With STALKER 2 long-awaited release scheduled for later this year, there’s been an unsurprising spike in interest surrounding the original trilogy which debuted on PC almost two decades ago.
Capitalising on this curiosity, Ukrainian publisher GSC recently launched STALKER: Legends of the Zone Trilogy, bringing the three games to Xbox and PlayStation for the first time.The trilogy marks an opportune gateway into the STALKER series, but it comes with one major caveat.
Despite the visual and quality of life improvements, these games have not really been rebuilt or redesigned with a console audience in mind.
They also hail from an era in which first person shooters didn’t all ascribe to a similar, Call of Duty-like template.As the developers claim, the trilogy has been preserved – warts and all – but with some of those rough edges rounded off to make the games playable with a gamepad on newer consoles.
In that respect alone, it’s a success, and although some players might baulk at the lack of hand-holding and other modern gaming comforts, the STALKER trilogy will give you an appreciation for what the developers wanted to achieve back in 2007 and how the series’ mechanics, setting, and storytelling evolved.