STALKER: Call of Pripyat

[Kellervo]

So, I'm sure I'm not the only one who was a huge fan of GSC's Shadow of Chernobyl.

I'm likely not the only one who was disappointed in Clear Sky.

I highly doubt I'll be the only one overjoyed that Call of Pripyat is more of SoC with a dash of CS' innovations, with none of the bugs.

With the help of a friend in the Eastern Bloc, I have a copy of the game - already out in Russia for some time, but not due out in North America until February. Even with a shoddy translation patch, it's still an incredibly enjoyable game.

How much have I enjoyed it so far? The money left over from cancelling my MW2 preorder has gone to Call of Pripyat. I'm only an hour in.

For those who haven't followed, or don't want to swim through Russian forums for the full list of features (which I'll build up as I go through the game)

No spoilers, just features and cons:

- Weapon customization system from Clear Sky returns, and is further expanded. More weapons, more enhancements, more attachments.

- Armor customization is further expanded. There are new suits, but in addition headwear is now an entirely different inventory slot, letting you mix and match to find the best balance suited to your needs. Even the starter gasmask can be handy well into the game.

- Unique weapons and armor return, as well as mechanics, so you can keep your guns in good shape throughout the game.

- 70+ quests, a vast reduction from the previous two entries, but superbly written. Think Fallout 3 style quest chains, far more immersive and rewarding then the prior games.

- A full, new cast for the game. Character interaction is leaps beyond Shadow of Chernobyl - you spend far more time then one conversation with each person.

- A real character to play as, with a defined backstory and mission. There is little ambiguity compared to prior games. You have a mission, and you know it from the start.

- Branching story dependent on said interactions and your progress through the quests (but, only one ending).

- 3 levels. Only 3. But each is absolutely massive compared to anything ever seen in the series, dwarfing the Great Swamp and the original Pripyat. Far more sandbox in approach then the prior games' linear structure. Vehicles might be included - not sure yet but it's hinted.

- Anomaly fields. But rewarding.

- Vastly enhanced AI. I'm not kidding when I say that, while I'm an hour in, I spent the first four hours playing getting my ass handed to me. No more conga-lines of death, nor grenade-spam. Even ruthless bandits who can't trust each other will make basic maneuvers, whereas hardened STALKER teams and Mercenaries will flank, ambush, lay covering fire, and advance in appropriate situations. Every gunfight is a life-threatening situation, for you.

- Monsters and STALKERs alike exhibit new behavior. STALKERs will team up and search through anomaly fields, loot corpses (and even put on gear they loot), Bandits & Mercenaries will break out into fisticuffs and gunfights over loot.

- Monsters are more unique - bloodsuckers will focus on loners and pairs of STALKERs, sometimes working in tandem, while large packs of dogs will aim for the weakling in STALKER patrols.

- Content removed from the original games - New anomalies, Dwarves, Fractures, Zombies - and multiple underground labs, sewers, and cavern systems offer even more exploration for the hardened STALKER.

But the cons so far?

- The difficulty is extreme, even by STALKER's standards, and like Shadow you're tossed into the fire right away. Better starting gear, of course, but still very unforgiving.

- The zone is vastly depleted. Even Shadow of Chernobyl was more lively - and most of the STALKERs you see will die, at least in the early going.

- Anomaly fields, while appropriately rewarding, are terrifying. The lack of an AI companion - unlike the other Loners who have watchmen and keep an eye out for each other - you more or less work alone. Nothing sucks more then being caught with your scanner out when a group of bandits show up.

- The huge levels are huge, and your feet are the only way to cover them (I think I might have missed something however). While it's much more fluid, and the anomaly fields and bandits make transit more enjoyable and less of a sprintfest, I can just tell there's going to be a 'run through all three levels' quest.

- The AI looting, unexpectedly, plays a big part in difficulty. In prior games you could easily get by just gunning down bandits and mercenaries for their weaponry, but it's a different matter entirely when - in order to get the good guns - you need to tackle Loners or even Duty in order to get a decent gun. Especially with the reputation system, where stabbing a single Loner in the back a mile from the nearest watchman can get you marked as evil.

In summary, I think GSC is doing with Pripyat what they meant to do with Clear Sky. It's gripping. I like the characters. The faction war is gone, the game is stable and bug-free.

It's not -quite- a Fallout 3 in terms of sandbox play, nor a GTA, but the huge levels give the player a chance to do whatever they want without having to advance the story on their own too far. There's - so far - no sign of a point of no return. The quests are engaging, and you actually get decent, usable rewards. The new monsters and weapons are fully implemented, and the underground sections - one of the highlights of SoC - are once again so far the most intense moments I've had in the game so far.

In short... don't like CoD MW2, but don't want to put money on Bad Company? Wait a little bit longer and get CoP.

[Desereck Creeggan]

Will look into torrenting, and if I enjoy it for more than a day I'll buy it when it releases :o

[Vinnie Lei]

Hmmm, just got the first one..if it looks good I might get this one too :)

[Zero Itamae]

The bugs have entirely turned me off from this series...They said Clear Sky would fix the first one, but they lied :(

[Kellervo]

Well, going on 3 hours, the only 'bug' I've found is that some traders will absolutely refuse to take AKSUs and Tier 1 Shotguns off your hands. And the occasional slowdown when radiation kicks in, but I think the blur and choppiness is intentional. Not a single crash.

[Desereck Creeggan]

Clear sky was a joke of a game.

[Kellervo]

20 hours later, the main quest is done. Only one crash, and a tiny handful of bugs (and one player kicking himself in the shins for decisions he made in-game).

I love it. In the end I was a walking armory, which made my ending all the more bitter.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

If you liked, or got even a bit into the first two, Call is without a doubt going to hook you. Those who love realistic combat or deep storyline, similarly, will probably like STALKER, and if you enjoyed Fallout 3 for its story and characters, STALKER has its own cast to enjoy.

The actual quest line itself isn't terribly long. Once I figured out where to go for information (there's one part where you're left searching for a person without any information on their whereabouts), I finished the main quest in roughly 15 hours.

Is it as action packed as Clear Sky's? No. It's actually a really quiet game if you want it to be.

Much like Fallout 3 it has 'one' main ending, for your main character that is, but the rest of it changes depending on your own actions. However, every single side character you encounter and cooperate with (or kill, or let die) also gets their own mention in the ending. This makes the number of conceivable endings incalculable. In my play-through I stuck with a close knit group, but in an unfortunate rescue mission, all but one was killed. This reflected on my ending, and made me go ;___;.

Yes, in a STALKER game, there are characters you actually care about, and they care about you too. The camaraderie and joking between the band on those missions is right up there with L4D's cast - even with the language barrier, I liked those bastards.

The point of no return does not exist, to boot. Even at the end, I was given the choice to keep playing the game - which indeed affected the ending, quite significantly!

The faction war had little to no impact on the game itself. I only observed a few isolated incidents of Duty-Freedom violence, and my only 'choice' between the two was a rather interesting sidequest I won't spoil because it also - like nearly all the other side quests - affects the main quest in a big way.

In terms of game-play, Stalker on Stalker violence only happens when you want it to. The only definite enemies are the zombified and the Monolith faction. Military, Bandits, Freedom, Duty, Loners, and Mercenary cells are neutral or even friendly depending - and if your reputation is high enough, not only are you awarded physically with ammunition spawns and even artifact rewards, squads will even appear in areas to assist you if you're in trouble. Not as blatant as Clear Sky, but a brilliant touch nonetheless - it saved my ass twice.

As a result, I didn't actually have a whole lot of gunfight until near the end of the game, where things start to get nutty. Until then, unless you take part in -many- gunfights, you can more or less pick and choose when you want to tangle with someone.

When they do happen, the gunfights are fast and furious, and often difficult - the enemies are very intelligent and often times, trying to flank them with an obvious side route will result in you running into the enemy squad's shotgunner already covering that side entrance. Grenades are rarely used, and nowhere near as over-powered as they were in Clear Sky. It's unfortunately rather difficult to use them yourself, and in the end I sold -all- of my grenades for the sake of carrying a new helmet.

The amusing / awesome part of the game is that some characters stand out in their behavior in combat: One Dutyer who joined my clique would keep track of his kills, while a military man would often completely ignore any zombies in military gear, stating he recognized them and couldn't shoot his comrades. My favorite would start singing in Russian as he charged headlong into the enemy with his automatic shotgun. Even enemies stand out. The leader of a Monolith squad will always stand atop the highest point in the area, and rant like a Commissar to his underlings.

The upgrade tree is much slower to advance despite being easier in general. Grabbing toolkits and planting anomaly detectors in the end let me fully upgrade my gear with only three main quest missions remaining - but those Tier 3/4 upgrades are worth every ruble.

Since I've said too much good stuff, here are the only gripes:

- Rare artifacts are extremely rare. I only picked up one in the entire course of the game, or about 20 hours of playing time. It's so hard finding them that it does not warrant the time spent, or the rubles for selling them - and if you don't have another rare artifact to counter the huge radiation penalty, you can't use them yourself without turning into a mobile Chernobyl.

- Some quests are still bugged, and sometimes you'll end up failing them repeatedly by dumb luck. This usually takes the form of an enemy respawning over and over again, resulting in a horde of snipers atop a skyscraper, or an endless horde of psi-dogs (absolutely terrifying). Reloading usually fixes it, but I should only reload when I die thank you. D<

- The amount of armor and helmets to choose from is actually rather limited. In the entire course of the game, I wore only 5 different uniforms, and two helmets. One uniform was required for a quest, but the others - once I got them - lasted for hours.

- Artifact hunting is either extremely challenging, or pathetically easy depending on your detector of choice. About halfway through the game I got a perfected detector, and could literally walk along a street in Pripyat and come back with 150k worth of artifacts without ever touching an anomaly.

- The game answers many questions from both SoC and Clear Sky - but it's obvious they want a fourth game, as many of these questions are replaced with other, more deep questions.

- The end quest is unusually well-paced for a STALKER finale. Until you get to the final portion of it, where it takes a page right from the original STALKER and takes the difficulty curve and turns it into a god damn wall.

- The sidequests are well scripted (most of the impact in the game came from those, include several 'omgwtfbbq' moments), and the cutscenes in the main quest are well executed, but the game lacks any major set-piece gunfights barring the finale. Granted, my first play took the sneaky / diplomatic approach to most quests, so I likely sidestepped or bypassed any such scenes entirely without knowing.

- Some of the sounds - noticeably the Groza / Thunderstorm, are noticeably low-quality, right from the original SoC, while other guns have been significantly updated.