Thursday, March 3, 2022

Good hunting, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

Pretty sure I've mentioned the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series of games here before, and it goes without saying that I'm a huge fan. It's an extremely well crafted alternate history, sci-fi, horror, open world shooter that takes place in the Chernobyl exclusion zone. To this day, I have never played a game that has such an immersive and fascinating environment, and no other horror game has actually managed to make me scared while playing it. 

I'm super eager for the sequel to come out later this year, but who knows if that'll actually happen considering they are a Ukrainian studio. So in the meantime, I've been delving back into the insane number of huge mods for the game. 

One of the best out there is a standalone mod, meaning you don't need the original game to play it, and it's totally free! Stalker: Anomaly is available over at ModDB and is one of the better experiences available due to it's extremely high level of customization to the gameplay and difficulty. By itself, it's campaign is a bit abbreviated, but it does have a separate one for each of the 9 factions in the game, and you can join any one of the factions you want, while choosing multiple starting locations and gear. It also includes a plethora of visual and UI enhancements over the original game. 

This is just the beginning, as you can not only choose that, but you can adjust how much the weather changes, how dark nights are, how high the mutant and human population is, how often cataclysmic events happen, how effective armor and weapons are, how much weight you can carry, how often traders restock, exchange rates, and so much more. Beyond the settings included, the game is built to be able to take a number of additional add-on mods that can add more quests, refine the dynamic relations between the factions, new NPCs, add better skins, or add new models, and just about anything else you can think of. 

So hey, it's free, so what have you got to lose?

No comments:

Post a Comment