Comment on Weekly Recommendations Thread: What are you playing this week?
Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 1 week ago
I’ve been having a hard time committing to playing anything recently. After a lot of staring at my library I decided to give S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly a shot. It’s a game I wanted to try for a long time now so this seemed like a perfect time to do that.
Long story short, it’s been a pretty enjoyable experience so far. Slow methodical pace, disempowerment and not having to care about saving the world is right up my alley and something I wish more games focused on.
Initially, the game felt somewhat clunky (and still does to some extent) but I was able get used to the flow, new additions and changes pretty quickly. It’s a modded Stalker experience, not like I expected a flawless and perfectly polished product.
There are only two issues that really stood out to me for now. First: player status UI could use some work. Information about bleeding, how hungry or thirsty I am etc. should be provided in clear an straightforward manner instead of leaving me guessing based on vague bars, icons or audio/visual effects. I understand that some of it is intended as part of the experience but it makes no sense to have players guess about some stuff then provide food descriptions with exact numerical values for satiety or radioactive pollution changes.
Second: lack of a proper manual, in game or otherwise. I shouldn’t have to scour the web to find out that I need to have and use the compression thingy to pick up a sleeping bag off the floor or how to set/pick up your personal stash. Again, I get that figuring stuff out is part of the experience but some of these things are not intuitive.
I’m still early into the game (about 10 hours) so I’m sure there will be other things I’ll have to get used to, most of the new stuff however was easy enough to figure out on my own. None of the issues are experience ruining, game work well (as long as I don’t screw up mod installs) and gameplay is good old Stalker with changes I’d like to see in more games. I like it.
Oh man, are you playing vanilla Anomaly? It’s a solid place to start and all, but the rabbit hole goes deep when it comes to modding. STALKER has a huge modding scene, especially in Eastern Europe, and there are tons of plug-and-play modpacks out there. If you’re into the game and want a more elaborate, more refined experience there is a metric ton of content out there, whether you want more survival/scavenging stuff, a vanilla+ experience with just better graphics or a classic unhinged STALKER Soup.
Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Mostly vanilla, just some custom settings and basic mods (LASS, UI bars to see hunger & thirst, additional quest templates). It’s my first time trying it so I don’t want to go too deep into modding until I work out a solid baseline for what does or doesn’t work for me. I’m sure I’ll create a customised monstrosity soon enough.
Is there anything in particular you’d suggest to check out? Can be anything as I’ll pick and choose anyway but it would be nice to know something that’s tried and tested to start with.
Making your own custom modlist is definitely the most satisfying thing, although I recommend using some kind of vanilla+ mod pack as a baseline just to save time. Last year when I was playing and modding STALKER Anomaly I used the now-defunct HACR, but it lives on spiritually as Null Point. That should be a good moddable baseline. Back then when I was hanging out in the HACR Discord I put together this document of some mods I liked that I added on top of the pack. I haven’t played or updated that document since last winter though and there’s been some new cool stuff.
Otherwise there are tons of YouTube videos out there that list like, Top 10 X-type mods for STALKER Anomaly, those are a good way to find new stuff. ModDB is full of nice mods, although unfortunately a lot is moving to Discord now. Hang out in the STALKER G.A.M.M.A. Discord server, that’s (unfortunately) a place where a lot of new cool shit gets posted. There is an engine mod on there that gives true Picture-In-Picture scopes with negligible performance hit, if you care about that stuff.
Also, make sure you know your way around some kind of text-comparison program like WinMerge or your favourite code editor because you’re going to have to merge some scripts and make your own patches if you’re building your own custom modlist.
Essence_of_Meh@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Appreciate the links, I’ll check them out once I’m ready to for more changes. I will most likely stick to a fully customised mod list as I tend have rather particular (dis)likes and going with packs can be more annoying than helpful (still find them useful as a reference point though).
Thanks for the pointers, looks like my journey is about the get started for real.