We normally reserve talk of discounted games for Saturday’s Bargain Bucket post, but this one’s too good to leave for then. STALKER: Shadow Of Chernobyl is a title that instantly flickers into the forebrain of both myself and Jim whenever the question of the last few years’ best/most important PC games is raised. It is not a perfect game, but it realises a world, a place, an atmosphere, a dream of what games can and should be that pretty much nothing else even tries to come close to. And it’s £3.50 on Steam (not sure of US price – presumably around $5?) until Monday. I find that almost insulting. On the other hand, it means there’s essentially no excuse to not buy the thing if you haven’t already. What else could you spend that £3.50 on? If you do invest in it, I strongly advise you apply the STALKER Complete 2009 mod compilation for maximum post-apocalyptic prettiness.
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The contrast was exactly what I liked about Complete 2009. It made both the lighter and the darker moments more effective for me, to the point where walking through Pripyat on a sunny day made the place feel even more wrong. You knew that this place could have been beautiful, but now it could only appear treacherously peaceful at times,
“The weapon upgrades in Clear Sky are nice and I liked the find-the-artifact system in CS much better instead of accidentally tripping over them now and then in SoC.
But SoC is a more rounded game with a better story, I’d certainly go with that one over CS.”
Good round up, I didn’t mind the weapon degradation too much in STALKER, what I did mind was not being able to repair them. In that game you lived by your gun, your loadout should feel part of you, I never liked just dumping them. Luckily some mods fix this
I know some people complain about STALKER not being dark enough and I don’t get that. At least on my screen it’s pitch black during night. And it took me a really long time before I figured out there was a flashlight. I was stuck for like several minutes in the house where the game loads (at the roadblock) because it was 100% dark and I couldn’t see anything. I was just walking randomly lol
Never played this before, and just bought it. Thanks to my abominably slow internet, It’ll be a while before I can play it, though.
I happily downloaded this for $5 and waited paitently to play it. I then went and tried that first mission but kept on getting killed over and over again, pretty quickly. It was then that I realized that I suck at FPS and went back and played Titan Quest. =( Looking forward to Torchlight though
STALKER is almost more of a tactical FPS, certainly in the beginning, when all your equipment is crap. So this generally means that you should keep close to the ground, use cover a lot and keep moving.
Also important – pick your fights. You should be able to handle bandits (although when the numbers rise, you should only approach them together with a bunch of other Stalkers) but stay away from soldiers.
If I could have picked it up at Steam, I would have. Unfortunately, “This item is currently unavailable in your region”. :/
Funny… I saw the discount, I thought, let’s buy it…
Then I watched the GT review, and decided not to buy it…
THEN I saw this post, and bought it.
You influential bastards!
I picked this up during Direct2Drive’s big $5 weekly sale a few weeks back. $5 Very well spent. I also got Sword of the Stars, World of Goo, and Bridge Construction Set for $5 each.
I’m loving STALKER:SoC but the inability to repair weapons has irked me a bit as well. I may to look around for one of the mods that remedies that. Other than that I really wouldn’t change much. Unless there is a mod to keep my son from walking into the room and talking loudly at the EXACT moment someone in the game starts speaking to me.
Ahhh, STALKER. I love STALKER. I still play STALKER. them. For a measy five bones, you can’t beat it.
For what it’s worth, I preferred Oblivion Lost mod to anything else, including Complete 2009 — although C2009 is very pretty. The sheer number of changes in OL is utterly redonkalonk, both reworking AI, fixing bugs etc and greatly improving the sounds and feel of the weapons. There are some graphical improvements too, even if they’re not as extensive as C2009.
Finally I will pick this up….I basically ignored the whole thing until I started reading RPS and finding how much you guys seem to like it. I missed the last $5 sale, but now it shall be mine….
Bloody hell, and now the Witcher: Enhanced Edition Directors Cut is on bargain!
Wow, I was totally planning to get Stalker when I was walking home today, thank you very much Steam.
As an aside, I do remember trying this a while back and finding it insanely hard, as in, I died in a hit or two but emptying my clip into a enemies face did nothing, do the mods/patches have any effect on this?
Deal of the week!
Not to be nit picky, but STALKER has been on sale for $5 in a lot of places a lot of times before this. Steam’s had this deal at least twice before, D2D has it at this price during the 5th anniversary sale, Gamersgate’s had it marked down to this price etc. Not that I don’t approve strongly of RPS notifying us when a particular favorite is on sale at an insane price or anything, I’m just a little surprised that I keep a closer eye on online sales than you guys do.
Everyone should play STALKER with the LURK mod installed. I think that for balance of fixes, improvements, and overall feel, LURK has done the best job of delivering what should be the real STALKER experience… And yes, you can repair weapons at the merchant shops…
http://www.moddb.com/mods/lurk
Would you still recommend the LURK mod to someone who has not played/completed on vanilla?
This f***ing board doesn't work for me. There was supposed to be a comment and this was supposed to be UP THERE somewhere. I give up.
What was the other blog that kept track of game sales, the writer used to post here? Not the crappy Savvygamer one, there was a really good one that used to reply to each Bargain Bucket post and then he stopped suddenly. Anyone know?
But I think this is the first time you can get it at that price in Europe (well, it's 5 Euro of course…). At least the fucking D2D deal was all region restricted.