Six long years. It took six years for GSC of Russia to turn
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl (referred to as stalker for the rest
of this review) into a playable form. Of course there are some bugs in
the game, but should we really expect any game to be bug free, even if
it has been in development for six years; no. The game introduces you
to your scenario with a very high quality cinematic, which exposes who
your character is. Apparently you fell out of a “death truck” when it
was hit by lighting and you are found by another Stalker who takes you
to a fat ogre for payment. I call him the fat ogre, in reality he is
your lovable Russian with sarcastic remarks and a lust for money.
Anyways, you are thrown on a table in front of the fat ogre and he
starts looking for your PDA. Needles to say he finds it and you, the
alive-dead character on the table reaches out and grabs it, you have a
tattoo with the words S.T.A.L.K.E.R on your arm. Which allows you to be
deemed the “Marked One” by the fat ogre, because apparently you have
amnesia; his cure for this is to keep you busy. The main mission of
this game is to find Strelok, a stalker whom disappeared a while back
according to the ogre. Along with main missions, there are side
missions, but since there is no incentive to perform on these tasks,
you may never touch them. Although, a few are actually forced onto you,
such as helping to protect a camp from bandits, which if you succeed
all you really get is money. While the game isn’t linear, because you
can go off, do all the side missions, and never touch the main story,
the story missions themselves are on the rails but the train can be
derailed. So, needless to say that in this immersive world nothing is
linear, but sadly you never need to touch the side missions to have an
exhilarating time. Now these missions, especially the main story can
become frustrating with how well Stalker’s Radiant AI system works.
Realism seemed to be key in their development when it came to how many
bullets it takes to kill someone and where the most destructive “hit
boxes” are located. Aim for the head, you won’t be disappointed.
Enemies in this game, become far and wide as you face the military,
bandits, rabid dogs, pseudo-dogs, pseudo-giants, snarks, poltergeist,
rodent, flesh, and bloodsuckers. Encountering a bloodsucker is probably
the most terrifying thing in this game, they have the ability to turn
invisible and some can use psycho mind tricks that will mess with your
visions and brain. I found it easy to kill them if you look for their
eyes while their invisible and pump two or four shots of from the
shotgun right in-between them. Most of these animals, other than the
poltergeist, bloodsuckers, and snarks are relatively harmless. The
human enemies though, paired with Radiant AI, just as the animals are,
will give you a tough time if you aren’t aiming for the head. By the
end of the game, you will have encountered everything since you have to
travel deep into the heart of Chernobyl just to beat the main story. To
kill enemies you need weapons, weapons such as guns and grenades. You
can only have four weapons and binoculars equipped and ready to use at
all times. You have a knife, a pistol, your choice of shotgun or
smg(which ever one you prefer when you find it), and grenades. Your
friend will become the shotgun, smg, and pistol. While I did find the
grenades useful to clear out groups of bandits, it never came in handy
much. The rule stays the same for all weapons, including the knife, aim
for the head and the enemy will go down fast…just like real life. I
haven’t talked much about graphics, usually the first thing I delve
into with reviews. Here is the reason why, we know they are dated; they
wouldn’t be superb anyways because of the size of levels, and three
details and lighting make up for it. That’s right folks, this game has
high detail and paired with HDR and other lighting effects it will turn
this bleak Chernobyl into a sometimes mutated fairy-tale. Now, on the
internet people have been complaining that this game isn’t very pretty;
well it won’t be pretty because you are playing in a nuclear wasteland
set in and around Chernobyl. Although, this game will cause even the
best of computers to become slow at times and buckle under the
attention to immersion and lighting in this game. Here is a scenario,
say your traversing the harsh radiated landscape at night and it begins
to rain. You see the rain and you hear the thunder along with chirping
of mutated birds and insects. The thunder intensifies lighting a
coming, boom you hear and see the lighting and the whole world around
you lights up. Here is why this game can bring even the best computer
down to its knees, the attention to detail doesn’t include just
textures, it includes atmosphere of the game, which is superb beyond
all expectations.
Two things have yet to been discussed, artifacts and anomalies.
Artifacts are essentially radiated pieces of earth or metal that now
holds a form of value. The value of these ranges from very low to very
high depending on the rarity. How greedy are you? Ask yourself this
because, either you can go through a trader who will get some profit
from this, or, you can sell directly to a scientist in the area, which
brings in more RU’s for you. The game does use the official currency of
Russia. Now anomalies are exactly what the definition says, “n odd,
peculiar, or strange condition, situation, quality, etc.” In this case,
they are random spots in and around the zone that will cause harm to
anything that walks in their wake. There are four different types,
lighting, bubbling green that causes severe blood loss, burner, and vortex. A few of these anomalies actually move on the ground such as
lighting and burner. Others such as bubbly green and vortex are
stationary and have life spans. These two things are related, if there
are many anomalies around there is or some artifacts around. Around the
bubbly green, I found “fuzzy” which looks like a big brown fuzz ball.
You know the core of the game now, game play itself is more realistic
than un realistoc because of the ballistics system used. Did you know
gravity affects bullets? Apparently, many shooters don’t understand
this, but stalker does. Don’t go around thinking you will be able to
snipe someone with a pistol or smg; they all have realistic ranges. As
you make your way through the zone and into Chernobyl itself, the
nuclear power plant that blew up years ago, you will be scared and at
times happy. Immersion in this game was a goal; they achieved that goal
not through graphics but through attention to atmospheric detail. Along
with random stalker’s and other characters that go about their lives
thanks to the Radiant AI system, so do animals, but the humans get to
speak in Russian that no one understands. Voice acting isn’t the best,
then again who cares when you have a game this phenomenal on your hard
drive. I would write more, describe more, and praise the game until I
die, but I want to get back to the Zone and have some fun. The game is
designed like an RPG in some ways; you will find upgrades for your
weapons, like I found a silencer for both my AK and my pistol. You also
have an inventory, which you can only hold up to fifty pounds at the
start. The inventory is of course where you will conduct trading deals
along with checking your reservoir of ammo and health packs. Eating
isn’t priority in the game, but is needed at times when you’re low on
health and need a caffeine boost. Talking with characters isn’t the
most exciting thing unless your listening to their Russian gibberish,
then it is rather enjoyable. The RPG side of the game isn’t as expanded
as most people, but from a first person lover it is a wonderful
addition that won’t slow you down. Before I do that, multiplayer should
probably be discussed along with a few bugs. Multiplayer is a bust, it
won’t be the new thing but it is fun for a while. Like in
Counter-Strike you buy weapons, grenades, helmets, protective vest and
what not. Thanks to realistic bullets, though only snipers can snipe
and smg’s can sometimes pull off a pop head shot. It’s not fast paced
and the system doesn’t feel very well balanced. It seems like the
developers through it together at the last minute and tacked it on to
their wonderful single player experience. The bugs in the game are
things such as NPC’s clipping through walls and the game sometimes not
starting up. This can be fixed with a reinstall though and you don’t
lose your save games. I’m saying that from experience. Overall the game
is gorgeous, in a radiated mutated way and it is one of the most immersive games that can compete in not just a shooting experience, but
horror also. If you’re a PC gamer, you need to go pick this game up.
Did I mention that some character play guitar and that Vodka reduces
radiation?
