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

One of the greatest games of all time, bar none. HOWEVER you should buy it NOW, even though S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is less than a week away (for real this time!) because xrMPE just made finished their CO-OP mod!!! You can play the whole campaign co-op with up to four players. And if you already own the game, go get it now! The mod is FREE!!

This game still holds up today 2024 even without mods. Playing this cause the excitement that Stalker 2 is finally going to be released is too much.
The atmosphere of this game is amazing for a game that came out in 2010! The game systems and player choice is amazing! You are literally just dropped in to the zone and it up to you on how and when you complete your objectives. There is very little if any hand holding. There is no yellow paint on how to do anomalies you have to figure it out.

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.

just dont listen to all these anti grass enjoyers (aka redditors).... you can play however you want, play whatever modpack you like and in the order you like. If you wanna play GAMMA without the trilogy then do it.

Cheers

Replaying this game lifted my migraine from playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2
I feel so much better now, thank god for this game.

HMM I dont know why but I couldnt take screenshots of just this game (and another stalkers )
✅The best part of Stalker in terms of gameplay. All the problems of the predecessors have been refined, everything that needed to be improved has been corrected. The only downside is that there are quite few tasks in Pripyat itself, but it's great to explore.
✅ A well-created post-apocalypse universe
✅ Engaging plot that connects previous parts
✅ Maintained detective atmosphere
✅ A vast world full of dangers
✅ Realistic artificial intelligence npcs
✅ Tons of weapons and equipment to use
✅ Option to upgrade equipment from technicians
✅ Conversation and trading system
✅ A huge number of side quests
✅ Full freedom when performing missions
✅ Friendly inventory interface
✅ Several difficulty levels to choose from
✅ Beautiful and highly realistic graphics
✅ Great Polish translation with a film narrator
✅ Reasonable hardware requirements
✅ A huge number of mods to download from the Internet
➖Occasional trimming regardless of equipment
➖Occasional desktop crashes
➖Occasional bugs in various game elements

Fantastic game although the threshold to get into it is quite high.

The game does not hold your hand at all. You're forced to figure out pretty much everything yourself - including what to do. I always leave the wiki open in the background to figure out which quest to complete next.

A couple tips regarding things I've noticed in the game -
1. Play on the highest difficulty - apparently the damage your bullets as well as enemy bullets go down on the easier settings. This makes killing enemies a lot harder the easier the difficulty setting is.

2. Sell ammo to stalkers that wander around, sell guns to the merchant (Owl/Hawaiian) - I've noticed Stalkers of the world pay a lot more for ammunition than merchants.

3. Hunt artifacts - Any time you see an anomaly (freak lights/electricity/fires floating around/lots of noxious gas/etc) there's a high chance there's an artifact somewhere nearby. Press "O" to pull out your artifact detector, keep spamming "F" and recover those artifacts. Some give solid benefits regarding protection against radiation/fire/improves healing factor/etc. I learnt of how important they are almost 16 hours into the game.

Give it a chance as it's super easy to just quit in the beginning. The first time I tried it years ago, I did the same. Once you've passed a threshold, the game is a joy to play.