S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Review
Played on:
Windows
Pentium M 2GHz CPU
2GB DDR2 RAM
Geforce GO 7800 GTX
Minimum:
AMD 2200+ CPU or
Intel 2GHz P4
512MB RAM
Geforce 5700 or
Radeon 9600 video
It's been over five years in the making and it's gotten pretty close to the top of a lot of lists of software that might never be released, but here it is: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl. This first person shooter, from Eastern European developer GSC Game World, promises a new kind of open-ended FPS gameplay where there are many different ways you can progress and lots of non-critical quests and tasks you can do before getting to the end of the game.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. takes place in the future in the Zone, an area surrounding the melted down nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl power plant in Russia. You play a character who showed up with no memory and only a single clue: the words "Kill Strelok" on his PDA. You'll get a little bit of help getting started again but soon will be on your own and solving the mystery - and trying to reach that goal of killing some guy named Strelok, too.
You'll quickly find out that the Chernobyl meltdown, which did happen in real life in 1986 and delivered lethal (or mutation-causing) radiation for many miles, has been augmented in the story forS.T.A.L.K.E.R. The game takes place in the future and a new sci-fi element has been added - mutations are way more deadly for the inhabitants, and mysterious laboratories and underground structures hold quite a few horrors inside. Still, people are drawn to the zone either for profit in the form of radioactive artifacts, or for research. Some are just murderous and can still manage a living here in the Zone, or on the outskirts, avoid the authorities, and still do all kinds of illegal stuff.
You, however, have one mission to start and only add on new, optional ones as you see fit. You'll of course find plenty of opposition as you venture out from the first major area in the game, the Cordon, and move in a general northerly direction towards the center of the Zone. On the way you'll find bandits, mutants, wildlife which may or may not attack you depending on their mood or how hungry they seem to be, and several organized factions - some of which allow you to side with or against them. You won't be forced to side with anyone in particular to beat the game, but there really isn't a whole lot that's absolutely required in order to beat S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
This doesn't mean there's not much to do. As you kill enemies you'll get notices of their secret item stashes which you can go raid, and there are plenty of weapons for you to choose from. You'll have to manage your ammo, and most guns do have multiple types of ammo that are better suited for armored or unarmored opponents. Items like grenades will add a bit of tactical flavor, but for the most part you'll be shooting people.
The combat in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. comes often and it is brutal - if you usually play FPS games on Normal difficulty, put it on Novice here. It's a tough game and combat moves quickly. You can easily get surrounded and taken out if you're not careful, and your aim is going to have to be impeccable - you will require an order of magnitude more ammo if you're not getting headshots more than half the time. This is because most of your enemies are wearing very protective body armor, and with the built-in inaccuracy for most of the game's guns (even the higher-end rifles), you're going to need to exploit the system to its fullest in order to spend more time in game and less time staring at the "Loading" screen.
You can augment your own abilities with artifacts. You've got five slots for these, and you can equip any combination of artifacts you want. Most of them have some kind of downside along with the perk; some of them will add to the radiation you're taking in, forcing you to drink vodka (yes, vodka) or take anti-radiation meds every once in a while to stay alive. Others will reduce your resilience to bullets, explosions, or various other hazards but give you a good boost on other stats. It's up to you how you want to configure your artifacts, but as you go through the game you'll find a ton of them on vendors, people you have to kill, or just lying around in the world.
The atmosphere in this game is actually very good, despite the use of a game engine that's pretty dated. The big thing here is that the outdoor weather and lighting have been tweaked very well, so rain falls realistically (when you stand under an awning, you'll see the raining only falling where the sky's open) and storm clouds roll in slowly but are tied to weather perfectly. There are plenty of special effects here,especially with the anomalies and explosions, and the environments are often very detailed - especially in the hundreds of run-down, half-destroyed buildings you'll find in the Zone. While the game does have vehicles in a few sections and near the end of the game, you unfortunately won't be able to take control of any of them.
I found a lot of frustrating things while playingS.T.A.L.K.E.R., and it's not just the ridiculously inaccurate weapons. You've got a carrying capacity of 60kgwhich can be very quickly filled up with your protective suit or armor, two or three rifles, a good chunk of ammo, a bit of food, and some medkits. While the number of weapons in the game is impressively high and most of them have unique attributes or even modifications (like scopes, higher rate of fire, or less recoil) added to them, you'll find yourself having to leave a lot of them behind if you are trying to keep a good range of guns for close-, mid- and long-range combat. Rifles and submachine guns, which you'll see the most, have several different types of ammo as well, so even if you pick up that hot, shiny new gun, you might not have much ammo for it. Sure, you can hike back to one of the game's few traders to buy some ammo, but there is no way to quickly jump back to them. You've gotta walk.
The more loaded down you are, the faster your stamina runs out. When carrying nothing you can sprint for long periods, but once you get over 50kgyou'll start losing stamina just by walking and you can only sprint for maybe a couple of seconds before you get tired and have to stop. It's pretty frustrating for those who like to collect weapons in games or who just want to carry around 4 or more guns, and since you can't quickly hop from one zone to another, it's really annoying. The game also tracks a number of stats for your character which you're not allowed to see. Not only are the game's later guns more accurate, but your own accuracy goes up. The fact that you're not allowed to see these stats at all, which is just odd and really was disappointing to the RPG player in me.
Traversing the Zone can be tough, as "anomalies" make it difficult to get through areas and can hurt you pretty badly - even kill you, if you're not careful. These are all built into the story, but you don't get to find out what really happened until very late into the game. But as you go you start unlocking the mysteries of Strelok and his group, why he was there, and what you should do. You'll also see how the fictional events tie into the real-life events of Chernobyl, why there are pockets of radiation around in the places that they are, and you'll even get a choice at the end of the game - via a semi-secret ending - to end it one of several different ways.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. includes online play with a few unique game modes, the best of which is Artifact Hunt. This has two teams both trying to find and bring an Artifact back to their base, while anomalies and a sped-up day/night cycle go on around them. It adds an interesting feel to the multiplayer mode and it does play quite a bit like the single player action, with the exception of the weapons' accuracy. When online, the guns are much more accurate, and I think the single player, which is the game's biggest draw, would be a lot more fun if the weapons were just as accurate as they are online. Either way, the multiplayer mode here with its money/buying system and interesting gameplay modes will last you a while, but you probably won't be playing this one for more than a week or two.
Some nasty bugs have crept intoS.T.A.L.K.E.R. and didn't get fixed, even with the game's first patch. First, don't even try to play this game in Windows Vista. It's even buggier than in XP, you can't use the quickload, and it crashes constantly. Beyond that, some game events will get screwed up if you do the zones out of the intended order, and there are a lot of small bugs which we can assume will eventually be fixed but we have no idea when it will be.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a fine game, but it also shows us a lot of potential that never got realized. The mostly-open, Fallout-style post-apocalyptic world is really engaging and its basis in a real-life event makes it that much more interesting, but the frustrating gunplay, high difficulty, and lack of transportation can get on your nerves pretty often. It's worth going all the way through to unravel the story and find the secret endings, but read up on the game's remaining bugs and try to avoid them if you can. Multiplayer is there and is fun, but the single player is really the innovative part of this game. If you love shooters and nuclear wastelands, this one is definitely an easy choice to make, but be ready for a tough time: the Zone is unforgiving.
