I play mostly Gamma in the last years, but it's undoubtful that Anomaly was a more important landmark when it was released. Gamma is more popular today, but still gets most of its stuff from Anomaly, and it's nice to see both here in GOG. Basically Anomaly brings together the "full" world of Call of Chernobyl (that is, all the maps from the original trilogy, and some bonus) with the complex survival mechanics of Misery, without the actual miserable ultra-hardcore experience. Or could be, if you want. Anomaly was developed as a very open and customizable Stalker mod, so you can adjust several aspects of gameplay and difficulty out-of-the-box, without needing to edit game files. But a question today is, if Gamma is an "improved Anomaly", why bother with Anomaly itself? Well, for starters, this is simply not true. Anomaly has the most free of the freeplays, while Gamma pushes gameplay in a particular direction, with a more linear progression. This fundamentally changes the experience, from a pure survival sandbox to a survival-RPG. Sure, both games have Story missions (basically the same), but they are there mostly for giving you some directions around the Zone. Don't expect too much of them, if you prefer story-driven games there are other, better Stalker mods. Now, vanilla Anomaly has its issues, mainly I would say the over-complicated crafting system. Repair and maintenance it's fine, but crafting itens is a convoluted nightmare. During a long time I just adjusted progression to ignore it completely. Do it if this turns you off. If you already know your ways through ModDB and addons, probably you won't bother with this GOG version. However, if you are beggining, know that this would improve by a hundred times your experience. This is what Anomaly was made for, a solid base and platform for custom gameplay. I must confess, for all thousands of hous I spent here, I prefer Gamma nowadays. This is because it saves you a lot of setup troubles, and, if you know a bit your ways, you can adjust it to have a similar "free" experience as with Anomaly. But you may give it a try, particularly if you disliked most Gamma particularities.
I'm surprised and happy to see this in GoG, because it will increase visibility of this modpack outside the modding community. I won’t delve deep into Stalker itself, you probably know and like the series to be here. Is this, however, the "definitive" way to play Stalker? Well, it depends on what you want. If you prefer a more story-driven gameplay, akin to the original trilogy, you have many other options, some better than this one. However, if you like more the freeplay aspect, this is hands-down the best experience and starting point. Grandpa here to tell a story. A decade ago, Call of Chernobyl was released: basically a mesh of all maps from the originals, with vanilla gameplay, but a ton of addons to customize your experience. At the time, another hugely popular mod was Misery, for Call of Pripyat: it turned Stalker into a true survival game. However, it was a divisive mod, because it tried too hard to be ultra-hardcore. The path was set for many attempts to bring together those two, the expansive world of CoC with the complex gameplay of Misery. Some good, some not, but one rose above them all. Anomaly quickly became the most popular Stalker mod, because not only united the best of the two worlds, but made the experience fully customizable, out of the box. That meant you could make the game forgiving or extremely hard, the survival aspects trivial or harsh, all out-of-the-box using the menus, no need to edit game files. There was an overly-complex crafting system, but you may adjust the game to basically ignore it at the beginning. Also, it fully incorporated story addons, which were fine but existed mostly to give some direction to freeplay, not as the main focus. And, sure, there were still tons of addons. However, installing dozens of them and making them compatible still represented a barrier to many people. Enters Gamma. Gamma was created by Grok, himself one of the main creators of Anomaly addons, and it’s not a mod “per se”, but a modpack: that is, you have not dozens, but hundreds of addons, meshed and tweaked to be compatible over an Anomaly foundation. There is a relatively simple installer, you just need to follow a few steps and have everything ready to play. Now, anybody can play a hugely modified and complex version of Stalker, with minimum trouble. Even better, you can turn individual addons on and off with a mouse click, and adjust many of them directly in-game. It was not surprising that it “exploded” in popularity, although it still gets most of its stuff directly from Anomaly (which is alive and well, you can also find it here in GOG). All this rambling is to show how this "lineage" of Stalker mods evolved, and how desire for customization was a strong driving force. Because there is one important aspect of Gamma: compared to Anomaly, it makes the experience more directed and linear. It “wants” you to start in the safest places, and slowly progress to the more dangerous ones, where the rewards are also higher. Economy is more restricted to make crafting not optional, but also removed trading with other Stalkers. While what made Anomaly so great for me is that I could drop my new character into the worst place possible and try to escape/survive with whatever I could scavenge for. Oh, look, a random high-tier gun in a box! Now I’m Hobbo Rambo, naked but dangerous! Wait, a single friendly face in this Monolith-ridden hell? Here, get my gun for a can of tuna, no use to have fancy gear and die of starvation. Such is the life in the Zone. This won't happen in "vanilla " Gamma. But, if you are a new player, I recommend to play Gamma as it is. Within its scope, it's great, and even the story-driven missions are good (but don't expect anything super fancy). You’ll have hundreds of hours of fun. If something feels too difficult or grindy, adjust it in the Options. It’s a single player game after all, there isn’t a “right” way to play. For instance, I like to increase Scattered Loot to the highest, it doesn’t make things easy, but exploration is more rewarding. Then, or if you are already a thousands-hour veteran, you may go deeper into customization. I usually turn off the more “linear” addons and other stuff that I simply don’t like (I would never give up on my Quick Save button!), and add a few others outside the modpack. Mind, however, that the “curated” experience is for the whole package. When you start to change things, it may lead to issues. For that, go to Gamma Discord, there is a huge community to help. You’ll probably end up there anyway, because be aware that this is not a commercial product made by paid developers (as if those were perfect, anyway...). Issues will always exist, but don’t let them turn you off from what I think is one of the single best survival AND shooter games in existence.
... didn't work for me. Too much talking, too little gaming. It would be a great book or series. If you liked Planescape: Torment, you'll like this. It's not that I'm a Icewind Dale kind of player, but more of a Baldur's Gate player. That is, games with good story, deep lore, but where you actually DO more stuff.
The Penumbra and Amnesia games left a huge impression on me. They were the first "true" horror games I played, and several times during gameplay I though "why am I doing this to myself?...". Point for immersion and atmosphere, for sure. I started Soma a few years ago and played 1/3 of it, until I got stuck in a given part and lost interest. Fast forward to now, I don't think I have the mental structure (or the patience) for the traditional sneak-and-run Frictional gameplay, but the setting and atmoshpere were enough to make me want to play it. So I tried the Safe Mode. In case you don't know, it's a mode where the monsters cannot kill you. But it's not only a lazy God Mode. They actually tweaked the AI of the creatures, so they are there, but behave in different ways. They may never get close to you, run away from your, ignore you, or even attack you without causing damage. You can play the whole game without worrying about sneaking, dying or losing progress. Ok, they basically removed THE main gameplay mechanics, and what is left? Well, a pretty good game. It helps that Soma, even in its "normal" way, isn't as focused on scares as the other games. It's bleak and dreadful, sure, but there is a lot of philosophical thinking and even light-hearted dialogue in between. There is a good deal of simple puzzles to make it still feel as a game, but story and atmosphere by themselves keep you going. It's very linear, zero replayability, but the first experience is a great one. I still felt tense, even knowing that I was "safe", but can't say the implementation of Safe Mode is perfect. Some monsters became just an annoyance, insisting in following you close like stray puppies, and spoiling exploration sometimes. There is a couple of times where this gets real bad, but doesn't harm the whole experience. In short, if you have anxiety/patience issues with this kind of games, Safe Mode still is a good option to experience a good story.
I like puzzle games but don't play a lot of them. I found difficulty in this one to be almost perfectly balanced between fair and challenging, just needed external help for two at the end. It's not a long fame, but the lenght fits very well its gameplay. Add to this pleasant graphics, great atmosphere and good story, and you have a truly great experience. If you like this kind of game, there is no reason not to play this one.
I'm not "used" to Bethesda games, this one was the first I really gave a try. It looked promising at the beggining, although as a letf-handed person I spend an awful time trying to make the terrible hardcoded controls to work. The other awful time was managing the inventory and item bloat, thinking that it was meaningful, but yeah, it's one of those "huge" open worlds that are just full of nothing. Useless junk, uninteresting enemies, shallow locations. Thus, exploration? Boring. Settlement management? Boring. Combat? Boring. Increased from normal to hard, but still was able to just shotgun everybody on the face while getting shot, no strategy at all, and the fact that you may just pause in front of your enemies to eat some food and recover health... well, "dumbed down" is a compliment. As a consequence, crafting and upgrading wasn't really meaningful, and, well, boring. By the time I decided to just forget the open world and follow the main story, I already lost interest in this.
When compared to other games in the classic "RPG-Immersive Sim" genre of the late '90s/early '00s, such as System Shock 2 or Deus Ex, VtMB is a buch of steps behind. The world is more shallow, you don't have too many little nice things to discover, the combat is much more awkward. The combat is simply not fun: or it's incredible easy, or you die due to awkward controls. It's truly a game about role-playing and dialogues, not so much about finding creative solutions to problems. It's undeniable that it does the role-playing very well, sure. Unfortunately, even after 20 years of community patches, it's still buggy as hell. It's playable, sure but still prone to crashes and glitches, even with the basic version of the most recent patch (the plus version is even worst in this regard). To be fair, what made me stop playing mid-game was crashes related to the HD texture pack, but the game looks really bad without it. I finished it once, but in this second playthrough, I just think it's not really worth the trouble.
This version is way better than the Steam one, so go for it if you want to try the game. You will still have to jump a few hoots to make it works, though. See the pcgamingwiki page for this. And I don't think it's worth the trouble. The gameplay is rather uninteresting and the story is you basic derivative Lovecraftian stuff. BTW, it looks terrible for a 2006 game. Using Sharpen Corners of Earth and SweetFX, it still looks like a modded original Deus Ex. it wouldn't be a problem with good gameplay, but unfortunately isn't the case.
More than telling another opinion about the game, I can tell you why would you bother with this version instead of the remake. Well, basically because you can grab it on a sale by less than 20% the hefty price of the new shiny one. The original still holds up pretty well graphics- and gameplay-wise. It's not nostalgia googles because it was my first time, and I didn't feel like playing an "old game" at all. Sure, in a vaccum, the remake is superior, but some of its improvements seem to me barely relevant. For instance, the fact that you may move freely back and forth between decks, while the original is strictly linear. Well, unless they changed a lot of the gameplay, there is no reason at all to backtrack after you finished the objetives of a given level. Also, in the original enemies don't respawn: their placement is procedural, but the appearances are stricly scripted, not based on timers or free movement. In the remake they apparently respawn, and if this is good or bad depends on the implementation and your personal taste. If you prefer to save your money, mind that you MUST tweak the game for it to work. But it's simpler tham it seems, follow what you find in the pcgamingwiki page and you'll be fine. What worked for me was playing in full screen (Borderless Gaming made my game stutter), tweaking gamma in the config files to avoid game too bright, forcing anti-aliasing, Vsync and FPS limit with Nvidia profile inspector (you MUST enable Vsync even when borderless, otherwise it will break some scripts), Dead Space Mouse Fix and Widescreen Fix at 0.2. And now my two cents of opinion about the game itself: cool game to play once, but not my preferred style. Too linear, scripted, noisy, full of jump scares and cheesy horror tropes that spoil the atmosphere. Didn't get vere excited about DS 2, since people say that focus even more on action. I prefer something slower and more open as System Shock, but Dead Space is shorter and still worth a run.
I didn't play the game before 2.0, so my review isn't biased by the recent changes. Most people seem to like, but is the game actually good? If you like liner shooters, it may be. Because that's what the game is. You'll spend long, long sections just watching a movie play and pressing buttons when prompted to, and then shoot something by the end. Not what I was expecting. It's not supposed to be a sandbox or immersive sim, but they marketed a lot the open world aspect. But everything outside the main story is really shallow. I had some fun hunting cyberpsychos and doing a couple of side jobs, but soon noticed that they are no more than the good old fetch quests. Since the game doesn't develop the other aspects of gameplay (dialogue choices are meaningless, stealth is just a matter of time before all hell breakes loose), and there is zero consequences about your approach, in the end everything boils down to shooting. And then there is another big issue: combat is bad. Not the shooting itself, it feels ok. But enemy AI is dull as hell. They will just take cover and stay there the whole combat, even if you are outnumbered and without escape. Bu what ruined the things to me was to notice that enemies are coded to stay in pre-determined areas and that's it. So you can enter a room, shoot a few rounds and just walk back to the door. The AI won't chase you, or try to flank you, or surround you. At most, they'll get stuck in some prop and at least let you kill them quickly. So combat gets boring really fast. I tried to increase difficulty to see if I got some challenge, but all this does is to increase their damage, and decrease yours. Then it's exactly the same boring combat, but... longer! This is no Deus Ex, for sure. Perhaps the best comparison would be to No Man's Sky: they share the same "redemption" story, and both desperately throw on you a lot of content, hoping that you won't notice the shalowness of it all.
