39% positive on Steam: Stalker Enhanced Editions dissapoint fans with cut content and blurry visuals

Today, enhanced editions of three classic Stalker games were released on Steam. The three games include the original, Stalker: Shadow of Chornobyl, as well as Stalker: Clear Sky and Stalker: Call of Prypiat. Unfortunately, player reviews have been flooding in all day, and they are not great. Clear Sky and Call of Prypiat earned “Mixed” scores with 42% and 40% at the time of writing. But the original, Shadow of Chornobyl, remains at “Mostly Negative,” with only 39% of player reviews being positive. They are not that far apart in score, but 40% is the cut-off from Negative to Mixed on Steam. At least owners of the original version can upgrade for free. But it may not be an upgrade.

39% positive on Steam, what went wrong with the Stalker Enhanced Editions?

GSC Game World, the development team behind the Stalker series, originally released Shadow of Chornobyl in 2007. The game takes place in the Zone, a fictional version of the real-life exclusion zone created by the Chernobyl disaster in 1986. The Zone has continued after the initial disaster, with some people managing to scrape together a life among the wasteland and avoid the mutated creatures wandering in the shadows. Despite some criticisms about bugs, the original game was a commercial and critical success.

So, the question becomes, what went wrong? Stalker is a beloved franchise around the world. Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl was released last year, and looking at its Steam page for comparison, it has 81% positive reviews. What happened to these enhanced editions? The first place to look is in those user reviews on Steam.

Many Steam reviews explain how the game looks blurry, does not support DLSS, has problems with mods, and apparently has some level of censorship. One user succinctly wrote in their review, “Very annoying to have to wait for mods to fix the blur and censorship on what was supposed to be a definitive version of the game.” The issue of cut content seems to have been a major part of the series’ history. The Stalker Wiki page shares a long list of features, items, or mutants that were at some point planned to be part of the game, but have, for various reasons, become inaccessible without mods or other methods. Several fan projects are working to realize a “full” version of the game. But, of course, fans are understandably annoyed that after all this time, they still have to deal with the cut content all over again, despite this being the “enhanced edition” of the game.

Aside from that disappointing flaw, these enhanced editions of the Stalker series also appear to have many other problems. Visually, it sounds like a mess, and if a game is blurry enough that players are making jokes calling it “Blurry Version” or wondering if the game has a “Vaseline filter,” it’s not something to ignore. Of course, this is day one. The development team may introduce some patches to address some of these problems in the coming days. Otherwise, as the review above said, you may have to wait for mods.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

March 20, 2007

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