Review: STALKER: Call of Pripyat

It’s getting dark. I don’t want to be out here when it’s dark, my torch is useless and I can barely see where i’m going. I can hear dogs howling somewhere in the distance, hungry for blood. My blood. These starving animals won’t stop hunting me. My geiger counter fluctuates as I pass by a mesh of metal that once belonged to a crane. It will be dark soon, and there is no shelter. No hope.

STALKER was all about creating your own story within the harsh radioactive environment of the Chernobyl Dead Zone. It was a dirty, rough gem that appealed to many despite its bugs and glaring issues. It almost never came to pass, but alot of people are glad it did. Now, several years on from the original, Call of Pripyat has been released and attempts to iron out the problems the original had and create a game to the expectations of what STALKER was meant to be.

Things though don’t exactly start off well however. The intro is a neat enough explanation as to the true story of Chernobyl, and the parts the game has invented for it in the future. The problem is that when the Russian English voiceover gets the dates wrong compared to the subtitles, alarm bells start to ring in your head. The intro stops and suddenly you’re thrown into the middle of the zone without much prior explanation of how you got there. Not the best of starts for STALKER, but then again veterans of this game will be used to it.

It’s not long before you’re picking up your first missions and getting to know the place a bit better. Call of Pripyat is set on the other side of Chernobyl compared to to the original. You won’t visit the NPP in this game and will only really get to see it in the distance. Instead this game is all about you, a secret agent soldier, trying to make your way through the zone to recover lost pilots from a military project that went up in smoke. You discover others along the way, learn all about the artifacts and treasures of the Zone, and perform missions in the service of other stalkers.

Artifacts have greatly changed in Call of Pripyat. You’re no longer just going to stumble across them lying on the ground. Instead artifacts can be found in anomalies that have been scarred into the wasteland. These anomalies take the form of different guises: fiery craters, chemical swamps, huge cracks in the earth. It will be up to your keen senses to gather the precious artifacts that exist in these anomalies. To help you’re given detectors, however you’ll start off with a pretty clumsy one and will need to build up on missions and money to get better ones.

Your fundemental source of income in STALKER are the finding and selling of these radioactive goods. Call of Pripyat extends this by making most artifacts now give you a huge return in credits if you sell them. It’s important to note though that some artifacts can improve status effects on your character for a little bit  of radiation damage. It therefore becomes a choice of equipping the right artifacts and selling the rest. You can also sell weapons and gear but this won’t gain nearly the same amount of money.

Call of Pripyat is therefore one part exploration, one part missions and one part hunting. The zone you visit in CoP feels larger than the original game, and there’s far more content and things to do in the three areas you visit. Interestingly the starter area can be just as hard as the later sections of the game, and when you begin STALKER it’s important to keep in mind your limitations. Getting a good rifle is step one. Loading up on food, medical supplies and vodka is step 2.

How you react to other stalkers and dwellers of the Zone is up to you as well. Unlike the original game, bandits will not shoot on sight, and in fact everyone is willing to bargain or answer questions for you, apart from the religious nuts Monolith, who WILL shoot you. Of course you can take the attitude of shooting another dweller in the face if you so please. Just be prepared for the consequences of people being mildly disturbed and shooting back. Call of Pripyat’s human inhabitants of the Zone are tamer than Shadow of Chernobyl’s.

Then you meet the dogs, mutants and other entities of the Zone that go bump in the night. Having good weapons is handy. Jamming in weaponry can be the difference between life and death. Call of Pripyat can be quite frantic at times against any enemy. Shooting and taking cover are primary aspects, otherwise you’ll end up dead quite quickly. Looting corpses if you’ve got into a fight with bandits should be about gathering resources such as medical kits. You’ll not be able to strip the guy naked and wear his clothes, but you can rob weaponry if you wish. Just remember you’ll eventually become encumbered if you overload your inventory. Sacrificing objects in the name of being able to run in STALKER is rather important; you don’t want to be stuck out there.

I do have some complaints though; Call of Pripyat doesn’t feel nearly as scary as the original, nor as memorable. The secret chambers and areas of Shadow of Chernobyl were frightening. I hated going into the secret labatories of Chernobyl. Squeky noises, strange anomalies and horrifying enemies. All of this eventually leading to the large sarcophagus of Chernobyl NPP itself: beautifully, terrifyingly, accurately rendered.

Call of Pripyat seems to lose that. The secret labs you visit don’t feel nearly as scary, and the end result of your hard work in the zone isn’t nearly as good. It’s something worth keeping in mind, and I wonder how many players of STALKER would agree with me that CoP just doesn’t quite match the frightening realism of the original.

Another gripe is the audio translation, oh the horrible audio translation. I’ve played The Tomorrow War you know, therefore i’ve heard poorly thought out dubbing. But this is worse. Nearly everyone you meet in this game seems to have taken there Russian voices from American comedy inspiration. They don’t sound Russian, they sound goddamn retarded (excuse my french). It’s an offense to anyone who is Russian. Characters in this game mix between saying things that belong from South Park, or sounding like the Heavy from Team Fortress 2. Some of the lines they come up with are poorly thought out. “Real mean go in from behind,” is one genuine example (and not for a situation you’d think it belongs to). Dear. God!!

Graphically Call of Pripyat has shrugged off the bugs of its predecessors but is starting to wane in the quality department. CoP will win no prizes for best graphics, although I always felt that the STALKER games attempted to maintain a sense of realism rather than attempt to go for flashy effects. Buildings and metal can look fairly realistic in the right lighting. Pripyat is realistic and feels eery.

Upon glancing over my review I get the feeling i’m being somewhat judgemental and harsh on Call of Pripyat which is a bit unfair. CoP does alot of good things to the STALKER license; it successfuly tidies up the game without the need for mods. It keeps in mind the community wants and attempts to create them. You’ll for instance have to deal with emissions, and original idea from the early plans of STALKER that were reformed by the community. These strong radiological waves that can kill you damn near instantly if you don’t get into shelter and result in the world lighting up in radioactive glow. You’re vision becomes fuzzy like the cameras that took pictures of Chernobyl when the disaster occured, and before you know it you can end up dead from radiotion poisoning.

These are good aspects and they’re what makes CoP exciting. The game is less linear exploration to an inevitable end and more open ended. You can choose how you play and interact with the world, and similarly the world will choose how to interact with you. If you’re new to the STALKER franchise this is where to start your story before trying the older game. If you’re a returning veteran you’ll enjoy this just as much as STALKER, and even more so than the lack lustre Clear Sky.

Call of Pripyat is definitely worth the visit. The harsh environment of the Zone is a unique first person shooter experience that shouldn’t be missed. Grab your vodka, get your gun and join me in the zone stalker, and watch out for the dogs.

7/10

© 2009-2010 LMB Productions. Template by GhostPool Designs. In the time you have spent reading this, Google has acquired all your details.

• Home