I used to love this game a few years ago, around 2009. Played it for hundreds of hours...

I used to love this game a few years ago, around 2009. Played it for hundreds of hours, and I'm replaying it again after I've started to branch out to more genres.

I'm not even sure what the fuck I liked about it any more. I keep thinking back to being super immersed in it, but frankly, there's so many things that just destroy the atmosphere if you give the game any sort of scrutiny.

The shooting is terrible, many of the levels are pretty poorly designed and poorly laid out, a lot of the later maps, from the wild territory and onwards have tons of just dead area that is poorly used, if not used at all. The missions are pretty shitty and even some of the conceptually cooler ones, like attacking the freedom base, have a terrible set up and execution.

I dunno, I was just fucking around in the blood sucker village, shooting the bulldog 6 willy nilly, tanking a few blood suckers and it just bored the shit out of me. Got the sniper trs-301, quit a minute later because the game was doing nothing for me.

Have you ever replayed a game you haven't in years? A game you used to love and just can't get into it any more? What do you think was lost, was the game even good in the first place?

I still love STALKER but I can't enjoy it like I used to because I know it inside out by now. You probably have the same problem.

I think I was just much more forgiving for its issues back then.

It's not a perfect game by any means, but it's probably still one of the best games in its niche. I haven't found a game that scratches the same itch as good as STALKER did.

I'm trying to think of what that itch was back then. Maybe to get lost in a world for a while, and Stalker did pretty good at that at the time. Just playing it now, I feel like I'm playing something with no substance.

For me it was fun shooting, exploration and survival mechanics. I'm all about that shit, but most games that try it fuck up in some way. Fallout New Vegas has decent exploration and survival, but the shooting mechanics are horrid. STALKER is relatively good in that regard.
Because you already know every nook and cranny. There's nothing left to surprise you.

I'm usually good at finding redeeming qualities in games, I can see how Stalker is one of the few games to scratch that itch I suppose, but the only absolutely good quality of stalker is the monster design. Some good work there. Although in practice a lot of it is underwhelming.

I don't think Stalker is as good as I originally thought it was.

Well, that's just, like, your opinion, man. If you find something that does what STALKER does but better, let me know. I'm still looking.

There aren't any to my knowledge, I'm just saying what accomplishes is done poorly, sloppily and in desperate need of some polishing up. CoP did a decent job at that, but left the game feeling much more devoid of actual content.

It's a really charming and technically outstanding game, but feels really unfinished and badly executed at the same time.

The shooting is far from terrible, but it mostly comes down to the enemies being bullet sponges with no bleeding and damage animations. The AI and their A-life is awesome, but the quests are awful and limited. The buildings are many, but they're mostly just empty fucking background props with absolutely nothing inside. The atmosphere has lots of that classical slavic mysticism, but you're right there are things that ruin the immersion. And the last levels, they're absolutely garbage.

But you know, despite somehow trashy, it's a really, really charming game with lots of love and thought put into it. It mixed the hard sci fi of Roadside Picnic and the mysticism of Andrei Tarkovsky's Stalker. The way it treats realism and mixed it with user friendly simplicity is something no other dev has tried before. Bethesda GS should learn a thing or two in developing Fallout from this charming series, but I don't think Fallout's atmosphere will ever be as immersive as STALKER since it's set in generic USA setting.

Fair assessment there. The thing is, despite the earlier areas (cordon, garbage, etc.) being a lot more fulfilling, they still don't feel complete. Like maybe 80% done at best, sort of like they were supposed to be better utilized with more quests and stalker interaction in general.

I've always wondered, how does Metro stack up against Stalker? I know it's Linear, but is the atmosphere just as good as Stalker? Is the shooting better(or at least the enemy damage response)?

It's better than stalker when it comes to combat, and it's at least much more consistent but it lacks that element of mystery Stalker has, where a lot is just left unexplained and left to theorizing. Like the way some mutants work in stalker, burers, chimera, controllers, etc. things like the monolith/wish granter and monolith group, the zone, expansion of the zone, etc has a sense of mystery to it. Helps that some of the names, especially leaders in the monolith like Charon are seedy and dark enough to really spark the imagination.

Bit of a ramble there, but in short, Metro tries and does end up explaining a lot of the mystery away. It's a bit disappointing in that regard. If you play the game on ranger difficulty, engage in stealth and fall back to shoot outs when things dont work out, the game is rather satisfying. Helps that you never really become death incarnate like you do in stalker.

Read the Metro 2033 book instead if you want mystery. The story is much better in it.

The gunplay in Metro is not better than it is in Stalker, and Stalker isn't plagued by excessively-long interactive cutscenes and light stealth sections.

yeah, stealth doesn't work in stalker at all

in metro it can at least be a little fun sneaking around, shooting out lights with a pneumatic and stabbing a few nazis. The recoil model is better in metro.

Metro is decent, but still nowhere as charming as STALKER. The guns aren't CoD tier arcadey, but still underwhelming imo. Call of Pripyat has better shooting tbh. I don't like how they utilize money in this game. Last Light is better for this.

I know. The game is an unfinished mess despite being like 6 years in development. The team was great, Dmitriy Iassenev is an awesome programmer, but they lacked resource.

Ha no

what, you couldn't do it? It's not hard.

That's the point and why I used the term "light stealth sections", it's baby mode compared to actual stealth games.

I can understand losing your infatuation with Stalker the more you familiarize yourself with the game, but holding up Metro as a better game is just laughable. Metro has more in common with The Last of Us than with Stalker, it has the stink of cancerous AAA design decisions all over it.

It's still the best we have, despite its flaws. And it's moddable.

Are you confusing it with either the redux or Last Light, cause that would make more sense

From a design decision standpoint, not budget.

Last Light is the worse offender between the two, but 2033 did enough damage on its own.

I always wanted to play it since 2008 but somehow I missed it. Now I pirated it again.
Is it correct that the game is totally bugged and shitty made?

No, it was well made but the engine developers left before the game was finished and THQ rushed it out the door.

Also all the niggers comparing it to Russian Call of Duty should gas themselves.

More like Russian Fallout 3 tbh.

Sure, fam.
Ukraine == Russia

I don't think he was talking about Stalker