I was, and am, incredibly taken with the Stalker games. To a lot of players and reviewers these are fiddly, overly finicky PC games that specialize in bad acting, bad writing, and a seriously retrograde sense of game design (see the cutscenes, quest and map system, and the complete lack of vital information, at points).
Of course, I look at all that and see the most convincing, "atmospheric" (if you'll permit me that term) game I've played recently. As any good Stalker game must, Call of Pripyat tasks you with exploring, mastering, and respecting the wasted, irradiated zone of land surrounding Chernobyl, called, appropriately, "The Zone." In previous games anomalies were semi-random, floating, often invisible distortions that damaged your avatar in various ways. They were often accompanied by radiation. In Pripyat, "Anomalies" are now huge, environmentally integrated objects in the world. A giant tear through the earth, a clawed hole in a hill (as if attacked by a giant hand), or any number of otherworldly landmarks will confront your hero. Within and about these blights float anomalies. They range from fiery geysers to black hole-like distortions, and while not all of them are deadly (instantaneously), they often conspire to weaken or kill your character.
This simple decision (to make almost all anomalies large, beautiful environmental structures) gives Pripyat a sense of cohesion and direction that previous games lacked. Instead of annoying, constant obstacles, anomalies are incredibly deadly, knowable adversaries, zones within the Zone that cow new players, and affect even skilled veterans. The rest of GSC Gameworld's tricks and tools are all on display here, less buggy than ever before. Stalkers (the tough, nasty mercenaries that roam the Zone, looking for artifacts spat out by anomalies) are still incredibly dangerous opponents who will kill you faster than most anything else. The mutants and monsters of the zone are still (with a few exceptions) terrifying and unsettling. They're dangerous during the day, but when night falls they're hideous, frightening menaces.
Hearing the guttural snuffling of a boar or snork, or the heavy, uneven breathing of a Chimera is the last thing you want when traversing the Zone at night. Pripyat perfectly merges these experiences (encountering frightening enemies, at midnight, without backup) with its other great tricks: you'll quickly encounter impeccably designed underground test chambers, ruined buildings, and hulking, ominous industrial complexes. Mysterious side quests and distractions abound in the Zone. Sometimes another Stalker steals your favorite gun, or your whole stash, or tricks you out of an artifact. In Pripyat, humans are just as dangerous as mutants, and as I learned this unpleasant fact, I moved deeper into the heart of the Zone, looking for more missions and stashes, even as I encountered new and bizarre enemies.
Pripyat is the kind of open-world game that most developers wish they were making. It has a relatively usable interface and an unforgiving, fun stash/loot/reward mechanic. Gun and armor upgrades turn Pripyat into the closest this series has ever come to being an RPG. It's the melding of all of these bits and pieces that makes Pripyat so incredible. Every day (for only a fool ventures out at night) I started out, looking for missions, anomalies, and artifacts. As the day wore on I'd find one or all of these things, but I'd be hungry for more. I'd stay out in the Zone for as long as possible, hunting, killing, and exploring until night fell. Then I'd high-tail it back to base, watching and listening for packs of dogs and snorks, or lone, deadly mutated humans and bloodsuckers.
Of course, that's if I'm lucky. If I'm unlucky, a long mission will last into the night. There aren't any Stalker bands nearby for me to tag along with, so I have to walk back, in the dark, alone. It's just as likely that my mission might lead me deep underground into a bloodsucker lair, or into a rift in the ground chock-full of snorks. Even as I explore the more industrial areas, Pripyat keeps the tension high. Reactors, science labs, and apartment complexes all share the same deadly, foreboding air. Thugs, Stalkers, and mutants creep through the interiors of Pripyat, ensuring that nowhere is safe in the Zone. If there's one overriding emotion Iâve felt while playing Pripyat, it's tension and (at a close second) dread.
It's all the more impressive that I want to explore the Zone so badly. Every irradiated car and shack might house a snork or bloodsucker. It might also house the entrance to a beautiful, convoluted underground tunnel system or an anomaly hiding powerful artifacts. Then again, forget the tunnels: the hills, alleys, and roads of Pripyat are alien, wondrous sights to behold. Nothing is randomly generated (except for the enemy spawns). Part of this urge to explore and discover comes from the game's extensive loot and tech options, but part of it comes from the unique, meticulously designed and revealed environments. Each area is perfectly rendered, from the swamps and plains outside Zaton to the frighteningly closed-in urban spaces of Pripyat.
Pripyat may be a brilliant game, but it still retains a few of its predecessor's missteps. While the interface for buying, selling, talking, and inventory management is much-improved, it's still just a tad clunky. The game is still pretty badly optimized, which is annoying, considering that even with DirectX 10 enabled, the game looks a bit dated. Quests can still be hard to muddle through, and one set of quests can be broken by players if they don't play carefully. None of it is really crucial to the game, but every little error does eventually add up. When I say that this is the least fiddly and buggy Stalker yet, let me be clear: this is still one of the more ornery, difficult PC games released this year.
Pripyat is a difficult game to finish, just as Iâm sure it was a difficult game to build the ending for. I love the fact that Pripyat keeps track of all of the little achievements and failures in my journey, so that it can tally them up and tell me, Fallout 2 style, what happened next. But to reach the end of this strange, unique journey and find that the finale is a conventional (if large) battle. It should finish as it started, with a frightening discoveries and revelations, not with Pripyatâs shallow âHelicopter Mysteryâ as its center.
This is the same problem that all Stalker games face: the world and people (and little squabbles) of The Zone are terribly convincing, bad acting and all. The peculiar central plots (what happened to the helicopters?) rarely make much of an impression. Who wants to spend their time trying to figure out why a bunch of helicopters broke down? You're in The Zone! More so than any game by Bethesda or Piranha Bytes, Pripyat fills you with an inescapable desire to delve into a unique and beautiful game world. I can't wait for the next game from GSC Gameworld. They'll be ditching their old X-ray engine soon, and they've now proved they can make stable, exciting games. The future of the Zone looks bright indeed.
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