Reviews - Teemuslayer

Good starting point for a "do-it-all" vanilla-like overhaul, with some questionable alterations that ultimately eat away the immersion and fun.

The removal of weight limit is outright counterintuitive decision for a survival game, obviously watering down the need to plan your loadouts and routes. It also nerfs many Artifacts as well.

One of the best parts of CS was its truly HARSH economy, which made hunting the now rare and powerful Artifacts more important than ever. This presented players delicious risk-vs-reward situations, making them choose between passive buffs and cold hard cash to use on gear.

Similarly the decision to make Bandits un-joinable, while sort of understandable from the game-design perspective, again goes against the fun factor.

A simple method of toggling these things into more vanilla-like state would get you far. But as it stands currently, ABR reminds me more of the good old Oblivion Lost from 2008, with its "STAMINA, FUCKYEARRR!!" memes.

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I created the very original Starter Pack way back in 2011 to aid the countless newcomers to have as bug-free "vanilla" experience as possible. Many PC games of old had already gotten their "Starter Packs" for this same purpose, so my compilation of mods also got that name.

Now a good decade later, I find that the Starter Pack has started to live its own life, and has clearly evolved beyond its original purpose and form-factor.
It is impossible to call THIS Starter Pack even remotely "vanilla". Every single detail has been overhauled, from graphics to audio, and with it the original atmosphere and art-style have been butchered.
The biggest offenders are the eyes-popping bloom effect and total desaturation of shadows, which makes the game look hazy yet burned-out. Flicking a flashlight towards a wall literally creates a cloud of pure white, blinding light, which makes it look more like an early PS3 game than a pseudo photorealistic PC title.
If judged on their own, the 3D model replacements are high quality, but really stick out from the world. As SoC does not support the plethora of modern PBR materials and such, the end result are these very "soft" looking models with round form factor and no perceived macro & micro detailing. The original models and world make heavy use of start bump maps and detailed photo textures, which in my opinion worked in the game's favor. It can also be argued if the inherently "modern" looking getup of NPCs really fits the pseudo-retro futuristic setting of STALKER; it might be set in the year 2012, but in a world that changed its course of history around the game the game was released. Think how different the MGS games' worlds of 2005-2014 are to ours, and you get the idea.
Same applies to the gun models and the faked through-scope sight pictures. The clearly hand-made textures lack stark highlights and wear details, making them appear almost all matte in the bigger picture. The new positioning of models also doesn't allow the details to show up very well. There are also some questionable changes in the arsenal, such as the iconic and rare LR-300 being swapped with the modern M4A1 carbine, clearly simply because latter's model is easier to acquire than that of a niche 1980's prototype AR's.
All this is a big shame, as I know that the properly mirrored gun models and stronger audio effects would please the gun-enthusiastic players a lot.

tl;dr: This "Starter Pack" is no longer THE Starter Pack I and many veteran Stalkan' players have recommended for years. It's not a good starting point for first timers, as it does not give a realistic, unchanged view of the vanilla game's looks and feel. At this point, the S.P.2017 is a similar major overhaul mod as Complete 2009; a mixed bag.

I expected a cheap, simple, jumpscares-running HL2 mod.

What I got was very lengthy total overhaul experience that is like a mixture of FEAR, Stalker and Penumbra!
Amazing visuals for the old Source engine, some impressive new features, superb gunplay, gore, plenty of choices and ways to play it ...

Applauds to the team behind this beauty!

Complete mods have always rode on the reputation of being "just bug-fixers" or "just visual overhauls", even if the truth is completely (not a pun) opposite. The various tweaks, or should I say nerfs, only tend to make the games far easier than the vanilla games. Meanwhile the various visual changes were total hit or miss, sometimes ruining parts of the game's atmosphere or great original style completely.

At this point all Complete -mods are unforgivably obsolete, being based on ancient alpha- or beta-versions of OTHER mods. CoP Complete is not an exception, and to be honest it's so far the weakest show of the trilogy as well. The problem with CoP's Complete-mod might've been the game itself: it was "too perfect", there wasn't much anything to "fix" anymore! GSC did their homework and play-testing this time around, and it shows. Only the visual quality appeared to be "downgraded" a notch from the first 2 games, maybe to improve performance when using the notably larger and more open maps.

So what does CoP Complete offer? Not much: textures from very old versions of the Absolute Nature & AtmosFear mods, a bunch of trademark difficulty-lowering elements (money looting, cheat menu, damage reductions...), that's it. The mod appears to add some ALL NEW BUGS and significant performance drop (which was to be expected). The mod lacks optimization and balancing, especially when already in vanilla-game your character was seriously overpowered and swimming in cash all the time.

So is Complete the "messiah mod" people make it to be? No, it's not.
Is it the worst thing ever spawned on the face of earth? Not that either. It simply lacks point, a reason to exist.
For veteran players it offers nothing new or challenging to justify a second playthrough. There's far better looking & optimized graphical mods out there available for STALKERs, and the few serious left-over annoyances you still need to patch up with other mods.

I'd recommend the "Starter Pack" over the Co

Too big style change.
Looks way too cartoony and out of place.

All orange? All flamy? Simplified, cartoony potion icons?

Not impressive. I actually prefer the original green-centric design, which syncs well with the Witcher's tendency of poisoning themselves with potions and going through various mutations.

The original design works better for the sake of atmosphere as well, and the few red elements they used were "highlighted" thanks to the counter-color greens.

in short, nothing actually WRONG with the mod, it just doesn't sit well with the game, and using it is thus really up to a personal preferences.

Damn atmospheric,
Deliciously challenging,
Deadly yet beautiful.

That's what MISERY is about!
Vanilla CoP is often called too easy and calm for a Stalker game, but this mod here should take care of these problems!

Hostile NPC groups, deadlier bullets and mutants than ever before, and harsh economy. All this is aimed especially towards Stalker veterans who could simply walk through the Zone by now, with nothing than a knife.

Performance is damn nice with Misery, a big improvement from IWA 1.2!
Now, the release version had couple small problems, like stamina draining at alarming rates even when not carrying overweight, but these should get fixed with the first patch, and can be easily tweaked yourself in couple minutes!

Great mod, just bit rough on the edges for now.

The weight-limit increase and removal of the gun degradation make the game way too easy and render certain important gameplay features (like gear-upgrading and repairing) useless.

The mod would work much better as a simple accuracy and damage boosting mod that also restores enemy bleeding. Now it has some good and some bad features in it.