
I found the Complete mod absolutely necessary for SoC (it fixed a crash-to-desktop bug that hit me pretty consistently) but kind of pointless for CoP. CoP will spoiler SoC's main plot, but if you can live with that, it's more polished overall. Once I got a rifle with a scope things got a lot easier.Įither Shadow of Chernobyl or Call of Pripyat would work as a starting point. In the STALKER series, you effectively level up by getting better gear, and the starting stuff is pretty awful. I had to reload a lot, especially in the early game, but the difficulty came more from having to rely on inaccurate guns and weak armor than skill. The contrast between those two games was impressive HL2 basically wants to play like an action movie, while SoC is about planning and resource management and not rushing into battle unless you have absolutely no other choice. Everyone told me that I needed to play Half-Life 2, so that was the first, and it was a good way to get used to WASD, etc. (Caveat: I've only got experience with the first one, though I don't believe the sequels are substantially different).Ĭlick to expand.I did the same thing a few years ago, and STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl was the second post-1995 FPS I ever played. This not a game where "running into the fray guns blazing" is a helpful tactic (well, mostly.there are moments and combats that are a bit more frantic and that you will be spraying and praying in, but those instances are there deliberately by design for atmospheric effect, and aren't the standard).

STALKER is also (mostly) less twitchy than other types of FPS games, even single-player, since while it's not a cover-based shooter, its realistic enough that you really, really want to be shooting from some kind of protective wall or something, and be very judicious about placing your shots.

Because I absolutely suck at (and therefore hate playing) the multiplayer type, but never had a problem with the single-player STALKER. I think it depends on whether you mean actiony as in a multiplayer FPS like CounterStrike or Battlefield, or as in a single-player FPS like Halo or Half-Life.
