. BUT: I didn't stray from the originality of the games by installing many mods except for the bug fixing ones. I finished all 3 games 2 weeks later I started SoC. I just couldn't stop playing. By the time I was in the middle of Clear Sky, I was beginning to grow impatient to play Anomaly after I finish the series. I was enjoying the gameplay of the series on Master difficulty, so I was looking forward to experience the masterpiece all together, collectively. I knew that that the story of Anomaly wouldn't get anywhere near the original games but playing it sandbox would at least give me the gameplay satisfaction, the gunplay. First off, all 3 games were breathtaking. SoC was my favourite by far though. I don't think that I have been told a story this gripping since Deus Ex Human Revolution. A story that was meant to be told to an audience who asks for seriousness in the plot, a danger to be sensed and has no hesitation to detonate like a mine. In my opinion, the zone is the neutrel evil version of Mother Earth. The expansion of the story narrates the journey that we take perfectly. I was mesmerized by the time I entered through that door in Lake Yantar. I stopped at the entrance of that iron gate and enjoyed the whole composition all together. The music, arrangement of the dead bodies and objects at the gate, the atmosphere: a perfect entrance into insanity. From that point onwards I finished SoC with that enthusiasm. CS and CoP were both great but I just couldn't feel that symphonic story telling. TLDR: My point to what I have written so far. I just couldn't get into Anomaly that much. I played it 10 hours with minimal mods that gave some weapons and a little bit of graphic enhancement. It has the gameplay, the zone, the touch of the atmosphere but not the soul of Stalker games. The zone was alive when I played the series but Anomaly couldn't quite grab me. I still love the gunplay, the suspense of danger, the raindrops, the audio engineering but it feels aimless. I know this is an unpopular opinion but this is unfortunately how I feel. The best gain of this experience is, now I have a new treshold for horror games and I have been catching the end of your livestreams in the mornings (I live in France and by the time I wake up, you are saying your goodbyes), and I may go for Fear series as I care for your opinions on games. I recently started playing Dead Space and finished it yesterday and now continuing the second game but it is just so much action, there is no space for horror. The game is always on the run, no suspense, hence horror just doesn't build up to a point where you enjoy it as it was meant to. It is like first Dead Space game with 4x speed, yakety song playing in the background.
That's pretty damn cool! I love how Stalker and the channel got you to play a few horror games. Plus having someone new get into Stalker is always the best thing. Cheers man! Here's hoping I can recommend a few more games you'll get into!
They actually went and put these on the Switch. Which is great, buuuuut, they didn't consider adding a UI scaling option, so it's super obnoxious to actually read things in handheld mode. As for the games themselves. To go off what someone else said in a comment, I gotta say, starting a big FPS like this, and not being the big hero of the story, is a nice change of pace. Usually it's like Fallout or Skyrim or something, and you're the only person in the entire world that could possibly save people and do everyone's menial tasks. Not to mention the endless praise you get for every possible mundane thing you accomplish. In this, it's just like "go do this. You did it? Okay. Bye." and you're just left to wonder if it was good or bad, how well you did at it, and just happy you didn't die. This is also one of the few games I've played, aside from maybe the early top-down Fallout games, where the loot you get from enemies actually feels *important*. Like, every medkit or weapon, or piece of ammo you find, is super helpful. So many games let you loot, but you really never NEED to, it's just there for the sake of it.
The difficulty thing is an absolute myth. You can stagger an enemy then pop their head with your pistol. Learning on lower difficulties is perfectly fine as long as you understand the strategic gunplay.
stalker was and still is the best single player shooter i have ever played, which i told to anyone who would listen. its crazy to think i am the only person i know who has ever played the games. i often find myself thinking back to me playing them. thanks for the vid. i still recommend stalker to anyone that asks
The zombies in STALKER aren't soulless... you can hear them talking about their families. You can hear them crying because they have a moment of clarity, and realize they'll never go home. They even react to fires by saying they're bright and beautiful, like the sun... but even though it looks warm, it's so cold. The voice lines for the zombies are depressing as shit. Definitely one of the worst possible fates in the zone.
And this is why the game tells you upon shooting g yourself in the head once your psy resistance drops to 0 that you have escaped a fate worse than death... zombies got it bad
I played with the misery mod and realistic weapons, then turned the difficulty to master. That played really well, where every gun is deadly and accurate as it should be.
I still have my retail boxed disc of SOC. The first time I tried to play the game, I didn't make it out of the Cordon before something shiny distracted me. But a month or 2 later I decided to boot up the game and give it another go and have been hooked ever since. You pretty much nailed everything I have thought and felt about S.TA.L.K.E.R. over the years.
Is no one gonna talk about how the frog looking thing showed up in the tunnel like a complete badass, causing explosions and shit then dying looking like it slipped on a bar of soap at 10:36
That's only in SoC. In CS or CoP, these things take so much shit to kill you might as well throw the entire military at them and it'll still take some time before it goes down.
Oh you can't even imagine how many times I felt you were me speaking in your video....... How can you make a new player understand the "feeling" of the zone ?? Is it even possible for a new gamer used to the Dix12 graphics feel the atmosphere of these 2007-9 masterpieces?? And how many things all these new players lose by not knowing the beauty of the zone...... Sometimes I feel every single player should play Stalker just to acquire the proper criteria that are necessary to judge any future game. Not to like/play Stalker, but for the sake of the game industry itself.
I remember waiting for stalker to release for like what felt like 10 years. Back then where I lived most people did not have internet yet, so we kids were sharing game trailers on USB drives. After seeing the one with the dogs in the freedom base I got hyped for the game. I believe that trailer included vehicles as well. When it came out I still had my first PC, and yes, it was a potato even as brand new, so it barely ran the game. With the PC running the game like that I experienced the most funny way to die in this game. You throw a grenade at enemies, but the game freezes at the point the granade is just leaving your hand. While you and everything else is stuck, for some reason the grenade timer goes on. When the stutter ends your grenade blows up in your face. Even running like that, played the crap out of SoC. After some time I got a better GPU and guess what, I replayed SoC and replayed it multiple times. Then CS came out and played the crap out of that game as well. When CoB busted out I have a decent machine to run it and again, I went through it multiple time. Later I discovered mods and again it kept me playing stalker. Sometime during all that, because of the game, I watched the movie and discovered the genius cinematography of Tarkovski. Also it got me to find a pdf of roadside picnic and read through it holding my breath. To this day when I get a new GPU I fire up Anomaly or Misery and get sucked into the zone for a week or two. I lost count how many times I played through the game, disregarding the times I just went in to progress to the endgame gear and shoot $hit up for a while, then stop playing until the next itch comes. Guess in my 60s I will still be running through the zone yelling cheeki breeki as many others will. Specially when a new mod releases.
Idk what difficulty you play on, but two weeks are by no means enough for me to even get past brainscorcher. And I mean two weeks of real bungingon stalker.
@@Bradley_UA I always play on master, it is much more fun. Enemies are too spongy on lower difficulties and IMO seem less smart in firefights. Not sure how true that is though. I played this game so much, I know the Zone like my back pocket. Since that includes stashes as well, you get decent gear rather quickly. One of the first thing I do is to raid the military outpost, usually after I retrieve the USB for Sidorovich. I wait for the patrol to get the closest they can to the loner base and when they turn back, I ambush them. Then quickly grab their stuff and GTFO of there. Wait for the rest of the base to start coming after you and smack them in semiauto with the AK as they come. You will die, a lot. But it pays as some of their guns usually end up being in solid condition. You can also pull back to the loner base to get some assistance, or at least some distraction cannon fodder for the military :D Alternative method is to plink the army dudes by the bridge from the top of the silo building by the bridge. With good mods, this gets even easier to pull off, since your starting guns are not bb guns. Then you can farm garbage for artefacts, it is usually chuck full of them in the vanilla version if I remember correctly. Then when at Agroprom you get that nice unique AK and a loner armor in Strelok's hideout, you are good to go. By the time you reach Bar, you have guns and artefacts oozing out of your ears and you are moving like a slug with 59.9 weight on your back :D
YESSSS LETS GOOOO I love these longer videos. Fham ur voice is sooo chill. I love falling asleep to these vids. I've easily watched the 7hr silent hill video atleast 40 times no exaggeration. Keep up the amazing work Jared!
I remember playing stalker soc on Gametap years ago as a young kid and totally getting my ass kicked straight off the bat. Looking at it now, It's totally something I would enjoy. I love games where the devs force you to figure things out for yourself and give you lots of freedom. It's almost too overwhelming for me though, but your review on the series has made me a little more confident.
There really is nothing like STALKER, it alone made me buy a new advanced PC, gas mask collection, survivalist gear and airsoft AKs. Going around a abounded local factory or farmhouse with that gear on and the ambient soundtrack in one headphone has shown me a new aspect on life and the world itself. The only other thing that comes close to compliment this series is METRO, being alone in a dark tunnel with a old AK with half a mag, 2 medkits, cracked gas mask all while hearing noises from pipes, mutants attacking a station or even whispers from the dead give me a eerily good experience. I love both series, the books and even the 1979 film, I am excited but cautious for HoC and the supposed METRO film, Im also intrigued by the game Atomic heart but it remains to be seen. Good video and praise Monolith!
I have played all the stalker games and to this I can say you nailed the stuff, by that I mean you explained this game to somebody who probably never heard of this game, I couldn't explain it better but because now that I have a video like this I can comment my own experience too. My brother showed me this game back in 2014 and I still remember those days vividly, I remember when the army outpost at the bridge near the shock tunnel was an actual challenge to me, and now whenever I think about playing stalker the one of the first thing's I do is push the army outpost near Sidorovich. And I really don't know how to explain my memories of this game. This is one of the games I will continue to love to the day I meet my end.
Oh god thank you! Just got off a 12 hour night shift and I'm not ready to pass out yet. This will ease me through the morning, though I lament the lack of your voice during my shift!
If you want the ultimate CoP experience that doesn't change up the core of the game, you should try the gunslinger mod. It makes everything lethal; yourself, other humans, and especially mutants
Not gonna lie, I could totally see you making documentaries if you ever retire from making gaming/UA-cam content. Every one of your videos is so comprehensive and well-curated that I'm still interested after several hours of watching.
As a Ukrainian, I am very interested in how the Western audience got such an interest in the stalker. For me, as for many players from the post-soviet countries, this is a game from my youth, when games were still bought on disks and passed on to their friends. Previously, I met on youTube 1-2 english-speaking channels on the stalker (and one of them was russian guy irl). And in the last 1.5-2 years I see new english videos on my favorite game every day. A whole bunch of new English channels on stalker have appeared. Where is this from? Like some english gamer found a diamond in a pile of shit called "post-soviet gaming industry" and was like "dudes, look, there's a damn diamond here! Let's all play it" Or how was it? Someone from the western players, please explain to me, I will be grateful. Sorry if there are mistakes somewhere in the text, I don't speak English very well. I will leave the same question under several more similar videos
I started playing stalker when new, downloaded the game from a emule chinese site called VeryCD, which has a ton of software and games. There it was an ISO dvd. Once I installed the game, even loading was very odd, because it shows what libraries, shaders, textures, etc... Like an incomplete game.... Was really, really odd to me. Then I started playing, then boom. You're dead with 2 shoots, and bleeding out haha!! That was a very good start for a game. Not having unlimited brain dead lives. Then, I felt a lot of atmosphere in the game. too many details. There's a ton of videos also in spanish. There was even a ton of photos from young guys from Spain, Mexico, and other spanish speaking countries dressed like stalkers with patches and everything.
Dude I like how you presented everything about Stalker, just all the in depth crazy things going on in the game... I wish I could play it! Even the new one coming out it’s only on the newer systems.. So I’ll have to admire from afar... an watch them being played.. I’m a lore nut! I love games with super deep lore!!!! I played an fairly enjoyed the Metro 2033 games an that’s kinda like the bastard child of Stalker. You can definitely tell the team behind the Metro games took a lot of good points from Stalker besides being open world... the latest game thou.. Metro Exodus kinda tried at open world gameplay... they did but it still felt like go here kill this bad guy, save the girl an get outta there before the creatures come. An I wish I knew more about Metro.. I never read the books cause I’m not much of reader. But if you do a playthru of the new Stalker game I’ll definitely be tuning in to watch!!! But yeah... I definitely subbed man!! I appreciate everything you did in this video!
I've finished these games so many times, SoC in particular. I've tried nearly every major mod and I don't regret it. There's just nothing like it, even a heavily modded Fallout game just can't get the atmosphere of STALKER.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a game I come back from time to time for the last 12-13 years. I was 15 or 16 when I discovered it. Shadow of Chernobyl, Call of Pripyat and all of it's variations are such an experience that will make you feel so invested. For a game from early 2000s it has mechanics that games at that time didn't even think about. If you love survival games, horror like games, exploring with slow gameplay and certain death - that's it.
Stalker still has the most enjoyable, satisfying shooting mechanics and ai of any game although kinda broken at times it still serves as amusement & not game breaking. The amount of times I've had to run for cover with psi storms incoming in the middle of the night while in gunfights to get into cover makes for such immersive unexpected events & experiences, like nothing else.
Totally agree, Stalker is by far the most immersive fps I´ve come across because it has an incredible atmosphere, while also having those unexpected and non scripted moments alle the time...its like the total opposite of Far Cry, for example
Holy sh*t man, I have to thank you. You showed an old S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Veteran Anomaly. I knew Misery, Lost Alpha and so on, but never heard about Anomaly until this great Video. And .... WTF! Anomaly is awesome! Thank you again, for showing me this!! :D
Ironman is really fun,like you are way more careful entering firefights, and it's very satisying winning one due to you thinking thay you outsmarted the enemy. And lastly it feels very much like real life cause you only make like 3 or 2 mistakes and you are dead which makes you more focused and immersed.
I remember the very early days of Stalker when I was barely out of my teens and waiting for this game that seemed so ambitious and interesting. It was a fun community back then, I remember they had story competitions on the forum, and there were even interactions with some of the devs, and I distinctly remember a player vs player multiplayer-only beta-like release which people took part in (I think the map was a variation of the Yantar warehouse/zombie area before entering the lab but I could be misremembering), though my PC really couldn't handle it at the time. Honestly, one of my favourite modern gaming series, even if it was ultimately flawed, it was the best kind of flawed and I am very interested to see what happens with Stalker 2.
that master difficulty thing is a myth its true till the late game. the armor starts to become extremely unbalanced. and the same armor on you dose almost nothing
In Clear Sky in Cordon at the military outpost if you wipe them all out they will respawn if you get far enough, meaning there is an exploit here that could help you break the economy, and the weight limit does not matter since you can just put all of the loot on one body and carry the body itself to the Sidorovich and sell it to him. Since Sidorovich will buy guns and ammo form you and he doesn't have a limit on the money and i ended easily with 100K + of rubles plus 10k of ammunition for the AK and about 4k of armor piercing round and med-packs, anti-radiation meds, food and could buy whatever i wanted. Also there is a footlocker in one of the barracks that can hold the things you put them in there meaning that you can stack up to several hundred kilograms worth of guns, AK , pistols , ammunition and med-packs and carry them in one swoop. It was funny to drag a body with 500 Kg with stuff on him, i remembered lord of the rings: "I can't carry the ring for you Mr. Frodo, but i can carry YOU". Keep in mind that at some point in the game they stop respawning so much so you'd better do this early on. So if you want that exoskeleton suit you know what to do :)
I don't know when.. but I WANT to play it. You hab me convinced at around minute 55. I got all(current) three parts of the series for -75% on Steam today. Really looking forward to it :D Really amazing review. You covered so many aspects, good and bad, and in my opinion that's what a review IS. Thanks for this great recommendation. You got my like and sub. I definitely watch more of your reviews based on this true experience of a video. Keep making great videos like this
Yo! The Metro and Stalker series are both on sale over at good old games right now! What are you waiting for??!?!?
Here's the link - www.gog.com/partner/Avalanche_Reviews
Picked up metro thanks to your retrospective, and so far it's great!
Thank you for the stalker games.
Thank you for showing so many people what great games all stalker and clear sky n call to pripyat are. My go too anytime I'm bored of newer games. I have hundreds of hours playing stalker and its Awsome mods.
Despite gog's user reviews, I prefer Clear Sky over SOC. Mainly for ditching the annoying hunger-thirst system and having different factions you can link up with.
@@paulsmecker2778 goddamn right, i forget how i even found out about it years ago... i think i was just researching "old game mods" or something, and omg. i wish i had a better pc. finished SoC and went straight for the full anomaly 3.0. so much stuff, brain hurts. so rough. so fun. EfT would be another for no horror etc, ehh.
I decided to buy the entire series on Steam the other day thanks to the summer sale. I started this morning before work, played for three hours, died for the first time, and realized there was no auto save, or at least I didn't turn it on. I cried when I respawned in the first room. And then got right back to it. Fantastic game
Ha!! Honestly, that's a pretty typical first time playing STALKER.
Good hunting stalker
Did you finish the series? What would you say about it? I just finished CoP recently too
@@martinadamek7016how did you like COP, I’m barely reaching the endgame portion of CS and I’ve been loving it so far. I’m really excited for COP so what would your honest opinion be on it
@@martinadamek7016I did, and I loved every minute. Few games have made me feel as immersed and scared for my own life. Amazing series, even with it's few issues
Dont get me wrong but i like to "watch" the longer reviews when im going to sleep. Never stop uploading these :D
Deal!
Same
Ah, a fellow Y2Mate enjoyer.
Big same. The frequent gunshots didn't help this time.
@@Shruggernauts adds flavor to your dreams
Stalker reminds me a lot of TES: Morrowind. It is an older style of game design. The game doesn't hold your hand, it doesn't tell you what to think about the questions it raises, it just asks questions and allows the player to find their own answer. The plot is reasonably important, but it is only half of the equation.
Morrowind is brutal if you are playing the first time without any prior knowledge of old school dice roll mechanics. I remember when it came out on Xbox and I died repeatedly trying to fight the 3 slavers in the cave outside of Sanda neen. Magic was the only surefire way to deal damage in early game. As you move almost a foot every 5 seconds and Your fatigue restores at a rate of -1000 every second. Good memories.
@@jeraminvidalez5334 I remember the first time I played, I wandered into a Daedric ruin at really low level and got clapped so hard! I think the difficulty is what made me love it so much.
Other games:
- Adventurer, this prophecy can only be fulfill by a strong and brave hero like you.
Stalkers:
- Can I do it?
- *silence*
- I did it. It's a good thing, right?
- *silence*
- Okay, I guess.
@@itspeany4899 yeah
"I don't know if I was right or wrong... but I made it. And I guess... is should be thankful for that." - Strelok.
@@itspeany4899 you want me to stay at lo l
@@itspeany4899 lol ok ppl
@@itspeany4899 you i look pollo oooo ooooo
Stalker is a series that made me think gaming would be incredible in the future...turns out it was just another anomaly.
Right? I didn't play the originals yet but I've been completely immersed in the Anomaly mod with the Expedition add-on. Never been more addicted to a single player open world game before. Which is saying something since I usually can't sit down for more than an hour or two with these modern open world games, but something about STALKER has me playing for hours at a time and ruining my sleep schedule lol. Sad that an old game like this is still leagues above any game these giant companies with millions in funding can put out.
Stalker 2 looks promising.
@@mamory3791 Idk, that gameplay trailer seems kinda... stiff for STALKER.
@@xJokerzWild its set to release in december so hopefully its gets better
@@mamory3791 development is halted till further notice due to the war.
But they offering a free real experience...
Just go to Ukraine, grab a gun and Gear.
Welcome to The Zone S.T.A.L.K.E.R
I love that throwing bolts ahead of yourself to check for anomalies or traps has carried over from A Roadside Picnic.
In the S.T.A.L.K.E.R movie as well, one of the protagonists is constantly tying rags to several bolts in his pouch, for scouting ahead.
I’ve only played “Call of Pripyat”, but I do remember it being one of my favorite games of my youth. Along with Metro 2033, Fallout 3, and Fallout New Vegas.
Yay! Some fallout rep! Everybody loves to look down on fallout, but they are legitimately amazing games.
@@ibelieveingaming3562everybody likes to look down on fallout? it’s one of the most acclaimed franchises of all time and new vegas is very often recognised as one of the best games of all time
@@ibelieveingaming3562Everyone looks down on the new ones, New Vegas is literally one of the greatest games ever. And 3 has some of the best settings in any game ever.
Metro is GOATed
Nah new Vegas sucks. 4 is much better
I really enjoy these longer linked together reviews of a game series, they're perfect for just hanging on the couch with chip and dip without having to worry about getting your mouse nasty with your sticky fingers :D
I'm glad so many people enjoy these so much.
@@AvalancheReviews That's what happens when you put so much heart and energy into something as you do Jared :)
Nice. What kind of chips and dip?
@@AC-hj9tv The classic one here in Sweden probably would be sourcream and onion chips, as for dip there's a couple variants available but my favorite is probably the one called Holiday, not sure what it is but it's good.
@@Seriouskai wow. Very nice
Have a good day brother 🇸🇪
That blue explosion in the sky in Anomaly is the "pulse" anomaly. If you stand beneath it, it can 1 shot you when it hits. However it doesn't appear often above you and if it does you still usually have enough time to move away.
Man I must be unlucky then because I've had a pulse appear almost right next to me multiple times. (thankfully never close enough to be deadly)
@@Andy_Enderson For me it tends to appear during a gunfight/mutant fight as I'm hiding behind a tree begging for my life
I always wondered what those were in Anomaly lmao, I only got one-tapped once 2 steps after saving
Roadside Picnic is such an underrated book. A classic imo. Has the perfect blend of mystery, cosmic horror and science fantasy. Still my favorite take on the first contact scenario too.
For real! I couldn't put it down when I read it.
I wish for the English audiobook they would've gotten the Metro 2033 narrator. That guy was amazing, but meanwhile the Roadside Picnic narrator sounds like he's a streetwise detective from Chicago or something.
(If you haven't listened to Metro 2033 you should. That guy is really good at acting out voices for Russian tunnel dwellers or stalkers, and it makes it such a nice creepy listen, in the dark, before bed.)
Master difficulty is a misconception (response to 0:41:00).
Master difficulty doesn't, in any way, benefit the player -- in *any* of the titles.
In SoC Novice gives you a 20% damage boost, a 50% additional damage resistance, and higher loot probability.
That's it, there are no additional effects. Notably *enemy weapon damage is always pinned at 100% in all three titles, it does not change from difficulty at all*.
There was a bug in very early SoC builds that had enemies use the player data for weapon damage and hit probability, but that hasn't been relevant for a long time.
he actually addresses this during the 2nd game's review! i think he's just combined his 3 videos on the franchise together because even the timestamps and such are a little bit off.
Source?
@@matthewjones39 google it, it's easier, but some guys actually checked the code and master difficulty doesn't actually make the game easier. Never did, what actually started this claim is the fact that the original animations are terrible, combined that with the fact that all guns do little damage and the game have bulletdrop it gave the impression that harder difficulty made the game easier when in reality was the player that replayed the game and having more experience found better equipment faster giving the impression that harder difficulty was easier.
strelocks face at the end was always poetically horrified, hes convinced hes doing the right thing but worries over the consequences
"with They are liyng what Else Will happen when their are gone" type of face
Stalker series is one of those games, where you know that it's so unique, so one in a million, that you won't find another games like this. The feeling of being alone most of the time with a thought that any person you meet may be your enemy, walking at night being catious of mutants hiding in the shadows and even fighting with the Zone itself makes for such a special atmosphere. Legendary series, that's all.
The first Stalker game was released when i was 14 and i played it soon after. Im so very glad i got to play all these games when i was a young adult who was able to be fully engrossed and absorbed by the incredible athmosphere of these games. Its amazing to see other people having similar and positive experiences with these games. They just dont make them like this anymore and i know its not just because of nostalgia i say that.
The easiest way to test someone who might be into the STALKER games is tell them two things:
In the game, if you shoot an enemy in the bare head, they will die.
If THEY shoot you in the bare head, you will die.
I describe it as the most immersive single player fps rpg, simply, nothing compares, and nothing comes close.
@@windshieldwasher6919 I feel like the fact anyone can die with one headshot including you sells that without droning on about rpg mechanics and sci-fi.
I've gotten many a Arma or Battlefield player into it just by saying that.
@@zigfaust meanwhile in far cry 6, explosive rounds are less effective on humans than vehicles
@@joshgroban5291 lmao
I've been playing Into The Radius recently, and because vr can sometimes be a bit displeasing to play for more than 2 hours due to the toll it takes on the legs and how unpleasant it is to do anything seated, I've been wanting to play something that was what that game was but played on desktop. Never played a STALKER game, but I seen that Anomaly is free and that there was a good modpack called Gamma going around for it so I think I'm going to start there. And before it is said, no I will not play the 15 year old games and never will, I've heard STALKER vets can be pretty ailing when it comes to preaching about purity.
Not gonna lie bro I have severe fibromyalgia so I’m in pain constantly. I get about 4-6 hours of sleep, if I’m lucky. Every day for the past 3 years. So falling asleep to this good content is the biggest complement I can give someone. Thanks my friend.
Grift
I feel you on that brother. It's rough.
STALKER is (rightly or wrongly) what piqued my interest in the Chernobly disaster and what eventually led me to book a day trip to Pripyat and the surrounding area. An eye opening experience and reminded me how an amazing job GSC did in replicating it virtually. No other game has had the same pull that STALKER has had. I normally don't like sandboxy-esque games but I can't imagine how many hours I've sunk into the the various STALKER games/flavours. Must be 1500+
These have been my exact feelings and experience with Stalker series and it's more than pleasing to hear someone talking thoroughly about it for hours. I couldn't do it better myself, and I somehow doubt that someone else could at this point. This is a truly beautiful video that only a die-hard fan could make. Congratulations.
I wanted to play stalker for ten years finslly got a pc last month and crushed soc, going through the series in order and i think it might be one of the greatest ever. Its so perfect for sharing your stories with other stalkers no wonder the communjty is so passionate
YES!!!!!!!! Some of the most fun you can have is just talking to other Stalkers about a mutant suddenly spawning into Cordon, or some other crazy stories.
As for the difficulty, a quick little addition. In SoC, MOST of the weapons actually do decent damage, from around the Bar up to the finale. Hell, even SMGs in the Garbage do decent damage at closer ranges, vaporizing your (or your enemies') HP in seconds. Apart from the bottom-of-the-barrel starter weapons, almost every one is deadly. It's MOSTLY only their accuracy and range which actually improves as the game progresses (except the Big Ben pistol, some snipers and maybe some shotguns). This is why it remains dangerous to rush in balls-to-the-wall into the starter areas even in endgame gear. And I think it's beautiful! Of course, endgame armor negates MUCH more damage than the beginner leather coat and its peers, but still, weapon damage overall kind of remains deadly.
It seems your wish will soon come true, ( Stalker introduced to the masses) due to Stalker 2 being an xbox gamepass exclusive. It will finally get the attention and awareness of a bigger audience that the first few Stalker games missed due to not being a triple A game. Personally I'm happy for GSC getting to showcase their work on the world stage and can't wait to give Stalker 2 many hours of my life
These long reviews are really appreciated. I can't begin to imagine the amount of work it must take to undertake such a massive piece (rough drafts , editing videos etc). It is quite a stunning piece of work.
As i've said before I love all your reviews whether I've played the game or not. Stalker blew me away when i played it for the first time. Every time I get a new PC, Stalker is the bottle of Champagne i smash across it's bow. Have an amazing new year for yourself and your channel.
Fun Fact: several of the cast and crew in Roadside Picnic had their lifespans shortened due to toxic exposure since they were filming in a restricted chemical hazard area.
That sure is a fact but I doubt it is a fun one my dude.
cast of tarkowsky's stalker you mean. They filmed it 2 times because the first all the footage was developed wrongly and couldn't be used
@@fuckingpippaman I wish they released first version too it looks awesome with fucked up colour
I can't wait to play some of these -- thanks again, bro!!
My pleasure man!
Hi hear reggae playing
They are great games, I dumped hundreds of hours on them back in middle and high school, still have them in my steam list and hard copies.
It was 2008.. i was in the army
I thought that the game has nothing to offer to me
Then i had a day off and i decided to go to an internet cafe
I saw the game in the library and decided to check it out
MAN... it was love at first sight
Next day i ordered it ( pirated)
2020 i ordered all three games from ebay
Today 2024 i saw that they released the trilogy on ps4( i immediately bought it)
Other than that i read roadside picnic saw the stalker movie spent many hours on videos and wikis and built 3 Airsoft loadouts inspired of this game.... You can say that i am a big fan
😺👍
That part about Master difficulty is NOT TRUE AT ALL. It's a complete myth. Setting difficulty to master makes you die faster. It does nothing for the enemies because the bullet damage doesn't change. It's the same for all difficulty levels. It's just that the players resistance is lowered.
I recommend stalker difficulty for new comers
play master anyway, makes the game more fun tbh
Another glorious compilation video from my favourite underrated game channel - Happy New Year Jared!
Happy new year!!!
Woke up to this video playing, now I have all the games and roadside picnic arrived today. Simply amazing, thank you for making this video
I started playing Anomaly based on this review (I think a lot of people did judging by recent chatter) but I wanted to make a post about it from the viewpoint of "casual stalker fan":
My experience with Stalker is 1 mostly vanilla playthrough of SoC that I sort of bounced off of. I finished the main story, but I didn't engage too much with the side content or open world and while I enjoyed it, it wasn't my favorite. I've been meaning to try again with CoC but while I was looking I stumbled on this video and anomaly and decided on that instead.
First thing I'd do, look up some extensive guides. -Put in a good 2 hours into researching before you start, because the game doesn't tutorialize pretty much anything. Blondefire has excellent videos for getting started.
-Don't give up on the tutorial quest, the game isn't as hard as that task makes it out to be, boars are the most dangerous enemy you'll encounter in the starting area.
-Ignore the main quest for now, just take one side quest with objectives in Cordon at a time and turn them in for cash.
-Dismantle low quality guns for parts and sell them.
-Once you've got a stack of cash, buy or pay a technician to fix some decent weapons and armor.
-It'll probably take 2 or 3 characters to get to a point where you know how to make money efficiently and gear yourself appropriately.
-Don't engage with the repair system at first, just use gun oil and glue tubes to keep your gear above 80%.
I'm sure people have their own tips for starting out, but these really helped me get going to a point where I could leave the starting area within 5 hours of starting a playthrough. If you're a fan of survival mods, I wouldn't call this game hard. I had a much harder time with Fallout Dust and Fallout Frost, and they were also much less polished.
Are you planning on making an edit about the SoC Master difficulty. I mean ultimately, it doesn't matter so much as some people might find it more rewarding, but the damage changes are a myth. The stat adjusted is how much damage YOU take (1.00 or 100% damage, lower difficulties do things like 0.75 or only 75% of the damage) and not the damage of weapons. Enemies receive no changes to their damage resistances across all difficulties and player weapon damage is actually lowered, making enemies spongier and more likely to survive headshots.
The ACOG thing in Anomoly could be chalked up to how far the rail mount is from your eye, and how they scale to the weapons size itself. Basically, its changing cause its distance/size relative to your eye is changing
40:08 lol😂 just as you said you'd only had one crash to desktop my UA-cam app completely crashed in a way I'd never seen before. Must have been the zone 😂
Finally in all of its glory and befitting of a series like STALKER. I can't wait what the sequel brings us. Haven't been this excited for a new release since Witcher 3. Thank your sincerely for your efforts.
yeah except for all the inaccuracies and him talking like some pro when he clerly sucks at the game like his comments about being " constantly low on ammo". Bitch by 1/3 of the game you usually have more russian ammo then u need for the entire game, by the time you unlock bar and further areas you will also start being flooded by more then enough other types. Fun challenge, only buy ammo and don't loot any more then whats in an enemies weapon. Also stalker is and was always intended to be survival lite so it could focus on FPS/horror elements. Don't know where this weaksauce obsession with survival comes but its unfaithful to the series core
did you not see the new darksouls?
I started with Anomaly, and I really liked the way I was essentially absorbing the plot points of the previous games through rumor-fueled osmosis on top of trying to piece together just what the zone is, who all these different outfits are, and how to survive it all with money and artefacts in hand.
The idea of being in the role of some guy who's just recently come to the zone after all this madness has already taken place was something that was really intoxicating to me. From the hunt for Strelok, to seeing rumors on the PDA about some mystery man called "Scar" who vanished without a trace, to high ranking people dropping the name "Alexander" more than a couple times, to picking up on stories from the returning npcs about where they were before and how they ended up where they are now. I'm not sure if I would have taken to it quite as much if I had started with SoC.
Aw man, although that will feel incredible, i felt much more satisfied seeing those names in Anomaly after i finished the original games, i won't spoil anything for you, but i highly suggest you play the originals (with mods if you want too), never seen anyone regret doing so.
RIP anomaly brainwashed
@@legion3408 I'm here to tell you I regretted it lol. Idk how Clear Sky and COP are, but SOC on Steam crashes frequently and is borderline shovelware.
@@NoxMonstrum You can install mods which can stabilize your game.
@@NoxMonstrum Stalker trilogy on GOG is the way to go.
Did I just watch an honest and well made 3 hour ad for a game series? Yes. Yes I did
Super glad I found this channel thanks to this amazing video. I'm getting back into S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and this was just the refresher/retrospective discussion I needed. Always love long form vids like this so I'm super excited to watch more!
when I first played SOC in 2007 at its launch, it was so immersive, my brain could smell the sun bleached ground and the swamps and garbage.. it was just that good.
Be warned, he talks about damage and accuracy being tied to the difficulty in the stalker games, but that's a myth. It's been disproven multiple times. Just an old forum myth. Play on whatever difficulty is most fun for ya!
Hard difficulty, or you're playing wrong
I wish they would make games like these now cuz the games of today are missing something but I really like the old look and things they added to these kinds of games like fallout 1 and 2 (yes I know they are different but they have that really good gritty rpg feel).
The games today are movies with a few minutes of gameplay in between. Cod ww2 for example.
one of the best videos I have ever come across in the my time on UA-cam, can't imagine the work that went into it, thank you.
Wow. You my friend have gained a well earned sub
A great Review of one of my Favorite Game series of all time, Thanks for spreading this hidden gem to others!
For anyone coming to this a couple years later like me, playing Anomaly is fine and fun, but the GAMMA modpack for it changes it to a completely different game, to the point that I am absolutely in love. Don't get me wrong, I had fun with base(d) Anomaly, but GAMMA's (at the time of writing) 443 mods included AND finely tuned to work together JUST right by the modpack author and their team just feels like the Stalker masterpiece Ive always wanted
This game really gets me in the zone, dude.
Been gaming for more then 40 years stalker call of pripyat in my humble opinion is the greatest game ever made.
Walking around Prypiat for the first playthrough was quite an experience I will never forget. Never was an empty space to tense
It's up there. By FAR the best STALKER
Yo dude, as a big fan of the series I want to thank you for this! Sooooo much details, stamps, spoilers, and not to mention your voice and the way you talk, because as someone who's native language is not English (it's Croatian tho) sometimes I have problem with understanding pronunciation. Video is top notch, and again, thank you! It's been a pleasure watching this! You earned subscribe for sure!
EDIT: could you please post link to the mods you are using? Thanks man, stay awesome!
😊😊
well this certainly was a trip down memory lane. thank you.
My pleasure!
Anomaly is free, easily moddable and runs on my older gaming laptop. It's a great survival shooter sandbox, give it a try.
its also completely unfaithful to stalker and should not be compared to it and there is the whole matter of it kinda stealing code from other projects
@@cropathfinder How exactly is it unfaithful to S.T.A.L.K.E.R.? I found the experience to be far better than the original games, regardless of "fixes" brought to vanilla. For my experience so far, Anomaly and M.I.S.E.R.Y. were by far the best S.T.A.L.K.E.R. experience I've had. I enjoy watching Provak videos on youtube but so far, all my attempts to make S.T.A.L.K.E.R. work with Provak have resulted in massive failure as the game is buggy and crashy as hell.
@@bicualexandru246 Misery, added a lot of things but It feels like that the modders never thought about if they should. A quick note, I played Misery 2.1(i think) at max difficulty, as recon, on black road but no other modifiers and I quit because the game got easy, more on that later. So time to essay starting with shooty gamplay.
Overall, I felt the game did not know the difference between hard, and borderline unfair. It added so much flavor text to items that it was legit not possible to show all of it on certain resolutions. Tooltips were also not updated (like fireball providing less protection than bloodsucker skin, you had to check it in the files to confirm it) which is kinda bad when you want a "punishing" game but you end up lying. It also had item bloat, constant back and forth between traders to check what item is worth more to whom. Economy that was shit (but in fact made to be broken by the player, like just maining shotguns for their high damage and cheap ammo, using shit double barrels to hunt for meat which has a higher selling price than actually mutated tissue sold to the eggheads?). Most stuff is not worth anything but loot you must and kinda have to abuse the fact that NPC's do not play by the rules as you, they have limitless ammo, but even with headshots you come out even on ammo and never gain anything(unless you use the surrender mechanic in which case you get a perfect weapon...suspension of disbelief anyone?) So the gameplay encourages shadowing neutral NPC's so you can loot bodies for...explosives?
Mutants are borked. Switching stuff around like, boars take reduced damage to the head and more on the ass (this is beyond my ability suspension of disbelief and is just being annoying). Or the cat that makes literally no noise, which is totally a mutation and not just missing sound files. Or that the pychic mutants just kill you unless you use consumables. So lets get to that.
Consumables basically became a thing that you must use. Imagine a person who spends 16 hours, every day on adrenaline shots so he can move (recon having 30kg carry limit made this an obligation), an annoying drain on resources, and hard to believe. Said psychic mutants above? Just use some weed and you are immune to them.
The game also had an unhealthy fetish for explosives. Pseudogiant? Just use a single RGD-1, ded. 3 chimeras, 10 cats and 2 poltergheists at Iron Forest or Jupiter? Just use an anti tank warhead rigged up to be a mine that kills basically anything in one hit that you got from dead NPC's who had it for...reasons? Mutant packs are too big but curiously hard to spawn later on (this was the reason why I stopped, there was no longer anything to kill) but a single rifle grenade fixes it so well, that due to the animation most of the bodies rot.
The staple of the game, artifact hunting, was barely profitable and made harder by making artefacts out of depleted uranium(weight) and adding containers that are literally lead(just on case one wants to...move). Fire/chemical anomalies cook you in any armour but in science gear, but once you have it, you can have a piknik in the field.
The Misery mod is big, but it is big in the sense the picture of the model they added to Yanov station is big. Takes up a lot of space, and hampers performance and the gameplay flows like a river of bricks. The mod gave you items that are just better than we had (recon gets a bonus to artifact usage? sorrly, using a carry frame+kevlar is better than these supposedly priceless artifacts). The animations were jank, eating while moving? impossible. Using a medical kit? The game wants you to think medkits take time to use, but time does not move during the fade out and fade in, so it is a trap to use injectors considering the cost.
And this is just gameplay, the story is bad too for my liking. This partially comes from their inspirations of which 1 is okay, 1 is meh, and 1 is shite. In order, Metro 2033(game version), I am Legend and the worst.....The Road (HRUUH).
Metro 2033 is the better one but MUCH MUCH more bleak than S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Stalker (the film), or Roadside Picknick, but it has that Eastern Slav mentality of going ahead and just adapting(a thing people did a lot of during and after Soviet times).
I am Legend I just do not get, the only inspiration I can see is the fetish for RDX.
And the worst....The Road.... I had to read that horriblely out of touch idea of survivalism(it has cannibals with humans kept alive as food, some catastrophe that is never explained and can not be explained in any way other than "God did it", the father has the survival instinct of a brain damaged deer in headlights who does not know what concealment is, who gets saved by a bunker full of food and the ending is horribly american and Deus Ex machina like).
The Road is bleak, just like the mod, it is bleak to be bleak, but that makes it tiresome and in several cases, illogical whithin the work. The Misery team had a lot of skill with photoshop to make depressing pictures but believable setting it does not make (especially in Eastern Europe).
Stalkers complaining how The Zone is hell(with gameplay mechanics like this sure, but you guys never pay for ammo like I do) but they do not leave cause the outside world is also hell(this is the modding team trying to justify why 5.45x39mm ammo is this expensive even tho the socialist machine churned out so much of it they armed the third world and still had a ton left over, also try not to figure out why the fucking XM8 rifle ,which was never adopted large scale, is in the zone) and people spend money on artifacts instead of...food, water, fuel for the oven....like people do when economy is shit. They also never laugh, ever, even tho black comedy is the cornerstone of Eastern Europe, I know, I live here.
Basically, ideas are thrown in that make no sense(bandits eat snork hands to establish dominance over other factions...and get radiation poisoning from it due to low calories and high radiation per hand? why not bloodsuckers? those are also human mutants) and makes the game world feel dead, and illogical. One can imagine living in the Zone as portrayed by GSC, the Misery team made it too edgy and suffers for it.
This turned the experience gamey, in more ways than one.
It also does not help that the game operates on grey and brown that is not only ugly to look at(and kinda unreal) when the Stalker games showed decrepit grey soviet buildings taken over by the greenery of nature but twisted by The Zone giving it a somewhat unearthly element as the mundane and old has now things that do not belong there while also making those things valuable but in a place that is recognized by people. One has contrast which is interesting, the other is muddy and over time, boring and uniform.
TLDR: the gameplay is bloated, gives alternatives to the unique gameplay elements that are better turning those into gimicks at best and traps at worst, mucks up the balance of the game to just make the game hard, while having writing that feels like was made from elements that are "cool" by themselves but put together in ways that creates conflict and not something greater than the whole.
I hope you had as much fun reading this essay as I did writing it.
@@Thund3r0v you must be fun at parties.
@@bicualexandru246 provaks version just sucks you are better off just modding it yourself
No idea if you will see this man but TY for so much great content that has lead to me finding so many interesting games to play or revisit, just over the last 6 days I finally got into Metro 2033 after having it since it released but never finishing it (played every STALKER on day 1) anywho I Finished 2033, Yesterday beat Last Light (eehhhh) lol and right now working on Exodus, keep up the great work.
Just purchased the bundle and I cannot wait to play this series. Its exactly what I've been needing recently.
I think I have "rewatched," all of the videos in this channel like at least 500 times each over the last year. Idk why these are so damn great to put on to go to sleep with but it is
Same here🤧 Avalanche ASMR
This video series you have made on Stalker and Metro are amazing video and very detailed. I have honestly watched this exact video 4 times now start to finish. I enjoyed them so much I have started my own playthrough for the first time. Thank you for the amazing content!
One of the best, if not the best, retrospective video. Thank you so much for your content ( also putting all three videos together)
A friend of mine suggested your channel when I told him that I was looking for an excuse to get into Stalker series. Lucky me, you had started doing the reviews of Stalker games and I started watching them. I have to add though, I am not much fan of survival horror games in the slighest. I hate any kind of jump scare or anything that resembles it. I stay away from these games as I have no reason to torture myself by scaring myself. So, this game was in that genre for me. BUT:
I didn't stray from the originality of the games by installing many mods except for the bug fixing ones. I finished all 3 games 2 weeks later I started SoC. I just couldn't stop playing. By the time I was in the middle of Clear Sky, I was beginning to grow impatient to play Anomaly after I finish the series. I was enjoying the gameplay of the series on Master difficulty, so I was looking forward to experience the masterpiece all together, collectively. I knew that that the story of Anomaly wouldn't get anywhere near the original games but playing it sandbox would at least give me the gameplay satisfaction, the gunplay.
First off, all 3 games were breathtaking. SoC was my favourite by far though. I don't think that I have been told a story this gripping since Deus Ex Human Revolution. A story that was meant to be told to an audience who asks for seriousness in the plot, a danger to be sensed and has no hesitation to detonate like a mine. In my opinion, the zone is the neutrel evil version of Mother Earth. The expansion of the story narrates the journey that we take perfectly. I was mesmerized by the time I entered through that door in Lake Yantar. I stopped at the entrance of that iron gate and enjoyed the whole composition all together. The music, arrangement of the dead bodies and objects at the gate, the atmosphere: a perfect entrance into insanity. From that point onwards I finished SoC with that enthusiasm. CS and CoP were both great but I just couldn't feel that symphonic story telling.
TLDR: My point to what I have written so far. I just couldn't get into Anomaly that much. I played it 10 hours with minimal mods that gave some weapons and a little bit of graphic enhancement. It has the gameplay, the zone, the touch of the atmosphere but not the soul of Stalker games. The zone was alive when I played the series but Anomaly couldn't quite grab me. I still love the gunplay, the suspense of danger, the raindrops, the audio engineering but it feels aimless. I know this is an unpopular opinion but this is unfortunately how I feel.
The best gain of this experience is, now I have a new treshold for horror games and I have been catching the end of your livestreams in the mornings (I live in France and by the time I wake up, you are saying your goodbyes), and I may go for Fear series as I care for your opinions on games. I recently started playing Dead Space and finished it yesterday and now continuing the second game but it is just so much action, there is no space for horror. The game is always on the run, no suspense, hence horror just doesn't build up to a point where you enjoy it as it was meant to. It is like first Dead Space game with 4x speed, yakety song playing in the background.
That's pretty damn cool! I love how Stalker and the channel got you to play a few horror games. Plus having someone new get into Stalker is always the best thing. Cheers man! Here's hoping I can recommend a few more games you'll get into!
if you dont like jumpscares try haunting grounds or silent hill 1 idk they dont really have any
They actually went and put these on the Switch. Which is great, buuuuut, they didn't consider adding a UI scaling option, so it's super obnoxious to actually read things in handheld mode.
As for the games themselves. To go off what someone else said in a comment, I gotta say, starting a big FPS like this, and not being the big hero of the story, is a nice change of pace. Usually it's like Fallout or Skyrim or something, and you're the only person in the entire world that could possibly save people and do everyone's menial tasks. Not to mention the endless praise you get for every possible mundane thing you accomplish. In this, it's just like "go do this. You did it? Okay. Bye." and you're just left to wonder if it was good or bad, how well you did at it, and just happy you didn't die.
This is also one of the few games I've played, aside from maybe the early top-down Fallout games, where the loot you get from enemies actually feels *important*. Like, every medkit or weapon, or piece of ammo you find, is super helpful. So many games let you loot, but you really never NEED to, it's just there for the sake of it.
The difficulty thing is an absolute myth. You can stagger an enemy then pop their head with your pistol. Learning on lower difficulties is perfectly fine as long as you understand the strategic gunplay.
stalker was and still is the best single player shooter i have ever played, which i told to anyone who would listen. its crazy to think i am the only person i know who has ever played the games. i often find myself thinking back to me playing them. thanks for the vid. i still recommend stalker to anyone that asks
The zombies in STALKER aren't soulless... you can hear them talking about their families. You can hear them crying because they have a moment of clarity, and realize they'll never go home. They even react to fires by saying they're bright and beautiful, like the sun... but even though it looks warm, it's so cold. The voice lines for the zombies are depressing as shit. Definitely one of the worst possible fates in the zone.
And this is why the game tells you upon shooting g yourself in the head once your psy resistance drops to 0 that you have escaped a fate worse than death... zombies got it bad
I played with the misery mod and realistic weapons, then turned the difficulty to master. That played really well, where every gun is deadly and accurate as it should be.
I still have my retail boxed disc of SOC. The first time I tried to play the game, I didn't make it out of the Cordon before something shiny distracted me. But a month or 2 later I decided to boot up the game and give it another go and have been hooked ever since. You pretty much nailed everything I have thought and felt about S.TA.L.K.E.R. over the years.
Really enjoyed this video, big nostalgia to see it all again. Respect for recording that section after a long shift 😅
Oi, i literally found your channel yesterday and just realized you uploaded a video today! Nice job dude, keep it up
Well that's good luck! Hell yeah!
Is no one gonna talk about how the frog looking thing showed up in the tunnel like a complete badass, causing explosions and shit then dying looking like it slipped on a bar of soap at 10:36
That’s a psudeogiant
That's only in SoC. In CS or CoP, these things take so much shit to kill you might as well throw the entire military at them and it'll still take some time before it goes down.
Oh you can't even imagine how many times I felt you were me speaking in your video.......
How can you make a new player understand the "feeling" of the zone ?? Is it even possible for a new gamer used to the Dix12 graphics feel the atmosphere of these 2007-9 masterpieces??
And how many things all these new players lose by not knowing the beauty of the zone......
Sometimes I feel every single player should play Stalker just to acquire the proper criteria that are necessary to judge any future game.
Not to like/play Stalker, but for the sake of the game industry itself.
back then i used to buy PC magazines and in the same number there was Stalker and Crysis review.. 2007 was special..
I remember waiting for stalker to release for like what felt like 10 years. Back then where I lived most people did not have internet yet, so we kids were sharing game trailers on USB drives. After seeing the one with the dogs in the freedom base I got hyped for the game. I believe that trailer included vehicles as well.
When it came out I still had my first PC, and yes, it was a potato even as brand new, so it barely ran the game.
With the PC running the game like that I experienced the most funny way to die in this game.
You throw a grenade at enemies, but the game freezes at the point the granade is just leaving your hand. While you and everything else is stuck, for some reason the grenade timer goes on. When the stutter ends your grenade blows up in your face.
Even running like that, played the crap out of SoC.
After some time I got a better GPU and guess what, I replayed SoC and replayed it multiple times.
Then CS came out and played the crap out of that game as well.
When CoB busted out I have a decent machine to run it and again, I went through it multiple time.
Later I discovered mods and again it kept me playing stalker.
Sometime during all that, because of the game, I watched the movie and discovered the genius cinematography of Tarkovski. Also it got me to find a pdf of roadside picnic and read through it holding my breath.
To this day when I get a new GPU I fire up Anomaly or Misery and get sucked into the zone for a week or two. I lost count how many times I played through the game, disregarding the times I just went in to progress to the endgame gear and shoot $hit up for a while, then stop playing until the next itch comes.
Guess in my 60s I will still be running through the zone yelling cheeki breeki as many others will. Specially when a new mod releases.
Idk what difficulty you play on, but two weeks are by no means enough for me to even get past brainscorcher. And I mean two weeks of real bungingon stalker.
@@Bradley_UA I always play on master, it is much more fun. Enemies are too spongy on lower difficulties and IMO seem less smart in firefights. Not sure how true that is though. I played this game so much, I know the Zone like my back pocket. Since that includes stashes as well, you get decent gear rather quickly. One of the first thing I do is to raid the military outpost, usually after I retrieve the USB for Sidorovich. I wait for the patrol to get the closest they can to the loner base and when they turn back, I ambush them. Then quickly grab their stuff and GTFO of there. Wait for the rest of the base to start coming after you and smack them in semiauto with the AK as they come. You will die, a lot. But it pays as some of their guns usually end up being in solid condition. You can also pull back to the loner base to get some assistance, or at least some distraction cannon fodder for the military :D Alternative method is to plink the army dudes by the bridge from the top of the silo building by the bridge. With good mods, this gets even easier to pull off, since your starting guns are not bb guns. Then you can farm garbage for artefacts, it is usually chuck full of them in the vanilla version if I remember correctly. Then when at Agroprom you get that nice unique AK and a loner armor in Strelok's hideout, you are good to go. By the time you reach Bar, you have guns and artefacts oozing out of your ears and you are moving like a slug with 59.9 weight on your back :D
YESSSS LETS GOOOO I love these longer videos. Fham ur voice is sooo chill. I love falling asleep to these vids. I've easily watched the 7hr silent hill video atleast 40 times no exaggeration. Keep up the amazing work Jared!
I remember playing stalker soc on Gametap years ago as a young kid and totally getting my ass kicked straight off the bat. Looking at it now, It's totally something I would enjoy. I love games where the devs force you to figure things out for yourself and give you lots of freedom. It's almost too overwhelming for me though, but your review on the series has made me a little more confident.
There really is nothing like STALKER, it alone made me buy a new advanced PC, gas mask collection, survivalist gear and airsoft AKs. Going around a abounded local factory or farmhouse with that gear on and the ambient soundtrack in one headphone has shown me a new aspect on life and the world itself. The only other thing that comes close to compliment this series is METRO, being alone in a dark tunnel with a old AK with half a mag, 2 medkits, cracked gas mask all while hearing noises from pipes, mutants attacking a station or even whispers from the dead give me a eerily good experience. I love both series, the books and even the 1979 film, I am excited but cautious for HoC and the supposed METRO film, Im also intrigued by the game Atomic heart but it remains to be seen. Good video and praise Monolith!
Love your video compilations. Hope your holidays have been well!
I can't complain. Just been spending time with the family and getting some work done.
I have played all the stalker games and to this I can say you nailed the stuff, by that I mean you explained this game to somebody who probably never heard of this game, I couldn't explain it better but because now that I have a video like this I can comment my own experience too. My brother showed me this game back in 2014 and I still remember those days vividly, I remember when the army outpost at the bridge near the shock tunnel was an actual challenge to me, and now whenever I think about playing stalker the one of the first thing's I do is push the army outpost near Sidorovich. And I really don't know how to explain my memories of this game. This is one of the games I will continue to love to the day I meet my end.
Oh god thank you! Just got off a 12 hour night shift and I'm not ready to pass out yet. This will ease me through the morning, though I lament the lack of your voice during my shift!
That's what these long videos are here for!
Finally dipping my toes into the Stalker pool now that it’s ported to consoles. It runs surprisingly smooth and I’ve already put 20+ hours in.
This made me want to play anomaly again
Edit: I've sunk way too much time into anomaly with the EFP modpack after posting this.
I hope that no matter how popular stalker 2 becomes, it stays true to their original vision
If you want the ultimate CoP experience that doesn't change up the core of the game, you should try the gunslinger mod. It makes everything lethal; yourself, other humans, and especially mutants
Anomaly really is the shit tho
@@Boopboob for sure, but anomaly is more a sandbox. Cop Gunslinger is more of a gameplay overhaul. Two totally different boxes of frogs mate 😂
I can agree; everytime I think of/mention Stalker, I always center the conversation about "atmosphere." There's nothing like it.
Not gonna lie, I could totally see you making documentaries if you ever retire from making gaming/UA-cam content. Every one of your videos is so comprehensive and well-curated that I'm still interested after several hours of watching.
Enjoyed the explanation and love shown in the video, I'm happy to be able to play these games finally now that they dropped onto Xbox.
As a Ukrainian, I am very interested in how the Western audience got such an interest in the stalker. For me, as for many players from the post-soviet countries, this is a game from my youth, when games were still bought on disks and passed on to their friends.
Previously, I met on youTube 1-2 english-speaking channels on the stalker (and one of them was russian guy irl).
And in the last 1.5-2 years I see new english videos on my favorite game every day. A whole bunch of new English channels on stalker have appeared.
Where is this from? Like some english gamer found a diamond in a pile of shit called "post-soviet gaming industry" and was like "dudes, look, there's a damn diamond here! Let's all play it"
Or how was it? Someone from the western players, please explain to me, I will be grateful.
Sorry if there are mistakes somewhere in the text, I don't speak English very well.
I will leave the same question under several more similar videos
Honestly, stalker has been pretty popular in the West for a while, this increasing when a youtuber called Sseth made a video on the series
I started playing stalker when new, downloaded the game from a emule chinese site called VeryCD, which has a ton of software and games. There it was an ISO dvd. Once I installed the game, even loading was very odd, because it shows what libraries, shaders, textures, etc... Like an incomplete game.... Was really, really odd to me. Then I started playing, then boom. You're dead with 2 shoots, and bleeding out haha!! That was a very good start for a game. Not having unlimited brain dead lives. Then, I felt a lot of atmosphere in the game. too many details. There's a ton of videos also in spanish. There was even a ton of photos from young guys from Spain, Mexico, and other spanish speaking countries dressed like stalkers with patches and everything.
Holy shit thank you for the analysis, I've already had my fair share of stalker binging but I won't be discouraged to replay them once more!
As a console player seeing stalker 2 coming to game pass on Xbox has got me as hype as a dog in a meat factory.
Dude I like how you presented everything about Stalker, just all the in depth crazy things going on in the game... I wish I could play it! Even the new one coming out it’s only on the newer systems.. So I’ll have to admire from afar... an watch them being played.. I’m a lore nut! I love games with super deep lore!!!! I played an fairly enjoyed the Metro 2033 games an that’s kinda like the bastard child of Stalker. You can definitely tell the team behind the Metro games took a lot of good points from Stalker besides being open world... the latest game thou.. Metro Exodus kinda tried at open world gameplay... they did but it still felt like go here kill this bad guy, save the girl an get outta there before the creatures come. An I wish I knew more about Metro.. I never read the books cause I’m not much of reader. But if you do a playthru of the new Stalker game I’ll definitely be tuning in to watch!!! But yeah... I definitely subbed man!! I appreciate everything you did in this video!
I watch every Avalanche video like a bedtime story!) This guy is very good at making interesting reviews!
Still remember when shadow of Chernobyl launched. I had an AGP video card still in my system. Was an absolute slideshow but loved every minute.
I remember having to research whether or not my mother board used agp or pci when buying a new gpu for FEAR. That brings back a lot of good memories.
@@AvalancheReviews FEAR demo was what made me upgrade to the Radeon 2600 AGP card. People will never understand the struggle lol
Stalker changed the game man, I loved that game. I really hope Stalker 2 is even half as good.
I've finished these games so many times, SoC in particular. I've tried nearly every major mod and I don't regret it. There's just nothing like it, even a heavily modded Fallout game just can't get the atmosphere of STALKER.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a game I come back from time to time for the last 12-13 years. I was 15 or 16 when I discovered it. Shadow of Chernobyl, Call of Pripyat and all of it's variations are such an experience that will make you feel so invested. For a game from early 2000s it has mechanics that games at that time didn't even think about. If you love survival games, horror like games, exploring with slow gameplay and certain death - that's it.
Stalker still has the most enjoyable, satisfying shooting mechanics and ai of any game although kinda broken at times it still serves as amusement & not game breaking. The amount of times I've had to run for cover with psi storms incoming in the middle of the night while in gunfights to get into cover makes for such immersive unexpected events & experiences, like nothing else.
Totally agree, Stalker is by far the most immersive fps I´ve come across because it has an incredible atmosphere, while also having those unexpected and non scripted moments alle the time...its like the total opposite of Far Cry, for example
Holy sh*t man, I have to thank you. You showed an old S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Veteran Anomaly. I knew Misery, Lost Alpha and so on, but never heard about Anomaly until this great Video. And ....
WTF! Anomaly is awesome! Thank you again, for showing me this!! :D
Anomaly is such an upgrade over over hyped misery
The fact that this video has 3 million views makes me very happy. Stalker shall conquer the heart of many gamers because of how good it is!
One day everyone will know how incredible this series is.
Ironman is really fun,like you are way more careful entering firefights, and it's very satisying winning one due to you thinking thay you outsmarted the enemy. And lastly it feels very much like real life cause you only make like 3 or 2 mistakes and you are dead which makes you more focused and immersed.
I remember the very early days of Stalker when I was barely out of my teens and waiting for this game that seemed so ambitious and interesting. It was a fun community back then, I remember they had story competitions on the forum, and there were even interactions with some of the devs, and I distinctly remember a player vs player multiplayer-only beta-like release which people took part in (I think the map was a variation of the Yantar warehouse/zombie area before entering the lab but I could be misremembering), though my PC really couldn't handle it at the time.
Honestly, one of my favourite modern gaming series, even if it was ultimately flawed, it was the best kind of flawed and I am very interested to see what happens with Stalker 2.
that master difficulty thing is a myth its true till the late game.
the armor starts to become extremely unbalanced. and the same armor on you dose almost nothing
STALKER was the first Tarkovsky I ever watched
loved it -- but ended up with a headache
In Clear Sky in Cordon at the military outpost if you wipe them all out they will respawn if you get far enough, meaning there is an exploit here that could help you break the economy, and the weight limit does not matter since you can just put all of the loot on one body and carry the body itself to the Sidorovich and sell it to him. Since Sidorovich will buy guns and ammo form you and he doesn't have a limit on the money and i ended easily with 100K + of rubles plus 10k of ammunition for the AK and about 4k of armor piercing round and med-packs, anti-radiation meds, food and could buy whatever i wanted. Also there is a footlocker in one of the barracks that can hold the things you put them in there meaning that you can stack up to several hundred kilograms worth of guns, AK , pistols , ammunition and med-packs and carry them in one swoop. It was funny to drag a body with 500 Kg with stuff on him, i remembered lord of the rings: "I can't carry the ring for you Mr. Frodo, but i can carry YOU". Keep in mind that at some point in the game they stop respawning so much so you'd better do this early on. So if you want that exoskeleton suit you know what to do :)
Hey Jared I know it's not exactly horror but just wondering if you'd ever consider covering any of the Fallout games?
I don't know when.. but I WANT to play it. You hab me convinced at around minute 55. I got all(current) three parts of the series for -75% on Steam today. Really looking forward to it :D
Really amazing review. You covered so many aspects, good and bad, and in my opinion that's what a review IS. Thanks for this great recommendation.
You got my like and sub. I definitely watch more of your reviews based on this true experience of a video. Keep making great videos like this
I remember hearing about a real world phenomena that somehow causes odd things to happen to rng machines like syncing.