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Stalker series on its own or in lightly modded form isn't that great. Call of Pripyat lacks personality in its gameplay and atmosphere. Game shines as a modded experience, but mods tend to be overtuned for an experienced Stalker player which leaves series as a whole rough to a newer player.

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Cult classics often are beloved by their fans. Often this love is blind and people ignore or might not even ever played the base game. Stalker series is a perfect example of a cult classic. It does one thing very well, it has extensive modding support. However, does anyone remember it without the mods? Do you review your nostalgia, mods or base game today? Well, I'm here to remedy this and to shine some light upon base game and mods.

A base Stalker game is terrible. It was nigh unplayable back then too with how broken it was. Over time it received patches from developers and community. However, Stalker games in general remain deeply flawed and not worth playing. They are a diamond in a rough which become great through work of modders which fixes all the issues devs could not bother and emphasise the strong points of a series. In order to enjoy playing this game, you need to know long and extensive of mods which you want to have and then to slog through over-tuned levels which are designed for players who had seen it all, replaying this game multiple times.

Truly Scary Gunplay
• Stalker games are broken at a fundamental level. Its gunplay simply does not work. You cannot fire an assault rifle or a pistol accurately beyond point blank range. The recoil is massive. Bloom takes half of your screen. Recoil is uncontrollable on most weapons. Game has a terrible shot deviation system where your guns won't fire straight. This alone would make for a terrible shooter experience, however, there is more. Even on Misery mode (the intended experience), enemies are still bullet spongy as hell. I could use an entire magazine from a pistol to kill one Flesh. I could take a two bore shotgun and it will have an effective range of 5 meters...literally. Gunplay is absolutely abysmal in this game. It is kind of game where each enemy is deadly accurate and are bullet sponges while you can die from a single hit from nowhere.
  
  Story
  
• Writing in this game is silly. Quests are mediocre at best. A best example of silly is a starter quest where you have to expose a doctor. Initially it seems that Stalkers encountered a Bloodsucker which were ample in the area. However, you soon discover that it is doctor that had drained all the blood, because...he has a hemoglobin addiction. Writing can get just this silly at times. Other times, cutscenes and character dialogues are delivered in a completely flat fashion, trying to make a joke about supposedly hilarious situation of a soldier hiding in a fridge. It is so bad that only amateurs with no skills, experience or time can make it. Other elements of a story is equally ridiculous. For example, military has anti-anomaly devices on their helicopters. Except story forget about that immediately as it is mentioned. Army also forgets that anomalies move after each emission. So their helicopters crash down. Except zone also forgot that anomalies move after each emission and our military forces also forgot that again. So they just radio in for a helicopter extraction and flew out. This is an actual main story of a game. It is just bad.
  
  Anomalies
  
• Anomalies got a lot easier and boring. First of all, all anomalies are located to certain areas. There is no real danger in those areas outside of being overly eager or careless. You simply throw bolts and pick an anomaly. There is no challenge for it and they all are comfortably and boringly placed to special zones which mostly look fine from far away, but is a mine field from nearby which tick down your life, mostly very slowly with dedicated gear and consumables.
  
  Artifacts are also of very dubious use. Most of them have minor bonuses to elemental resistances. However, each artefact generates radiation. This means that you cannot put an artifact without another artifact which would constantly drain radiation from you. Your 4-5 slots for artifacts are essentially cut by 2 just of counter-weighting effects of radiation. Furthermore, even really useful artefacts are as painfully boring as they can be. The best ones are things like +20 kg carrying capacity. System is very primitive and quite honestly, boring. It is here only to serve as a cash cow to enable you to purchase best gear quite early on if you know where to go and what to do.
  
  Unfair
  
• What annoys me the most is how these pseudo-realistic games pretend to be realistic, but are as far removed from it as possible. First, they make weapons unrealistically deadly. In real life you are unlikely to die immediately if shot. Here you will die a lot quicker than in real life. Another problem is how accurate NPCs are. They can quickly zero in on you and snipe you while your own weapons are hilariously inaccurate. Then comes the fact that enemies can soak a lot more damage than they should. My first encounter of that was a single dog. I shot his back with my starter shotgun. I hit, but dog had leaped and killed me with a single bite... A dog which can't even be a serious threat to a man instant kills you in a game. A lot of encounters can feel equally unfair. Burers for example take an enormous amounts of punishments. However, they are just dwarfs. Most enemies are unarmoured. Bloodsuckers for example can take whole magazines of ammunition before going down, but their claws can one shot you. Enemies in this game are complete bullet sponges while difficulty only makes them instant kill you with deadly accuracy while your own weapons remain crooked, ineffective and inaccurate at more than 5 meters range.

Just mod it you say and all of my problems will go away. Just install these X mods and it will make game so much better! This is the usual argument people are making when an old classic games with heavy modding support are critiqued. I would like to make few points of why such line of thought is flawed.

Should I review the game or the mods?
• If a base game is not worth playing, then what I should review? Should I write a review for a base game or a mod? Which mod I should write this review in particular? It is easy enough then there is just 1 mod which is just a massive patch just to fix up a game and to bring it to modern standards. However, what I should do with something like Stalker series?
  
  What if mod ruins your experience?
  
• Enthusiasts are usually blind to the faults of a mod. They played it so many times that they know what to do. However, what a newbie should do? I played ARB mod which spawned like 6 Burer's in Iron Forest. Spawned an entire Monolith platoon next to a helicopter on a hill. Put Bloodsucker hunting parties everywhere. I wanted a mod for a game which would just fix it up, but would retain what developer had intended as much as possible. However, in reality it had broken the game as it made game vastly more difficult and frustrating.
  
  What about set up?
  
• Stalker barely has any good mods for English speaking community. I looked for mods, I found one which had ruined my first impression of a game by making game way more difficult than it is originally. I assume a lot of those advanced mods to be like this. However, how this then improves my experience with a series? Furthermore, how the time I spend searching and trying to set up a mod makes a game better to me? I do not relish my hours spent on trying to install a dozen of smaller mods just to get one big mod working like with most advanced mods in Skyrim. Should I consider this horrible experience in my review?

I cannot recommend Stalker: Call of Pripyat. While it was an atmospheric and immersive experience at times, most of the time it was rather tedious, sometimes really unfair and eventually too easy. A lot of stuff in this game is broken and I'm not talking just about technical crashes. Basic shooting in this game does not work. Weakest enemies can take an entire magazine to kill. Your guns are not accurate beyond five meters. Anomalies are boring. Writing and questing is banal. It was a challenge in finding good mods on my own and ones which I installed ended up ruining my experience of a game.

Stalker: Call of Pripyat can be a good game. I believe it can become a good game with right set up/mods. People who already had played this game in the past will find it more fun and will bypass all the unfairness the newbie might encounter and will be able to head straight to the best mods he likes. For everyone else, it just takes so much time and effort for a modern gamer to experience Stalker. Due to this, I believe it is not worth of giving it a try. Stalker 2 is coming out, there is now similar games to Stalker too. Try them out first before jumping to this one.