This post if gonna be a short article about a video game, I will write a little bit about the game, what I think about the game, why I like it and then how to get it working in a linux system. It just work perfectly in windows systems by default so no need to worry if you are a windows guy. Yes so if you are not into gaming there's no point of reading the rest.
Okay the name of the game is S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. I know the name is kind of weird and long. Oh and this acronym stands for "Scavenger, Trespasser, Adventurer, Loner, Killer, Explorer, Robber" if you are wondering. This game was developed in 2002 by a Ukrainian game developers called 'GSC Game World' and was published by THQ. And later they released few other S.T.A.L.K.E.R games too, but in this article I am going to talk about the first one only.
Now let's get into the game. This game take part in an alternate reality that there was a second Chernobyl disaster. And the surrounding area is destroyed and mutated. And there are so many weird things going on in this area, and in the game we call this region 'the zone' so I will continue to use it too. In the zone the reality we know if blurred and the laws of physics we know are altered too. So yes expect to see some weird shit in the zone. There are mutated animals and plants all over the zone.
In the game we play as a man called 'marked-one' because somehow our memory is lost, so we know nothing about ourselves. And there are people who are called Stalkers. They are kind of like explorers but yeah not just explorers as I said before. Normally stalkers work alone, but stalkers can join different factions too. Player can join any of those factions too, and it's totally upto the player. Oh and don't forget that you actions will affect how different people and factions react to you. If a faction has a beef with you, trust me they will identify you and will kill you. In this game it's very easy to die. So don't worry much about dying. Focus on enjoying the environment and the experience. If you have never seen the game just imagine the world is kind of like fallout 3 but it's more lonely and dark. Definitely expect some lonely and scary vibes.
If to talk about the gameplay and why I like this game. First compared to most other games, gameplay of this game sucks! At least it will suck for the first few days you play this. The game is very hard thanks to the combat mechanics of the game. You will have to put carefully planned shots to kill some one and hope the bullets will hit them. But don't expect the enemies to go easy on you. The AI is pretty dumb to be honest. But the combat system is much more biased to the AI. Don't get surprised if you keep missing shots for 10 seconds and enemies shoot you accurately from a long distance. But that's where the fun is. The zone is not forgiving, it will not go easy on you like in other games. In 99% of the games in the market, the games are made for you to be the hero. But not here buddy, here you are just a regular stalker just like hundreds of others. And you are a small fry. The world doesn't give a fuck about you. And the zone will kill you like a mosquito. So this game will give you a very unique feeling. A feeling of loneliness and reality. In the world you are just like others and if you are not good enough then the world will get rid of you fast. But that doesn't make playing this game stressful or anything. I mean it will be frustrating if you are dumb enough to do the same thing in your every try, then you will just keep dying. But the zone will test you. You will have to manage resources properly and come up with strategies to survive. In this game you will have to use a lot of ammo. But in the other hand the resources will be limited. So you will have to collect resources and trade stuff you don't need to get things you need.
And the visuals are really escalate this gloomy and powerful world. I really like this concept of giving all badass powers to the environment and not to the main character. I mean in Skyrim you will be called a freaking hero and a world savior! And in this game you are just a worthless stalker with no significance.
See these pictures,
Okay now if how to run this on linux, if you have a windows machine don't worry this work very smoothly on windows. But in Linux if you installed this with wine and playonlinux in the regular way, this might not work. It will work, but will have main performance issues. I tried it this way and it was unplayable. Disregard of how low your graphic settings are, the game will lag, even in the menu. But I found a very nice forum page explaining how to install this easily. It's thanks to this guy named "adamhm" he wrote a bunch of scripts to install everything properly with needed preferences. This is the link. You can follow what adamhm has written. And once you download the relevant archives, don't forget to read the README file. There you will find everything clearly mentioned step by step. Trust me his scripts work, so if it doesn't work for you. You are doing something wrong, I am pretty confident about it because for me now it works really well! If you have a question feel free to send me an email.
If you haven't played this game yet, and if you like open world role playing like games you should try this one too. May be you will like this!
Good hunting STALKER!