The Zone of Alienation mod is an adaptation of the renowned AMK mod. It is built on top of a specialized variant of AMK that uses a magazine system. From this premise, it has expanded to aim to include the following:

RSS Reviews  (0 - 10 of 135)

Oh my god I just want to sit in the bar and load magazines all day what have you done.

The mod is great when it works. Save frequently because a crash, although they are rare, (about once every 2 to 4 hours of play), they happen at anytime so you dont want to be losing progress.

The Zone is incredibly intense, especially with moving anomalies, ect. Read through what AMK does and get a general idea. Then read this one.

I only experienced one bug, the binoculars/magazine reloading. Wasnt game breaking, I just always had to carry tons of looted magazines on me for my weapons. No need to carry bullets at that point. Downside was that I wasnt able to use my binoculars, which kinda sucked cause they add a great feel to the game.

Normally The Zone becomes easier for STALKERS who gain better artifacts and gear, like Vanilla version. Well in this mod, its not like that. At all. I got wrecked all the time. You cross to another area of the map, climp on top of the highest hill to get a general feel for the area and suddenly 10 dogs, 4 boars, and 4 fleshs come at you like a wolf pack of ligers and ****. It was awesome. I crouched down and just fired into the seething mass hauling *** towards me. I knew Id had to reload at some point so I just stopped shooting and sat there, getting hit by a wall of rabid and radiated mutants. I was dead in less than 2 seconds. Thus is life.

New mutants, improved gears, artifact transmutation. You can even use artifacts as weapons. You drop them on the ground and they spawn anomalies. Pretty useful if you know how to use them.

I played on Master, which is honestly the only way to play and enjoy any STALKER game to its fullest. That helped make this whole mod enjoyable and pretty much helps envision what the mod creator has in mind.

i have played a lot of stalker mods in my time. I have played some of the more difficult ones like Misery 2.0 but at least that mod felt this is one of those stlaker mod where anything kills you in one hit no matter what but you can unload 2 mags of 7.62x25 into an enemy and he just turns around and kills you in one hit... I cant stand that if the player is going to be super fragile then the AI needs to be too.

What a brilliant mod. It's hard, it's beautiful looking, the gun play is fantastic, the world is immersive. FatalFunnel has put in so much work and done such an amazing job on this. Truly this is the best iteration of any STALKER game. I eagerly await the next patches.

A++ for effort, execution leaves a lot to be desired.

Pros:
Atmosphere
Expanded character backgrounds, additional quests
Magazine system
New & remodelled weapons

Cons:
Artificial difficulty
Artificial difficulty
Artificial difficulty
Frequent crashes

Let me break it down, starting with the cons:

I'm a fan of challenge in FPS games, but this takes the cake, ***** on it and force-feeds it to you.
Aiming and recoil is half of my main complaint. I like weapon sway a lot, but SoC has some weird "drunken" view-panning, I don't know how to describe it. Basically after you stop moving the mouse, your turn will still have some momentum instead of stopping when you do. This would be fine by its self, but coupled with massively exaggerated recoil, it becomes frustrating. Speaking of said recoil, again, I'd be fine with this by its self, but once you factor in the ability of NPCs to make accurate follow-up shots it's once again extremely frustrating. Combat doesn't feel compelling because it's stacked against you so much.
Beyond that is weapon damage, NPC resistance to damage and your own resistance to damage - If you even survive long enough to do it, it's possible to put 3 rounds from an AKM into a bandit and yet they don't react to getting hit, while an M1911 is capable of one-shotting them. You, however, with the starting suit at least, are lucky if you survive a single shotgun pellet. Again, I'd be fine with this if NPCs reacted to being hit by any round that does significant damage to them, and if a given round (especially 7.62x39) isn't doing significant damage to a guy in a leather jacket, something's wrong.

Radiation simply drains health way too fast for my liking, especially when drunkenness lasts so long and doesn't do much to diminish it. These things are fortunately easy to modify to your own taste.

Anomalies - I'm torn on whether I like their invisibility. It makes the bolts actually necessary, but at the same time it restricts your movement to the point of tedium especially when they're randomly placed. I'm neutral on it, I can deal with it.

Crashes and bugs, well, it's STALKER.

For the pros:
The magazine system is probably my favourite feature of the mod - If you've not tried it, basically you can buy and find boxes of individual rounds, with which you must load individual magazines where appropriate (Certain weapons like shotguns and certain rifles load with loose rounds). However, once again the execution leaves something to be desired. It's overall a very clunky and tedious system and that's no doubt due in part to engine limitations, so I can let my complaints slide; those being that there's no easy indication of which rounds your loading, it's not possible to load different rounds into the same magazine (Eg. you have 15hp and 15ap 9x19mm rounds, you can only load two mags of 15 rather than 1 of 30), switching between which rounds you're loading doesn't seem to work and the process of emptying and loading magazines being relatively convoluted.

Atmosphere speaks for its self, I think it really builds on that of the original SoC rather than taking it a different direction. Very bleak, and many of the gameplay changes factor in.

You'll get a lot more side-quests to do with this mod, as well as being able to hear stories from most named NPCs, real nice touch.

vSoC's weapon models and animations are really dated - the ones used in this are a big step up in comparison.

Overall, when it cooperates it's very fun. Clearly had a lot of work put in to it, I just hope future versions address the issues I outlined.

10

El_Zongo says

May contain spoilers Agree (2) Disagree (1)

why do i need to review crap? can't I just vote?

This mod likes my gun autism. I like it too. Loading mags has never been this fun.

Excellent concept, but unpolished.

To get it out of the way - ZoA looks incredible. Seriously. With this mod, graphics at max and forced AA, SoC looks as good as it probably ever will. It looks realistic without being overly gritty, and manages to be both colorful and grim at the same time, unlike a certain other "realistic" Stalker mod.

Weapons are generally well textured, with some occasional wonky modeling and quite a few poorly modeled iron sights. Also, certain guns have an annoying innate zoom on their irons, like the SVD. One of the better features is the inclusion of night vision optics, which feel like a natural extension to the attachment system and work very well. Rarely, when attaching scopes, the gun and scope can spontaneously disappear.

The magazine system is also a nice touch, though it certainly has flaws. Reloading feels much clunkier than it needs to be - there has to be some way to implement a menu or something - but the fact that magazine reloading is actually animated is really cool, and gives you something to do while waiting for dawn around a campfire. I experienced some issues with magazines getting "eaten" by the reloading process, and loading from boxed ammunition, rather than loose ammo, sometimes outright refuses to work. There also doesn't seem to be a way to unload partially loaded magazines without first filling them, which is a huge annoyance when trying to scavenge rare ammunition.

The almost total lack of HUD is an interesting choice, and usually works well - with one exception. There's no way to check the fire mode on a weapon without test firing it. There needs to be some way to do this - perhaps a brief text popup when you switch between fire modes?

Overall, ZoA is one of the best mods out there. It's certainly a bit unstable, and in need of some polish, but the uniquely brutal combat and atmosphere make it incredibly immersive. It feels like the game that STALKER always should have been, rather than just a mod.

Despite the bugs, the crashes, the huddled masses, ZoA is the most intense and atmospheric gaming experience I have ever found.

Amazing job, Fatal.

Cool mod, pretty stable, adds some nice ideas.