Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Via the strange magics of download service Gametap, the original STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl (not its deflating sequel Clear Sky) can now be played for precisely zero pennies. No region restriction (apparently), and it joins a freebie roster that also contains the stalwart likes of Deus Ex, Hitman: Blood Money, Psychonauts and – yes! – Hotdog King.
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The past week of my gaming time has been dominated by Stalker mods: downloading, testing, crashing, deleting, reinstalling, and even a few hours of playing. For Shadow Of Chernobyl there’s pretty much a one-stop shop for changes, which is the extraordinary Oblivion Lost mod. It’s a comprehensive, colossal piece of compilation modding, much of it done by the author, and the rest factored in from across the community. It isn’t to everyone’s taste, especially since the list of changes is immense, but it includes drivable vehicles, sleep, alcoholism, and reworked NPC behaviour. (And that means grenades, annoyingly.) Oblivion Lost is, given the difficulty of combining and over-writing various Stalker mods, a worthwhile download – but it also completes Shadow Of Chernobyl on a profound level. This is modding at its finest. The problem for me, however, was that the Stalker I wanted to return to wasn’t an augmented Shadow of Chernobyl, but a fixed Clear Sky, which I hadn’t played since the pre-release review version. Could it be time to go back?
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