I recommend using the Complete mods for the entire series.
Clear Sky Complete does not add that much to CS (except sleeping bags and Smart Save, AFAIK), while it has been a little too buggy for me with certain missions (
including a main mission in which Scar is being captured by some bandits when trying to meet Fang (at least when working for the STALKER faction, it worked for me when being a loner at that point in the story). So the gameplay can be somewhat hindered by those bugs. Call of Pripyat is a title I did not go through entirely, but the part I have played thru so far did I enjoy in vanilla (because my issues with the modded CS install).
I wouldn't really compare STALKER or Metro to BF3, down to basics yes they are both shooters. But one of those 3 I wouldn't buy for the SP content, and it's pretty easy to guess which one.
I only mentioned BF3 because I expected that others would perhaps react like "don't forget about BF3". So I mentioned it while making clear I did not play it and thus cannot recommend nor advise against it.
And it is quite obvious that BF3 is mainly a multi player game.
No, Brink MAY be worth $5, which is how much I paid and haven't played more than 20 minutes. Bulletstorm is a much more fun game for $5, which it is fairly often.
The best $5 is Metro 2033, fun campaign with great atmosphere and gameplay, Russian accents, flying critters and mutants, and good story.
I doubt that those accents are actually "Russian". I mean, the adults sound a bit like wanna-be russian (they fit the Western stereotypical idea of what Russian sounds like) and the voices of some children that appear in the game sound like American to me (extremely rhotic, with a very strongly rolling R). After one or two playthroughs I put the speech on Russian and gone was the resemblence with my stereotypical idea of how a Russian person speaks. So I you only care about what the main characters say (and not about what is said in conversations of figurants) I recommend using the available subs paired with Russian speech. It is sounding more convincing that way, and especially the voices in Artyom's visions are dubbed better in Russian (deep manly voices with some echo, instead of that ridiculous whispering).
It is nice to replay it in Rangermode (less intrusive HUD) and/or to try and get the alternative ending. BTW, most of Artyom's visions are interactive. Making use of that by trying to approach the Homo Novice makes sure you can get the alternative ending (beside listening to Commie and Nazi conversations, or taking the postcard Hunter hands out in the beginning, etc.)
+1 to that, all day long. Excellent mods for an excellent series.... The community is a bit quiet (at least on this side of the pond), but last I checked, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was still in the works. Looking forward to it
On the other hand....
https://twitter.com/#!/gscstalker
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kl81...DvjVQa1PpcFM3gGkmv-PHrIh7j9r0VuKIurvd0z5UyF0=
I think that even though GSC is bankrupt, they (Vostok Games) yet had to rename the fork because they don't own the rights to use the "S.T.A.L.K.E.R." name. That they have the room now to broaden the concept may be a good thing. Just like with projects such as LibreOffice (derived from OpenOffice), Mageia (derived from Mandriva) etc. they had to rename the fork into something else than the name of the original but that does not necessarily make the fork of inferior quality.
