Stalker: Lost Alpha Developer's Cut mod available now

Three years ago, a leak caused the developers of ambitious Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl mod Lost Alpha to release it early, and while by all accounts they created something worthwhile, it's clear there was unfinished business there. Fast-forward to March of this year, and modding team Dez0wave announced a release date for Lost Alpha's 'Developer's Cut': a new version of the mod that makes a huge number of changes, from bug fixes to additional side quests, graphical options and equipment, and with "more variety in the mutant relations, to see more epic fights between them". The team has also, and this is brilliant, "re-enabled humming, whistling for random npcs to achieve even nicer atmosphere". (I've just picked a few patch note highlights; there are many, many more changes made.)

Lost Alpha Developer's Cut is out now on Moddb, and you can download it here oh you already are. There's a new trailer to celebrate the release, which you'll find below.

Tom loves exploring in games, whether it’s going the wrong way in a platformer or burgling an apartment in Deus Ex. His favourite game worlds—Stalker, Dark Souls, Thief—have an atmosphere you could wallop with a blackjack. He enjoys horror, adventure, puzzle games and RPGs, and played the Japanese version of Final Fantasy VIII with a translated script he printed off from the internet. Tom has been writing about free games for PC Gamer since 2012. If he were packing for a desert island, he’d take his giant Columbo boxset and a laptop stuffed with PuzzleScript games.