I also recommend playing SOC first, Pripyat second and last Clear Sky if you want to.

Honestly though I thought both Pripyat and Clear Sky was poor. The former had not barely any story and the latter was inconsistent.

I wonder if the the Stalker Soup mod have the main quest from Pripyet or Clear Sky as that mod makes you able to visit the areas from all three games including some areas from SOC that wasn't released due to time constraint or resources.

For your first playthrough I'd reccomend complete - as it touches up the graphics / tweaks out bugs and doesnt alter the game beyond polishing it up.
If you want content addition / changes after your first playthrough or two, I'll give you a list then
I think it's still buggy as hell mate - ive never bothered with it as yet though, so I only know what other modders / Stalkers have said.


GET OUT OF HERE STALKER!

SirEyeball, Sachys is a fan and an expert on S.T.A.L.K.E.R., you can trust what he says ;)

As for a mod for Shadow Of Chernobyl, I recommend this: http://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-complete-2009

I tried the mod but even on lowest details it drains about 1.5GB of RAM at the start of the game, I bet it has memory leak and likely crashes in ususal and rare places. It sounds great though. :P

My mistake then, that is the order I purchased them and became aware of them. Hadn't heard about CS until after I already had the other two.

I agree with those that recommend STALKER Complete 2009. I recently did a playthrough with it and it fixed and improved on nearly everything I didn't like or thought could be better in the vanilla game. There's also versions of the mod for Clear Sky and CoP as well.

Not entirely a bad thing! ;)

Dunno about expert - but it is a bit like Licurg with Sacrifice I suppose.

BUY SHA.... nah...

Thanks thats the one I found myself as well + Sachys recommended it too so I think its destined to be installed before my first playthrough ;)
that would make you this forums Sidorovich if I am not completely mistaken about the story ;)

Heheh!
I actually do a mean Sido impression!

I've not played these yet - would you classify them as Far Cry style open shooters, FPS / RPG hybrid like Deus Ex, I guess or Sandbox like.. Just Cause only less silly?

None of the above

I have only played "Shadow Of Chernobyl", but I can say, is close to a Bethesda's Fallouts (3 & NV) mixed with a little of the gameplay of Chrome, and some scares from F.E.A.R. It is an open world divided in regions, and quite big, set in Ukraine. You'll have to walk a lot, and speak with others NPCs to get more informations and missions (no voice, only and only using text), but the gameplay, graphics and GUI (vanilla version) are not as polished or easy to play as a Fallout game. Can be a little difficult at first for beginners though. Also, have some survival elements too, because is not easy to stay alive there... (:P)

I'm actually gonna disagree with this, although I recognize it as an entirely subjective opinion. If you can stomach some major quirks, I recommend going with the Zone Reclamation Project as the only mod for playing through SoC. It fixes bugs and adds some very minor balancing (all with a very handy front end for selecting what you do and don't want, something Complete lacks) without changing the core gameplay or atmosphere. Complete makes some gameplay changes that can mess with the game's difficulty curve later (some areas are like shooting fish in a barrel), and also changes the weird visual atmosphere of the vanilla game into something prettier but (IMO) less evocative. Also, some of the quirks it eliminates are actually pluses, in my opinion.

The problem with Complete is that a lot of people think it's just STALKER but prettier. It's not. It may not be quite as big a change as other mods (like LURK or Oblivion Lost), but it's still a different experience than vanilla STALKER.

Again, all of this is very subjective.

It's a open world FPS/survival/horror game. Very atmospheric, brutal psuedo-realistic combat, some minor survival elements... it's hard to describe, actually. It's STALKER.

The first game especially. It's just such a weird beast, in part because it's basically just a shell of what it was supposed to be, and has a TON of loose ends. I think they add to the charm personally, but...

the third game was the one that brought all the ideas together and made them work in a semi-coherent way. It's just a shame it forgot to bring the brutal difficulty and oppressive atmosphere along... -_-

I agree with jefequeso on this. I would like to point out that I also hate the graphics mods that tweak the colors in most games though. I feel that color is very important for atmosphere, and I don't want a bright and vibrant Skyrim (for example).

I would also recommend tracking down the Float 32 mod to go with it. It tweaks the lighting and makes the bump mapping more apparent, but doesn't change the atmosphere at all. Last time I looked for it I had a very hard time tracking it down though. It nearly disappeared when the parallax mapping mod came out, and that is also something you can look into. They sort of do the same thing, and are incompatible. The parallax mapping mod has a lot of graphical quirks and glitches though. It makes the bump mapping much more bumpy, and I think that's why its so much more popular. There are things that look way wrong with it though. Not all over, but common enough that I found it really annoying. Its things like certain walls being made of spikes when they aren't supposed to be, chipping paint that makes it appear as though the paint is a couple inches thick, bullet holes floating over top of what they are on, and other general weirdness. The parallax mod is actually included in STALKER Complete, and its the the thing that most turns me away from it. To each his own, though. If you aren't bugged by the little glitches the way I am then the Parallax mod might even be the better choice for you.

If you are unable to find the Float 32 mod, let me know. I hung on to the version 2.0 installer. Its been copied a few times though, so I cant verify its integrity.

EDIT:
One more thing before I forget again: Float 32 does make shadows darker. I cant remember if its tweakable or anything, so take that into consideration. Some people think its more realistic with darker shadows. I have yet to play a game were I felt the shadows were anywhere near realistic though. To me the shadows look fake both ways.

for me the biggest graphical turnoff was just how bright and happy Complete makes the zone look. In Vanilla STALKER, the zone had a weird alien look to it. Evrything looked washed-out and cold, even the lighting. In Complete it looks a lot more "normal". You could argue that since Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat had lighting more akin to Complete, vanilla's look was more a result of it being technically inferior, but still... I just find the look of vanilla to be a lot more evocative and interesting.

Here's a quick comparison shot I made, btw, so you can see how different it looks:

http://i44.tinypic.com/n6ro6.jpg