S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly, a great Free to Play FPS game.

Gaming PC
#1

Anomaly is a free-to-play standalone mod for the 2009 survival-horror First Person Shooter S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat. It has really good reviews on ModDB, where the game can be downloaded. It’s about 9 GB in size. Here’s the download link: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly mod for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat - Mod DB

Gameplay is mainly centred on exploring the radioactive post-apocalyptic “Zone” of Pripyat while surviving. There are a lot of weapons, ranging from knives to grenade launchers. The guns can be deeply customised with different scopes, suppressors, and magazines. There is a wide selection of body armour as well. You can undertake difficult but very rewarding quests, and as you complete more and more of them, your influence will raise and you will get unique jobs which have great story elements. The gunplay is realistic and accuracy demanding, and it’s mostly better to leave unprovoked foes alone so you can save ammo and keep your weapon from wear and tear. There are dangerous and terrifying enemies everywhere in the zone, and there are anomalies. I won’t spoil anything about them though.

Graphics is quite good for an indie game. The atmospheric, dark lighting really suits the post-apocalyptic feel. You can play it on a laptop or a low-end PC, as it doesn’t demand a high-performance system.

So, I hope you guys will give this wonderful game a try. And if you like it, post a review on the site because the developers deserve it!

#2

Completely agree, and such a privilege it is to play for the price of “free”.

To me what is great about the game is the complete allegiance it has to creating an immersive experience. Not realistic, which is a different thing, then again, The Zone is not a place where the conventions of reality have room to exist in anyway. But the way you hear constant strange noises in the distance, that if you hear gunshots you’ll see in your PDA the people in the firefight asking for help, or how you are informed of meteorological conditions about to happen, other Stalkers offering for money to escort the somewhere or communicating when they find bodies and how they looted good stuff from them, overall just showing that there are people here struggling to survive just as much as you.

And all of this without mentiong the “Escape From Prypiat” mod for Anomaly, which I haven’t tried myself, but that draws inspiration from “Escape From Tarkov”, which is one of the toughest games I know of, as if Stalker wasn’t challeging enough.