Last time I played a game with a huge amount of potential I had great
feelings about the future of the First Person Shooter genre. The game
combined the shooting elements I loved with the choice and character
development of an RPG. To my great disappointment the game did not kick
start a revolution, it seemed as though most had just ignored it
despite it’s stellar ratings. Deus Ex is the game I’m referring to and
after almost 7 years the mix of genres has been drastically under
utilized, only a handful of titles have been released with a similar
playing style.
Enter S.T.A.L.K.E.R. from stage right, an eerie shooter set in an
alternate universe around the Chernobyl area called “the zone”. The
game seems to have come from an older time because even it’s very
design, whereby the player is not being told exactly what to do, seems
to comes from an older era. The game has fewer RPG elements when
compared with Deus Ex but it does not suffer from it. You don’t need to
worry about putting points in weapon classes only to have your options
limited should you get a sniper rifle. Your experience is gained by
your own use of weapons much like how standard shooters work. As you
travel further into the zone enemies get harder and weapons found are
much more dangerous. Most of the enjoyment comes from being able to
choose how you want to approach quests and seeing how that choice
changes the AI.
Of course the game is not a direct Deus Ex clone set in Chernobyl. The
game world is far more open and you can travel between the connected
levels any time you wish. The AI can also travel between these regions,
this may be in order to strengthen numbers or to perform other quests
as though you were not the center of the entire game world. It’s not
uncommon to come back to a zone and see dead bodies strewn about, ones
you did not shoot. Animals such as dogs within the zone move in packs
and circle around dead Stalkers and require some different tactics to
overcome.
The game’s direction does not suffer when you add this extra freedom
and allow players to do side quests. There is a fairly clear path of
main quests that the character follows and a PDA will regularly keep
you up to date on them. This direction also includes more traditional
corridor segments in underground areas. Atmosphere increases greatly
during these underground sequences where there can be quite a high
level of detail in the environments. If you are lucky enough to have a
PC that can run it with dynamic lighting then you are in for a special
treat. The whole game is lathered with atmosphere the chilling sounds
in the distance, the dynamic weather and time of day system and the
click of your Geiger counter as you enter an area high in radiation.
Based on my experience I can only hope that games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
become commonplace. The key word I mentioned earlier is potential and
despite being a great game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has so much more potential to
become a masterpiece.
