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cover-S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

Wednesday, May 15, 2024 3:59:58 PM

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat Review (s m o k z)

This game is amazing, but there's already a thousand reviews telling you that, so I want to quickly talk about the massive modding scene this game, specifically, has.
If you go to google and search for "S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly", you will find a link to a moddb page that has a FREE download for the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly mod, which is a mod for this game. Basically, it is a fanmade engine update for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. that was much needed. It also adds a lot of new things and has a far larger map than any of the official S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, as it's pretty much all of the maps from the 3 games merged into one, and it works amazingly. It also features a main story that is 3 (+1 bonus) chapters long, and while these questlines won't be winning any awards, they definitely kept me sufficiently interested to keep exploring the zone, and also provide some answers to some questions the original trilogy left, though they're obviously fanmade theories and not actually canon.
I will say though, play the original trilogy first, if only to support the devs. A 4th game should also be releasing later this year, so now is the perfect time to get stuck in.
Now things get interesting, mods on mods on mods.
On ModDB there are a ton of mods that you can install ontop of stalker anomaly, which add new animations, areas, weapons, questlines, etc. Though if manually modding games isn't your thing, there are also lots of modpacks that completely overhaul the game in various ways. The main one I want to gush about for a moment is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. G.A.M.M.A.. This FREE modpack has given me the most entertainment I've had while playing any video game for years. Seriously. No games core gameplay loop has gripped me by the balls like G.A.M.M.A. has. It is, for me, the perfect single player FPS experience, and it is entirely free, though it is like 200gb to install (100gb after installation).
One downside with G.A.M.M.A. however, is that it does not like to run well sometimes, as it is a collection of hundreds of mods. I have an RTX 3060, Ryzen 5 3600 +32gb of RAM, which is by no means any sort of super computer but seems like it should be sufficient, however it will still have times where it struggles running G.A.M.M.A., though these are only ever dips down to 40-50fps for about a minute max, then it usually smoothens out again. A YouTuber named "Cheeki Breeki" has a great video detailing how to squeeze the most fps out of G.A.M.M.A. that you should check out if you're interested in playing the game.
There are also other modpacks available for download, some better than others, but after playing a good chunk of them, I can say that, at least for me, G.A.M.M.A. is the best I've played, though the rest are absolutely still worth a go. G.A.M.M.A. is also massively customisable, with a ton of mods that you can enable/disable inside of MO2 after you have it all downloaded. "Cheeki Breeki" also has a great install guide. *
Anyway, all in all, Grok and the rest of the G.A.M.M.A. team have done great work compiling and creating their modpack, and it offers a beautifully brutal experience like no other game I've played, and I cannot recommend it enough for fans of difficult First Person Shooters.
TLDR: The original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy is amazing, but it can be better with mods. Try out S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly and, if you have a decent PC, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. G.A.M.M.A.
*EDIT: The GAMMA Discord now has an official channel for optimising the game, and should help get the game to run on weaker PCs. It has a ton of steps that are very detailed and easy to follow so check that out if you're interested.