S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

Tiptoeing through a lair of Bloodsuckers can really get your adrenaline pumping. Bumping into one of them and hearing someone yell, “They’re waking up! Run!” sent a chill down my spine like the claws that immediately tore up my character, sorry dude. Since its release in 2007, Stalker has reached cult status among PC gamers. The series is dark, it’s graphically demanding and for an ex-Counter-Strike player it’s heaven, or at least a post-apocalyptic one. Shadow of Chernobyl is still the best of the series, but Call of Pripyat is a polished and fine-tuned expansion of this hardcore PC title.

 

 

Within its development cycle, Ukrainian developer GSC Game World managed to create one of the most experimental and graphically demanding PC titles ever made. And you don’t see games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. too often anymore. The only other game with this kind of PC exclusive polish is Crysis, a game that came out way before its time. What makes S.T.A.L.K.E.R. standout from other open-world first person shooters is how developed its atmosphere is. Being a Stalker isn’t about following someone home at night, being a Stalker is a calling, a purpose. It’s a calling that the game expects you to take on, and something that Major Degtyarev is supposed to learn.

 

Stalkers are a group of people who have made their way into the Zone, an area around Chernnobyl, to search for treasure, fame and their identities. There’s a community of people there, some who treasure and respect the Zone and there are others who would wish to destroy it. The diversity among the characters of the series always gives a fresh perspective of the Zone. If you look at a character like Strelok who is so visibly fragmented, his journey into the Zone becomes a journey into himself and his memories. It becomes something larger than just an expedition for uncovering artifacts and untold riches; it becomes a journey to develop self-awareness and the individual. The Major's journey is somewhat less complicated, but that's all in perspective.

 

This game takes place after the events of the first. Strelok has made it to the centre of the Zone and has opened it up for all Stalkers to loot, pillage or worship. Major Degtyarev has been sent into the Zone to investigate why five military helicopters crashed and why the crews never made it back. His story is much like the Merc. The Major has to go into the Zone, adapt to his surroundings and figure out why the military is hell bent on invading this anarchistic space. It’s a simple story, but the Zone is a complex and dangerous place. As a player, you will have to find a balance between exploration and story progression. You will need money, you will need food and you will need bullets. And when you’re walking through an abandoned substation looking for Bloodsuckers and you’re running low on ammo, you'll wish you traded in that artifact for some extra ammunition.

 

This is what S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat is all about, atmosphere and terror.

 

The game’s atmosphere is more than just sitting around in dark spaces and ambushing bandits, it comes from the Stalkers around you. When you’re outside wandering through the half-deserted wasteland and you see a group of Stalkers playing guitar near a bonfire, you just feel like there’s a community. One element that has been revived in this game is the background conversations Stalkers have with one another in Russian. The darkness, intense lightning sometimes being your only source of light, raging gunfire careening through claustrophobic halls, if this is post-apolcalyptia then bring on Armageddon! Just make sure you have a gasmask or you’ll end up a mutant, and not the cool X-Men kind of way. This is an intense and difficult experience, but it’s also a cult series that has made a distinct mark showing what GSC Game World is capable of.

 

Going into a dark, mutant filled complex at night can really play tricks on your mind. The game’s revamped X-Ray engine makes shadows into more than just blobs or vague outlines. It makes them into dynamically created silhouettes and spaces of darkness. Hiding in them is also a major gameplay tactic that you will have to use. This time around enemy A.I. is actually intelligent. They will flank and hide and throw grenades and piss you off.  There have been times where I’ve been fighting a group of bandits and have camped out in one spot only to slowly step around a corner, and get two buckshot rounds of whoop-ass right between your eyes. And if you’re anything like me and getting headshots is like candy, enemies can crack open that piñata too. It’s difficult but realistic. This is something that Stalker is notorious for and something the Call of Pripyat has kept.

 

 

Call of Pripyat is a hard game. It won’t pull its punches, and even on the easier difficulties if you get surrounded you will die. The difficulty serves not as a hindrance on the game, but as an element of its cult status. First-person shooters with regenerating health, games where you can run miles and miles without stopping, be gone! Stalkers are wholly human and painfully mortal.

 

Artifacts are still hard to find, weapons and armour are sparse and ammunition comes at a premium. One element that has been drastically improved is the in-game HUD. Unlike in Clear Sky, it actually serves a purpose and has useful information for the player. The compass tells you exactly where everyone is and where the stashes are. Whenever you have to attack a group of enemies their presence is tracked by map markers. The map system is dynamic and marks events and locations easily enough for the playet to find. Everything has been streamlined. It's a definite improvement.

 

Guns are powerful, anomalies are everywhere, Stalkers and bandits have roving battles, what was once good in Shadow of Chernobyl is back in Call of Pripyat. The complex faction system present in Clear Sky has been removed. Something about it really didn’t meld with the core gameplay and atmosphere. Knowing where each fight was taking place and having a deadline to either defending or assisting really put a panicked onus on the player. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is more about exploring and finding those battles and having the choice whether or not to intervene. Another Godsend is the addition of a personal box at every Stalker base. There were so many times in the last games where you just have too much stuff and no where to store extra guns, ammunition and armour. It feels like GSC Game World really listened to fans and made a concerted effort to improve the game. It's still a kill or be killed world, and the true-to-form Stalker mentality is still there.

 

One problem that players will have is the open-world. Sometimes having boundaries is nice. Without them, the development of the narrative can sometimes lose its place. Characters become secondary, objectives become obscured and purpose is sometimes lost. It will take a while for most players to get into the groove. The addition of quick travelling, which is actually affordable this time, really helps to make the huge world feasible. Why not explore though? Call of Pripyat has giant areas for you to explore, small caverns to traverse and magnificent environments to gape over. With the Direct X10 and support for 11, this is a really beautiful game. Now, having the processing power in order to have volumetric clouds and dynamic wet surfaces is a little demanding, but if you can it’s well worth the dip in frames per second.

 

Unlike Shadow of Chernobyl and Clear Sky, the amount of exposition and the quality of the writing has fallen down quite a bit. There’s nothing wrong with the voice acting it's superb, but small things like the descriptions of the stashes are missing from this game. I wouldn’t call the writing rushed but it’s not up to the standard of the first game. Another small thing was that during the opening sequence some of the dates were wrong. It was kind of funny actually, but maybe it was intentional or it just a mistake. These are minor problems and those who are new to the series probably won’t notice them. The one element of the writing that makes the game a lot better is that the main character now has a voice.

 

 

Major Degtyarev is able to reinforce his identity as the protagonist through his voice. The Marked One and the Merc were both interesting characters, but what development they saw depended on what you experienced during the game. If you joined the Stalkers, if you joined Duty, what ending you achieved in the last game, these are things that helped solidify your identity. In this game, you have a solid identity and purpose, which is actually a nice thing to have. This gives you a base of morality and ethics that can help let your character determine some of his choices rather than declaring an all out war on the Zone and its inhabitants. Nothing could stop Strelok from killing an entire camp of people because he has no idea who he is. At least, the Major can look to his military identity when it comes to developing his own balance between his Stalker identity and his own.

 

 

One awesome thing that has developed out of the game has been S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Fest, an event held in the Ukraine almost every year. Check out the link here: http://stalkerfest.com/ and you can see how large of a community that has been built around this videogame. You don’t see things like this in the West, and it's amazing event. All we get are occasional bus ads and websites, this game has created an entire festival of people! You can’t get any better than that.

 

Likes:

• Revamped graphics
  
• Terror filled atmosphere
  
• The idea of going to Stalker Fest

Dislikes:

• Some writing issues
  

Review Score

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