Recently I wanted to get back in to Stalker. I played the Metro games again, and once done still had my post-apocalyptic groove on, so decided to look into getting Stalker back up and running. The last time I played would have been around 2013, and I was playing Misery 2.0. Misery is a love it or hate it kinda thing. I loved it. It is challenging no doubt, but it appeals to me because it is so bleak. I like actually scrounging for useful stuff. Most versions of Stalker are lite on the survival aspect. Before long you've got so much stuff it's really not a survival game at all. It positions itself as one, but really it's not. When you've got 20 medkits, a pile of rubles and a dozen sweet rifles to choose from you're not hurtin' too much.
So Misery scratched that itch. Finding a half-empty mag of 5.56 was a triumph. Potential enemies and targets were often skirted around to save the ammo. You're more concerned with finding your next meal, a gas mask you can actually see out of or some way to reduce your radiation. Even in Misery, if you stick with it long enough, you'll eventually have quite a stash. But it's a struggle until you get there.
When I played Misery, I didn't really play it conventionally, that is following the story line and attempting to move it forward. I simply lived the stalker life. I had a home, and a stash, and every morning I'd concoct some mission for myself, lay out the kit for the day and venture forth. I might be heading to a certain anomaly to hunt artifacts, or go mutant hunting, explore a new area, going to a trader or raiding a camp for supplies. The goal was always to be back home by nightfall, because the freaks come out at night. Playing with pitch black nights transforms the experience, at least until you get night vision. Even then, in Misery, you need enough batteries to keep your NV going. So even that is used sparingly.
So while the Stalker main stories are good, I've already played through all three games, a few times over. And that gets us back to the topic, mods. I'm looking to restore the feeling I had playing Misery 2.0. Well, why not install Misery 2.0 you might ask? I almost did. It's now at 2.2. I might just do so. But the truth is that the Misery devs make thing difficult for difficulty's sake. I want the barren, bleak, hardcore existence, but I also want enemies to die after a reasonable amount of hits. Even dogs are seriously powerful enemies in Misery, let alone Chimeras. You better find a rock to climb on or that pack is going to rip you a new one.
A few days a go I began the process. I installed Call of Pripyat and some mods, like Atmosfear and Arsenal Overhaul. These are great, but within 10 hours or so of starting I had a tier-2 SEVA suit and an arsenal of tier-2 modded high-end weaponry with more ammo than I could shoot in a week. Fun, as always, but no survival struggle.
So I continued to rummage the interweb and stumbled across Call of Chernobyl (CoC)
http://www.moddb.com/mods/call-of-chernobylIt's like the ultimate playground for the play style I mentioned earlier, just living the stalker life. It's been out for a couple of years, so it's not new to some of you. Essentially CoC is a free-play mod that features all 31 maps from the three Stalker games, plus one new map for 32 in all. You can travel through them all, but cannot jump from one to another, skipping those in-between. In other words, to get from the rookie camp in Cordon to Chernobyl NPP you need to travel through Cordon, Garbage, Rostock, Warehouses, Red Forest, Jupiter, and Zaton. And the whole route is fraught with stalker peril. It's not a sunday stroll lemme tell ya!
But there's much more to it. For example it is highly customizable through the in-game menu. How frequently do you want emissions? Do you want a warning, or none at all? Do you want it to kill those unable to find shelter in time, or turn them to zombies? How densely do you want your world populated? You can choose any faction at the start and all the good and bad relations that entails. You can also choose your starting location, or leave it random. I chose to be a loner and start in the Rookie camp, because well, rookie. That's how I see my character, just a guy looking to make a living and keep on living in the exclusion zone.
I chose veteran difficulty and 'story mode', which in this mod just means there area couple of objectives to shut off machines like the brain scorcher and the magic maker. No story in the traditional sense. I guess the buzz-word is emergent gameplay. You make your own story. There is an ironman mode that clears your history and game state when you die. I die twice every hour so that's not for me, but a cool mode nonetheless. There's even a mode that, when you die, you take over another random NPC. So you could suddenly be a bandit with a leather coat and a sawed-off, or a Monolith soldier with exoskeleton. I also installed a mod for dynamic faction relations. Each faction likes or doesn't each other one based on ever changing events in the game. So areas that were once safe havens could suddenly be off limits or visa versa.
I've installed Arsenal Overhaul, new guitar tunes, texture packs, and a mod to allow traders to buy all of the beat-up weapons I find, among others. The only issue I have is that I still don't have that survival struggle. Again, within 10 hours or so I'm flush with kit. While rummaging the net I saw there is a Call of Misery mod, which evidently imports Misery gameplay to the CoC map setup. Maybe I'll go that route? I'd like to achieve the everyday struggle, but without overly powerful creatures and enemies. It's a work in progress.
So if anyone here has been up to date in the Stalker universe and has suggestions I'd like to hear 'em.
