An Eastern-made total conversion. New story, reimagined levels, gameplay improvements, revamped visuals, custom voice-over, and an official translation.
So far, one of the best stalker mods I've ever played, really fresh experience.
Graphically beautiful, full of colors and flora mantaining the Stalker feel.
An exceptional work on the UI.
High quality mapping.
So well done storyline along with cutscenes, subtitles and dialogs.
I personally love the sounds, the new ambience sountracks are a great work that adds a lot to the atmosphere.
Okay, so gonna be honest, was not super enthusiastic about this mod when I saw it on the front page, figured "just another STALKER mod, whoopie, can't beat Anomaly, I bet!"
Well, while I can't call it a straight victory, after 2 hours of playing, I'd say in certain categories, it blows Anomaly out of the water.
First, gunplay. Keeping a round in the pipe with a half load mag? Check. Haven't had a jam yet, but I have a sneaking suspicion we'll get a proper "un-jam" animation.
Second, story. Much less generic than Anomaly (though that could be called Anomaly's greatest strength, given the different factions option.)
Third, environment and game play. Feels oddly like FarCry rather than STALKER, but hell, I like it, a much more vibrant zone.
Fourth, the overall UI. I almost can not believe what these devs have done with the XRAY engine, it barely feels like STALKER, but as I stated previously, I like it!
And fifth, the environment! I love the subtle and not so subtle changes they have done! Like an anomaly tearing up a structure and having it floating in the air, to the simple burning down of a house in the rookie village, it make the Zone feel alive and ever changing, unlike most mods doing a straight port.
Gonna continue jamming through the Zone and hopefully I love it as much all the way through!
I'm a member of Team Epic, authors of CoC.
I didn't play a single mod for CoP since the last official release of CoC several years ago. I pasted too much time in the Zone, I leave it to work in my small farm, lost in nowhere, far a crazy world.
I publish here my first review for a mod since a very long time.
You can't imagine my pleasure when I arrived in the True Stalker Zone.
Here, everything is almost perfect for a great storyline mod. Imo, it's really close to a official game (better than LA in all case).
The new UI is fine and easy to use. The bleeding, rad and hit icons are misplaced but it's nothing for a veteran. 9.9/10
The difficulty with the economic balance remember me the progress in my first SoC game, the player is not a super hero after 5 min of gameplay. Perfect. 10/10
The level design with new and old places is great, I see a lot of nod to SoC builds, new models for npc and object are fine too, in the pure Stalker mind.
My travel enjoy me hours after hours. Sometimes, it remember me some old mods as AMK... This work respect two decades of stalker universe. 10/10
The 2D art for loading screen is beautiful, according to Stalker 2 concept art. 10/10
What about anomalies, particles and lighting? Electrical are perfect, gravitational are really hard to see as they have to be. It's nice. The player can find anomalies fields and random anomalies, the better choice regarding gameplay. 10/10
Arties, they are not so much and powerful but enough as the diversity of weapons. Here, no gunporn or artifactporn. Not thousand of useless items as in crazy giant modpack. There is toilet paper in a bandit camp, but we can't use it. We're safe. It's a game, not a virtual life. 10/10
The technical support and english version, very good. 10/10
What about Sid? I hate this crook man, manipulator and slavery, always hidden in his safe bunker. But I have no choice, no other path. I have to work for him, just for a time.
I'll not stay in Cordon for a long time. I have to make my own way to the Center.
I meet bandits, terrible. Military, mercenary, scientist, duty, freedom or stalkers... This guys are always here, always the same. They are the reflect of us, of our humanity, with our beauty, our weakness, or worse, our madness & evil. Each one have his own character stroke, his personality. 10/10
True Stalker is not a mod as all that we can see. The core is not in the gunporn, the 3D, the full 4k, the dream of a realistic alife, a full openworld available in multiplayer or the restoration of unrelease content from 2003... It's a story with severals protagonist. A book. A novel, between science fiction and fantastic (as Roadside picnic or Le Horla from Guy de Maupassan).
It's linear with the adequate liberty of movement. As SoC was in his time.
As everybody, I can complain about few choices from the devs that I don't agree, but a skin or a color for a monster doesn't matter, it's anecdotal regarding the overall result.
By the way, it's time for me to go back in the Zone and finish my game.
All my respect to the ap-pro team for this work. Thanks you so much.
During my sleep, I'm dreaming about the Zone, once again. Regards.
Just amazing! This is no mod, this is a game!
(Written at Chapter 5, played on the release version, Master difficulty)
One of the highest production value mods I've ever played. Everything here is very technically impressive, particularly the UI, level edits, and voice acting. Performance is solid, and the game looks great for the most part. Gunslinger port means everything to do with weapons and combat feels good.
The first thing to understand is that this is very much a linear story-focused mod. There is little incentive to explore, there are few choices to be made, and you're not going to be coming across any random encounters. The mod is designed to lead you from one scripted sequence to the next, with little room for player choice as far as their approach or roleplay goes. I have come across a few "let them live?" dialogue options, but none seemed particularly consequential at the time. This is not a criticism, but a conscious design choice one should be aware of before playing.
Personally, I do prefer a more open, roleplay-centric experience, so this did impact my enjoyment, although I'm not factoring that into my score. I particularly dislike neutral NPCs having friendly fire disabled, meaning you're only allowed to resort to violence when given permission, but I can understand that for an amateur story-driven project, this choice makes it a lot easier to create a scripted narrative without having to worry about players going off-script.
Cutscenes are a cool addition! Unfortunately, I feel they are overused, and are more a crutch to keep the player on rails than they are a means of emphasizing cinematic moments (which do occur). One of the most frustrating recurring experiences in this mod is being put in a cutscene, dropped directly in front of a firing squad/swarm of mutants, and then given control of your character moments before you are helplessly torn to shreds. Often this will come with an autosave, which in theory should let you Hotline-Miami the encounter until you succeed, but in practice seems to place you a moment after you initially gained control, meaning you're better off loading an earlier save and sitting through the cutscene again for the extra leeway. If these moments preceded more interesting, extended encounters I could excuse this, but it's generally just a 10-second combat against a handful of enemies that is only "challenging" due to the immediately disadvantageous circumstances. So these moments feel cheap and artificial rather than like genuinely challenging encounters.
That is not to say the mod is too hard. Instead, I'd argue that the baseline experience is a bit too easy to be compelling. Resources and equipment are plentiful, and I never feel the need to conserve my items or consider how I use them. High condition weapons are easy to come by from the start of the game, and repair costs are negligible, so the progression doesn't feel exciting. Lethality is high, stacked slightly against the player, which I like. However most (not all) combat sequences are predictable and easy to manage. I'd hope that the encounter difficulty picks up over the course of the game. Mutants are particularly predictable and easy to leash, and you don't have to worry about random mutants roaming the map.
There have been many complaints about backtracking already, so I won't dwell on it. I felt it was a bit excessive at times, and made worse by the absence of the random encounters that typically make traversal engaging. As it stands, traversing these (beautiful) levels feels more like a chore than it does gameplay.
As for the story, I feel that if the gameplay is going to be this scripted, the narrative should feel focused, steadily progressing in a clear direction, with interesting plot hooks. Instead, it feels more like a series of unrelated quests justified by the idea that our protagonist needs to "get more experience" or "make a name for himself". Believable but not engaging. I wouldn't say it has me invested. That said, these disconnected sidequests are pretty well-done, and if you look at it as a remix of SoC with pretty visuals, Gunslinger, and a variety of cute little side stories then I think they've done a fine job.
To conclude, it's clear that a lot of heart and effort went into this mod's creation, and any fan of the series will be able to appreciate that from the get-go. I think the team has set new standards for stalker modding in many areas. Sadly, while I've found the experience technically impressive, I can't say I found it particularly fun to play. There are moments that feel like they could be snippets of an official GSC-made expansion, but taken as a whole, True Stalker feels like an impressive, beautiful, but empty tech demo. I'm not sure if I'll finish the mod or drop it here, but I am certain that I'll keep an eye on its continued development (if any), and any future projects from this team. There is a lot of potential at the core of this project, and I'm excited to see what comes next.
This mod is something else. I'm only a few hours in, but I'm already blown away. To be completely honest, I was already really impressed in the main menu before I even started a new game. The menu and loading screen designs are fantastic, including the satisfying sound effects that accompany you while you navigate the menu.
But to talk about gameplay itself, I really love how this mod is everything that the original STALKER games were, but at the same time it has its own identity and builds upon the foundation that GSC has laid without being bloated with unnecessary features like some other modern STALKER mods.
the attention to details here is just stratospheric
After only a few minutes in it's easily visible, that this is BY FAR! the highest quality Stalker mod there has been yet. It's just amazing, really feels like a new game! Perfect, when you're burned out from playing to much Stalker mod packs in the past. Hats off to the developers, amazing that this is free.
A new, fresh breath of air in the stalker community =)
A game true to its name.