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[Poimandres]

Doc Seuss doing God's work again. I'll never tire of talking about (and of course playing) the STALKER games. So many ideas that were executed fantastically in the STALKER games haven't even been attempted since... I wonder how long it will be before we see a true successor?

I sometimes dream of a world in which STALKER released back in 2004 and revolutionised the FPS genre. I think it would have made a huge splash back then but alas, it wasn't to be...

 

[NervousXtian]

It's a pretty good article as a love letter to STALKER, but it's a bit misleading to compare the series to much of what falls into the survival genre these days.

Most of them are meant to be MP games first and foremost.. talking your Nether/DayZ/H1Z1/etc.. which STALKER isn't.. and trying to implement any of the STALKER stuff into those isn't quite so simple.

A lot of the other games really try to be quick play, figure it out rogue-like type of experiences... your Don't Starve's of the world. Fun for what they are, but I don't think they ever meant them to be a long play type of game to begin with.

STALKER isn't really a survival game, though surviving is a key part of it. It has a narrative, some RPG like features and NPC's.

I don't think the other games are missing what STALKER did already, it's just that's not what they set out to be.

Though, I'd love to see a move towards that style by some people with new games.. because really outside of Fallout.. no one else is even really trying. (Metro games are far to linear)

 

[Vaporak]

STALKER is one of my favorite games of all time, and I can pretty precisely point out my falling out with the fps genre when STALKER came out and the industry at large ignored it. Like the guy above said, 2007 was a perfect time for STALKER and Crysis to come out at and show the world a look at what the future could be. It's just so unfortunate that no one cared.

 

[Messofanego]

STALKER is one of my favorite games of all time, and I can pretty precisely point out my falling out with the fps genre when STALKER came out and the industry at large ignored it. Like the guy above said, 2007 was a perfect time for STALKER and Crysis to come out at and show the world a look at what the future could be. It's just so unfortunate that no one cared.

Maybe it was a time where publishers (THQ, EA) were willing to pay big money for ambitious PC-exclusive FPSs (Crysis: $22 million, anyone know STALKER's budget?) but that mentality has long since changed. The only recent big budget PC-exclusive game I know is Star Citizen ($49 million), and that's independent.

 

[Sotha_Sil]

This and Deus Ex are always going to be brought up cause of how much they still stand out in design, I wonder if the developers knew these were "evergreen" games in that they're talked about years later.

If I had to guess, I'd say a lot of developers never played either of these, and it's a damn shame. There's so many good/decent games out there that could be so much more.

 

[MattyG]

Maybe it was a time where publishers (THQ, EA) were willing to pay big money for ambitious PC-exclusive FPSs (Crysis: $22 million, anyone know STALKER's budget?) but that mentality has long since changed. The only recent big budget PC-exclusive game I know is Star Citizen ($49 million), and that's independent.

I can't find exact numbers, but from the sound of it it probably wasn't a huge budget.

 

[JumpJeff84]

I played a bit of Stalker, not sure which one.

If I was gonna try and get into JUST ONE of the games in the series, which would be the one? As in, which one is the least janky?

 

[phoenix296]

STALKER was such a fantastic game. One of the few games I bought on release day. It was quite buggy but that's to be expected from such a large scale game from a small team.

 

[PBalfredo]

Bit of an aside, but is Metro 2033 related to STALKER, or did I make that up? I have that in my steam library and I should get around to playing it some day.

 

[Lord_Balkan]

Bit of an aside, but is Metro 2033 related to STALKER, or did I make that up? I have that in my steam library and I should get around to playing it some day.

Metro is made by some of the guys that worked on STALKER in the early to mid 2000s but left the company.

 

[Denton]

The reason why CoP was the best, for me, lies in the fact that it had most open design. Three huge maps, on each of which I could spend ten hours easy, with no loading screen, just exploring. Most uniquely designed anomalies, huge and weird freaks of nature. The quests.. The quests were brilliant, much more interesting than in previous games. And I loved the whole choice and consequence thing the game had going on, with even the Fallout-style ending slides describing what happened to various characters.
But mostly it was just insanely immersive due to that openness.

 

[DocSeuss]

eh, I feel STALKER fills the role of a different type of survival game. Similar to the whole what Monster Hunter/Dark Souls is to your standard fast paced, brawler action game. There's a different focus.

Yes, that was the entire point. STALKER is a proactive survival game. Others are reactive survival games. Reactive survival games don't work for me, proactive survival games do.

CoP is the best but Stalker as a whole is one of the finest trilogies in all of gaming, anyone who didn't play them is missing out immeasurably.

Why

It's a pretty good article as a love letter to STALKER, but it's a bit misleading to compare the series to much of what falls into the survival genre these days.

Most of them are meant to be MP games first and foremost.. talking your Nether/DayZ/H1Z1/etc.. which STALKER isn't.. and trying to implement any of the STALKER stuff into those isn't quite so simple.

A lot of the other games really try to be quick play, figure it out rogue-like type of experiences... your Don't Starve's of the world. Fun for what they are, but I don't think they ever meant them to be a long play type of game to begin with.

STALKER isn't really a survival game, though surviving is a key part of it. It has a narrative, some RPG like features and NPC's.

I don't think the other games are missing what STALKER did already, it's just that's not what they set out to be.

Though, I'd love to see a move towards that style by some people with new games.. because really outside of Fallout.. no one else is even really trying. (Metro games are far to linear)

My point with the article was that I think they're all basing their take on "survival" by making players "react" to the world, which tends to just be "you gotta put out several different fires at once/juggle a bunch of different plates." They make players react to things, rather than give players the tactical tools to make decisions and do something interesting with it.

It's not that I want them to try to be STALKER, it's that I see STALKER as a game that looks at survival from a different angle than a bunch of games that are essentially clones of each other.

I played a bit of Stalker, not sure which one.

If I was gonna try and get into JUST ONE of the games in the series, which would be the one? As in, which one is the least janky?

Shadow of Chernobyl is the one you SHOULD get into.

Call of Pripyat is the EASIEST one to get into, but it's got the dullest world. Lots more downtime than the other two.

Clear Sky is my favorite, but if you're used to normal games and not the mindset of The Zone, it's kinda weird.

Plus, I mean, there's a story there. It's like jumping right into MGS4 without having played the other games. It'll confuse you.

Go with SoC and use the mods I linked earlier to help fix some issues.

 

[Messofanego]

Yes, that was the entire point. STALKER is a proactive survival game. Others are reactive survival games. Reactive survival games don't work for me, proactive survival games do.

I like this take on the distinction.

 

[Vulcano's assistant]

This is the same reason why I rather just install survival mods in Skyrim than play a 100% survival game. I still have to go into dungeons and kill monsters for a greater goal while the survival elements are an added obstacle.

 

[Prime crotch]

I should reinstall SoC and compare to SoP; for some reason, the STALKER sequels never grabbed me as much as the original did, either by the dull maps or just the added elements that deviated from what made SoC great.

 

[SomTervo]

Some people might disagree with me on this, but I think Dying Light is one of the only games which has moved forward open-world survival gameplay in a long time.

By daytime it's a pretty easy zombie-killing simulator like Dead Rising, with difficult human encounters akin to STALKER. (Eg Early in the game a few human enemies are placed in your path, and the questgiver says 'don't fight them' - but you are entirely free to do to. Try it, and you'll probably die (at the very least you'll burn through your medkits).)

But by nighttime it captures that pure STALKER dread. Nighttime is pitch black, and without your flashlight you can basically see nothing except the blue UV glow of sporadically placed safe houses. Enemies are insanely tough and very hard to predict. It becomes an improvisational stealth experience.

There are some great encounter designs, too, but not as many as STALKER. Probably 60% of the encounters in quests are decent, 15% are bad, and the other 25% are excellent.

Great post, though, Doc. (You and I have had many polemics over the years – elsewhere I go by the name Kenshi_Ryden. Incl. on Kotaku,)

 

[Masquerader]

I don't think it was ahead of its time. It was a fantastic game that came out exactly when it should have.

It's that the genre has stagnated and even regressed in ways since then.

Stalker, Crysis, and Call of Duty Modern Warfare all came out in 2007. Two of them were glowing examples of what happens when you push technology to build massive playgrounds and simply set the player free to play on their own. The other one outsold them in multitudes that probably still haunts Cevat Yerli's nightmares.

And we know where the genre went from there.

To be fair, Modern Warfare was admittedly fantastic. I'd blame it more on the rise of huge corporations running the industry that coincided with COD 4.

At the same time though, I do also wish that Stalker did better.

 

[Omegasquash]

Heh, I've still got the game disc and case on my shelf. One of the last physical games for PC I purchased.

God DAMN did I play that game and love it, but for some reason the others just didn't grab me the same way.

 

[Mr Swine]

I think there's a lot of push-back against the game in part because Clear Sky was so... alive. A lot of people didn't like that. This often translated to "I don't like that I feel my efforts are futile/I can't 100% the game." You'd go capture a point, and then twenty minutes later, you'd lose it again. There was nothing you could do about it. So many missions, you'd hear on the radio, then you'd get a mission failure notice because the Zone is so cruel. It infuriates a typical gamey mindset. You have to learn to let go and treat the Zone like a real, brutal world to start to appreciate Clear Sky. That's when it gets good.

And this is the sole reason I thin Clear Sky is better than the 2 other Stalker games. Yes it has 90% of the same levels that Shadow of Chernobyl had but this takes the game to the next level with all the different factions fighting out and the living world

 

[bsod]

Yes! I'm playing through The Last of Us Remastered and it's really annoying how I have to spend to much of my time looking through every nook and cranny to find crafting materials and other things. It really pulls me out of the game when the characters are having these heartfelt moments and I'm wandering around. Between this, Wolfenstein, Bioshock, etc., this gets really tiring.

 

[grandwizard]

Great article. Stalker is insanely underappreciated and unknown for how far ahead of it's time it was and how ambitious it was as a game. I have felt for a while that a lot of games try to make the player feel like they are in a survival situation but don't actually create mechanics that do that, because creating a survival simulation means giving the player the opportunity to put themselves in a situation in which they are completely screwed. And modern game design doesn't like to do that, it more often wants to be leading you by the hand but make you feel like you are putting in the work. Games like Stalker were the complete opposite of that.

 

[SomTervo]

I have felt for a while that a lot of games try to make the player feel like they are in a survival situation but don't actually create mechanics that do that, because creating a survival simulation means giving the player the opportunity to put themselves in a situation in which they are completely screwed. And modern game design doesn't like to do that, it more often wants to be leading you by the hand but make you feel like you are putting in the work. Games like Stalker were the complete opposite of that.

That's a really good analysis.

State of Decay is really good for this. That's an excellent game for survival mechanics – althouth the difficulty curve falls off too soon. Unless you make it to level 9 on the survival game mode, in which case the first 10 minutes of the level are too hard!

Again, in addition to my last post, Dying Light does this a lot. You're the one who takes the risk to push forward into dangerous situations – you're the one who suffers if you took too many risks or didn't prepare well enough.

 

[Grief.exe]

To be fair, Modern Warfare was admittedly fantastic. I'd blame it more on the rise of huge corporations running the industry that coincided with COD 4.

At the same time though, I do also wish that Stalker did better.

Go play it again today and see if it holds up.

Spoiler

played it again this year, outside of one or two levels it is honestly not very good.

Then go play Stalker or Crisis.