STALCRAFT - Not a joke anymore

Let's define right away: the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. community. - is a separate caste of people who are ready to prove with bubbles that their favorite game is the best in the solar system. And all because S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - is a kind of 2007 from the world of video games: those who caught it at a conscious age and understood the essence of it, will never cool down to it. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. enjoys enormous fan love, for more than a decade the game lived solely on content created by admirers. On free content freely available.

While GSC Game Worlds has been diligently releasing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 which year, based on the motives of the captivatingly dark universe came hundreds of modifications. But the dream of many fans - S.T.A.L.K.E.R. online - had time to appear in the minds of developers, was born stillborn, to grow a bunch of clone freaks, meanwhile, the main challenger to the messiah was gaining strength in the shadows. STALCRAFT was an ordinary modification, a combination of not quite matching games - Minecraft and S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

For the first years STALCRAFT remained a purely niche game with an unenviable reputation. And now, on December 9, 2022, it made its way to Steam. On the new gaming platform the old-timers continued their wanderings through the Zone, the online growth and...STALCRAFT is just the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. dream to live in. But, as always, there are many nuances.

Put the gun down, man.

If the title of the subtitle sounded recognizable in your head, you are at the right place. There is a myth that the atmosphere of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is contained in the X-Ray engine and cannot be reproduced on other engines, STALCRAFT proves otherwise. It turns out that it's all about recognizable sounds of the message coming to the PDA...

...background ambient, mutant voiceovers, and player-unfriendly environments. In the case of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., the audiovisual has always come to the forefront, with the visual playing a secondary role. Even in the cubic style of Minecraft you feel the very same Zone, those feelings. And what STALCRAFT pleasantly surprises on the fly - it is a full professional voice acting as the main quests, as well as secondary. Let not all tasks can boast exciting stories, but the fact of the titanic amount of work done by voice actors...

Gameplay STALCRAFT repeats the formula of his ideological mastermind only by a third. In this third - viscous gameplay, consisting of unpredictable walks through the dangerous territory of the CEZ. The A-life system of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in STALCRAFT is largely the responsibility of the players. To have free time on the servers did not slip into a continuous mutant safari, imported faction war polechete than in the "Clean Sky. After a short learning curve, we will be offered a choice of two classic factions:

The choice of preferred faction is similar to the choice from Call of Chernobyl and similar mods. However, this is where the first, barely discernible nuance of STALCRAFT comes into play: stalkers can later go to the Duty or Freedom, and bandits can go to the Mercenaries and the new faction Covenant. If you get sucked into STALCRAFT, then the hasty choice of initial grouping you can notice only after a hundred hours - it turns out for the Stalkers easier to start, and the choice of bandits promises only top-end, exclusive equipment. Zaporizhatsya character you do not risk, but a thousand hours later - and this is quite normal for this game - a choice you can regret. The example with the somewhat unequal choice of faction is not the only unpleasant surprise, which you can encounter only after 500 hours. Yes, in stating that STALCRAFT is livable, I'm not exaggerating. 5,000 and even 10,000 hours played is quite normal for this game. But how did the developers from EXBO achieve playability comparable to Dota?

That's how a friend of mine died...

At first, STALCRAFT gives the impression of a mixture of Escape from Tarkov and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. From the first - the inventory, the contents of which are lost after death, ganplay and timid attempts at realism - all weapons behave differently, and the bullets do not work on the principle of lasers, and have quite a sensible ballistics. From the second - the Exclusion Zone itself, its background and atmosphere. Let the name "STALCRAFT" not mislead you. Only cubic aesthetics are left of Minecraft - no construction, no raids into dungeons for resources and no man-made worlds.

The balance of STALCRAFT is built so that the player can not feel safe anywhere, only in neutral territories. Even in the initial location cases of unjustified killing for the sake of a piece of sausage - quite normal. It is impossible to prevent almost permanent death. The basic idea of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - "Man is a wolf to man", in STALCRAFT works like a Swiss watch.

After an uncomplicated character customization, the player is literally thrown into a world where everyone you meet has no thought of cooperation. Between assassination and shaky alliance, assassination always takes precedence. This is where the second nuance of STALCRAFT comes in; this problem, by the way, is also relevant in Escape from Tarkov: distracting yourself alone at the game after a hard day's work is unlikely to work. For significant results you need a trusted friend, ideally a guide, a mentor. The rule is optional, but alone the player will be killed time and again by the players in the party. The algorithm is as follows: wander around the location, find the loot, go to the merchant to sell the goods and ... die from local gooks. Sitting on the edge of a tree, methodically waiting for stripped loot victim - for STALCRAFT picture routine:

Constant death and loss of loot - this is the first trouble on the road. So pumping from the planned 10 hours stretches to 30, 40, or even 100. To withstand this, the player needs game experience, but not levels, things, etc. Can attack at any second, from any angle. If the player has not learned how to shoot, do not navigate in the area - he is doomed to certain death. Donat will also not help, which we will talk about in detail a little later...

Over time the first location - the marsh - becomes a home, where you can and must navigate almost blind. There is no hurry in STALCRAFT: the map is huge, has tangible entry thresholds and is divided by servers:

Among the community there are even guides where newbies are taught to pretend to be newbies a little longer than they actually are, and after gaining experience, yesterday's newbies artificially raise their rating for a tougher server. If you've played MMOs, pumped your character up to impressive levels, and then created a new account/character to make fun of the newbies, you will understand the logic of the aforementioned guides. That's how the developers from EXBO balanced their game, you can't help it...

...However, this approach thinly or less divides players by equipment, statistics and skills. Another thing is that at first you can not feel the game serious resistance, relax, and then ruin the stats. Imagine playing unobtrusive Death Math in some Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, and then being thrown against 10 levels of Facit in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The feeling of a cold shower is guaranteed.

Too MMO

Despite the fact that STALCRAFT at first pretends with all its might to be a free Escape from Tarkov, first impressions are deceptive. Having spent 100 hours on the game, you risk realizing in a moment that you're stuck in an MMORPG with all its typical features. Random sharpening of weapons and armor, hundreds of hours of grind, entering the game as a job at certain hours, the obligation to join clans - STALCRAFT combined everything that scares away fans of the genre. For example: the maximum item sharpening at the time of writing the review is +15%, sharpening +1-3% is easy, but for the highest value it can take as many resources as veterans of the game earn for months.

"But STALCRAFT is a shooter after all, why can't I win by straight hands?" - you ask, but here too I have to disappoint. When two players meet on the battlefield, relatively equal in skill, and one conditional rifle kills in 4 hits, and the second - in 5, then the second has only to rely on luck. Beneficial stand out from the surrounding area due to the skills obtained only to a certain level of equipment. If this level is not overcome in time - will be stagnation, and even degradation, if overcome too quickly - the player feels a weak link, which pinch donatom ...

Donation in STALCRAFT is merciless. Sold not only cosmetic items, but also quite imbalanced things. Of course, every cybersports mom you meet will argue that the game drag straight hands, that the donation is only needed to save time. Do not listen to this man, he lies not only to you but also to himself. Complete Pay-to-Win is not seen, but seen something worse - everyone's favorite loot boxes with paltry probabilities of falling out really top items. The only consolation is that the STALCRAFT donation is so expensive that not every hiring specialist can afford to mess around with the balance a bit.

Prices in real currency are four-figure and sometimes five-figure, so most use a relatively down-to-earth donation. Another thing is that by pouring, say, $500 into the game, you won't get a tangible increase, you'll only level up with the mediocre players. Remember when I said that many players have 1000, 2000 or even more hours played? There is a downside to that fact. Upper STALCRAFT is a private club, which is very difficult to get into without donation, and the lower STALCRAFT is something on the level of mail.ru games, and maybe even worse.

Thousands of hours played have affected the game's economy as well, with local inflation having flown to the moon a long time ago. One way to get items is to buy them at auction, as it was at the start of Diablo III. The auction is implemented decently, you have to give EXBO credit here: items are sorted, they can be inspected, and there are no nasty hidden characteristics. The player always knows what he's paying for:

But for all its shortcomings STALCRAFT manages not to roll into a soulless Korean MMO, and cleverly flirt with the mechanics of the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R., for example: the voice chat between random players is disabled by default, but turns on if one of the players falls under the influence of psy-radiation. The psy pressure generates dusky voices in the mind of...other players, funny.

Is it worth it?

STALCRAFT is not a game that you will play for 10 hours and get acquainted with all the content. This game will take a lot of time and effort. STALCRAFT is not a bad option for those who are sweeping from mod to mod, clicking all sorts of Dead Air like sunflower seeds and languishing in anticipation of a new mod.