S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

The Good
The Graphics: Not spectacular, but the art design stands out and they work hand in hand with other elements to create a visually appealing and surreal setting in the zone.

Sound: The sound will immerse you into the bizarre surroundings of the zone, and will even sometimes go farther than any of the horrific mutants in creating a genuine atmosphere and feel of terror. The strange sounds emanating throughout the zone along with the stark uninviting and harsh wind is guaranteed to keep you on your toes.

Combat: The combat is great, realistic and very involving. It can be tough, but it only helps immerse you further due to the realism and genuine feeling that you have to take care of yourself and survive, using any method possible be it a bigger gun or patching yourself up before the battle.

The Game World: The game world is easily the best part, The Zone is a well defined and scary place, and is wide open for exploration... at your own risk. The game sucked me in more than any other "sandbox" type game, as the complex system of the zone is so well balanced and unique. You will have the desire to explore, but the dangers of the Zone will keep you on edge too.

"Hybrid" gameplay:

Is it a first person shooter with RPG elements? Is it an RPG with guns? It's hard to say. To me, it feels like a cross between a lite-RPG, a military simulator, a horror game, an adventure game, and of course a shooter. This hybrid of gameplay blends seamlessly with the equally unique system of the zone, you will make a name for yourself, affect the world, and truly feel like you are trying to survive from crazed militants and frightening mutants and the deadly "anomalies" that are strewn across the zone.

The Bad
Mediocre Voice Acting: No one really seems to put any effort into their roles, and just grunts out lines. It's also inconsistent, important characters will speak English but others will speak Russian, and sometimes a glitch will cause them to just revert to Russian which can be confusing for someone like me who doesn't speak Russian.

Bugs, Bugs, and More Bugs: The engine needs some serious retooling. There are too many glitches to note, the list I attempted to compile consisted of over 300 giant bugs... and this is after several patches. It also has a strangely steep system requirement due to poor threading of the engine. It's also a bummer to have an intense fight crash on you.

Difficulty: STALKER's difficulty can be daunting at first. I almost wanted to hate the game because I had to do the first mission 20 times on the "Rookie" setting. There is almost no tutorial and you are thrust into the game rather jarringly, so you have to learn the game through lots and LOTS of trial. If you have patience, you will soon adapt to the difficulty and you will adapt to the zone, but the initial difficulty can make the game have a slow and sometimes frustrating start.

Disappointing story: The story had lots of ideas going for it, but it never really went anywhere. It doesn't help that the character you play as has no characteristics at all. The endings are also a disappointment. There are moments that the story is interesting, but usually those moments relate more to new areas of the zone and events in the zone, and less about the characters story. I also felt let down as, while I know this is not a direct adaptation of "The Roadside Picnic" or the film "Stalker," I feel like it could have used the more philosophical elements of those stories to greater effect.

Graphics are as bad as they are good: Like I said, STALKER looks good from the artistic standpoint, and looks very surreal and neat, but when you look at the game from the technical standpoint, its not impressive at all. Animations are stiff, facial expressions sort of jerk around unblinkingly, lighting is slightly off, and some textures are just very low resolution and sometimes jaggy.

The Bottom Line
Stalker is a game that is impossible to describe. The best way to describe it is if you have played the game "Deus Ex;" Imagine Deus Ex, but with a more realistic weapons system, a sandbox world, and mutants. It's similar to that, but even then, it defies categorization. Stalker is one of the most unique games in years, if not ever. It's hard to explain, it's hard to even understand, but it will suck you in and compel you to play through many times over.

If you are open minded, and want a change of pace from other shooters, STALKER will bring you that change and despite its problems, the amazing and memorizing game world will win you over and make up for almost all of the flaws (Except maybe the constant crashes, which usually happen during the best parts). Check out this game if you have not already!

The Good
Several years ago, I remember reading an article in a magazine about this game when it was in early development.

The details at the time were sketchy, but it described something about the game being focussed on individuals called Stalker’s, who were all in competition to recover rare artifacts from the most dangerous areas in a post nuclear holocaust Chernobyl, and that you would trade these valuable artifacts with merchants for better equipment, food, and so on.

The most chiefly important characteristics of the game at this point seemed to be realism - eating, drinking, sleeping, fatigue and other such factors that present themselves in day to day life. The fact you were competing with other Stalker’s in “real-time”, so to speak, built an impression in my mind of a game which would actually have a genuine kind of immediacy, unlike every other conventional shooter where a bunch of scripts simply pop up at pre defined moments, where the game doesn’t move unless you do. Moreover, it certainly left me intrigued, and the name “Stalker” would rattle around in the back of my mind for the subsequent years that would pass.

It seemed for a time that the game had become vapourware, and would remain in obscurity, and ultimately would have the same fate as the paradox which is ‘Duke Nukem Forever’. History of course dictated, the game would come to fruition, and a big part of this was due to THQ’s intervention, becoming the games’ eventual publisher.

Granted this was a mammoth project, very ambitious in terms of scale and complexity, and the developer - GSC Game World, would get a huge leg up. Of course, compromises were to be made in certain areas of the game-play which would dramatically impact the end product.

Much of the original concepts and ideas that were initially conceived have been retained, and hold true in some capacity for the most part here.

When the game actually begins, you find yourself (the protagonist) with no memory of past events, and your most significant distinguishing quality is the initials S.T.A.L.K.E.R. branded on your forearm. You are only known as the marked one, and are in essence a blank canvas, so that YOU, the player, may develop and mould the character, by the decisions, actions and choices made throughout the course of the game. Well, this is the intention at least, and here I will talk about some of the positive aspects of this.

The way in which you interact with other characters here for me was in a way reminiscent of graphic adventure games from long ago, an acceptable broad example might be, Lucas Arts’ title ‘Monkey Island’, where you carry on conversations with others by reading dialogue, (except here much of it can also be heard through voice-over actors), and subsequently you are given a multiple-choice selection of phrases to respond with.

In some instances which call for a conscious response, you select the one you feel best suits your own characteristics, or whatever you want. Much unlike the aforementioned game, there are no wrong or right answers, but you see my meaning. I suppose more apt and juxtapose examples of this particular game facet would be found in Monolith’s role-playing shooter ‘No One Lives Forever’.

As a usual conventional trait for a game with role-playing elements, you can receive important tasks or even little side jobs from characters in the game, the latter of which includes things like recovering a lost item, protecting a camp, gathering intelligence, and so on.

These jobs usually have a time limit to complete, and you are rewarded in some way if you are successful - whether it is paid in ammunition, medical supplies, artifacts, or whatever, depending on whom you are dealing with.

There is no limit to the amount of jobs you accept to take upon yourself, and a PDA is utilised to organise all of the information you take in during the game. Keeping track of everything going on can be quite daunting at first, but familiarity with the games’ interface settles this.

You will generally discover that there are two basic types of NPC in this game, the first being loners, which are neutral to all others. The second, are members of factions, which all have quite uniform beliefs, and attitudes towards other factions and groups.

The most interesting part of this side of things is, that if you decide to lean towards one faction in particular. That is, do a lot more than just one passing gesture, you will become an adopted member to that collective, and their friends, whether it is in the immediate area, or found scattered all over the game world, suddenly become your allies, and their enemies conversely become aggravated by your presence.

In truth, this proves to be a double-edged sword, on one hand, your new friends will alleviate certain parts of the game which would normally be more testing, because you will have a tactical advantage, with strength in numbers. While other instances will see you in increasingly hostile territories without assistance, which will make your life increasingly difficult.

This is one of the games’ strongest assets. That is, the ability to give all players’ a uniquely different experience. So moreover, if you were to talk to some others who had played the game, you would come to find each person would have a separate and unique tale to tell about their own Stalker exploits. Of course, this isn’t to say there are strong plot development constants in the game, because there are, but the little things make this game so enduring.

How you organise you inventory in this game is very similar to how it is handled in Ion Storm’s classic Deus Ex. Though the chief difference here is that instead of being limited by space, which is for the aforementioned game, you are instead limited by weight. How you attain all the different items is just like in the aforementioned game, you can steal, loot dead bodies, buy and trade with others, and so on.

So here, again you can carry many different weapons and items -, e.g. pistols, machine guns, foods and drink, armour vests, artifacts, and so on. But, if you carry too many things you will get completely weighed down, and will not be able to move anywhere.

You have the ability to run, which is complimented by an endurance gauge which depletes while partaking in this physically demanding pastime. The heavier loaded you are with inventory, the quicker it will exhaust your stamina, resulting in puffing and panting, and eventually take all the spring from your step.

Another facet of the game I’ll touch on is how artifacts can be utilised, other than trading them. All artifacts have special properties which will affect the wearer in a multitude of ways. You use artifacts by attaching them to your belt, and this is done in the inventory, and you have a handful of slots to put them in. While artifacts have positive and negative reactions, you can try to strike a good balance to suit every situation, e.g. some will provide protection from puncture wounds, but subsequently make you more vulnerable to anomalies.

For those long treks across the zone expanse, you could use all artifacts that have endurance enhancing properties, which will allow you to run indefinitely, provided you are travelling light.

Alternatively, you can also drink soda will give you a burst of energy which will top up your endurance gauge, which is particularly handy when you are fleeing a battle which was a bit hot to handle.

Stalker has the most advanced combat I have experienced in a shooter which isn’t strictly a veritable sim. Enemy AI is fairly advanced, where your opposition will make most of their surroundings, taking cover from fire, employing tactics such as flanking, ambushes, and so on.

The weapons in the game are very authentic in look and feel, and up the stakes in terms of realism. Guns of certain build quality can be directly affected by environmental conditions, such as dusty winds, and this will cause frequent jamming in certain firearms, which will as a result requires you to constantly reload the weapon. This is certainly something which hasn’t been touched on very often in this genre, and adds some new and interesting dynamics to the proceedings.

Other ways in which the rather unpredictable and erratic conditions of the zone, present some very interesting twists in play, for instance, you may be in a firefight with some bandits, and suddenly they could be swept into an up draught of a cyclone anomaly, which operates in a real-world fashion, and isn’t discriminating about picking up any and all movable things which get in its way, and this includes you.

This game has perhaps the most expansive world ever seen in a shooter, and the freedom of movement could be considered something akin to Crytek’s ‘Far Cry’, though to an even larger scale. In stark contrast to that lush and somewhat beautiful game world however, this is somewhat sombre, with a dominating bleak and desolate atmosphere. Though this, is most certainly the intent, however. The world is full of danger in many forms, is inherently mysterious, and draws forth different instinctive and emotional responses from the player.

Visuals are a definite high point for Stalker. The ‘X-Ray’ game engine is a technical marvel, which brings forth a genuinely astounding level of depth. Everything from dilapidated stone housing structures, gigantic industrial expanses, acres upon acres of foliage, dank and ominous marshes, - are all visually striking and suitably well realised. Environmental conditions like day turning to night, and other real-world factors convey an aura of authenticity not previously touched on in a game of this type.

The audio side of things is well catered for also, with some very atmospheric effects. Ambient sounds include hauntingly eery samples of distant screams of perils and unsettling roars of howling beasts. Other sounds like the pitter-patter of rain, thunder and lighting, gusting winds and all other incidental effects are convincing, and go to great lengths in bringing the world to life.

The Bad
Your relationships with other individuals in the game world are rather black and white, and are essentially reduced to their statuses towards you being any of the three states I mentioned earlier - neutral, friends of foes. Sadly, you cannot ask friends for assistance, or command them in any rudimentary way whatsoever. They will always simply adhere to their own individual scripts. The illusion that the NPC’s freely go about their business does in fact convince to an extent, but limiting factors’ slip through the cracks, and you can’t be oblivious to the fact that there are in fact “scripts” being utilised, and reactions to your presence are simply to take no action, assist or attack you.

When you are hungry, a fork and knife icon is shown in the bottom right corner of the display, and if you don’t succumb to your hunger pangs, it very slowly depletes your vitality gauge. So in essence eating is just reduced to a little bit of tedious micro management. I’m not quite sure where I am going with this, but, um, a pork and bean’s noshing-simulator may have been interesting.

As this game’s presents a free roaming approach to accessing the game world, this presents its own problems. The thirty so kilometres of level scape has been broken into several sections, which means how you have directly affected the different individuals, environment and so on, has to be kept track of, and while the game succeeds in accomplishing this for the most part, there are some holes which can detract from your feeling of virtual reality, as it was.

The missions that appeared when you entered a new area for the first time, would suspiciously reappear every time you revisited the same area. The same could be said for jobs available that you had accepted, and whether or not you succeeded or failed, the task would be presented again regardless. On the same note, this goes for enemies you defeated, which will magically be back again to repeat the process every subsequent time you reenter the section. Some of this tediousness was however, in the games’ defence, rectified to some degree in a later patch.

Some times in this game you may hit stumps which leave you wondering as what to do next, and moreover wandering around aimlessly. For the most part this is perhaps attributable to some of the character dialogue requiring more persistence on your part than is suggested by the lax form of the conversations.

There is absolutely no transport or any kind of usable vehicle. This is sort of a cheat in itself, for if the game were so inclined, the main objectives presented could be finished in an unacceptably short time. I would have liked to see, even if only in a very minimal capacity, some kind of centralised transportation, to save you some tedium on those really long treks which can be a bit boring. For example, employing the railway trains which are apparent in the game, but are instead strictly decorative.

In terms of acceptable system requirements, Stalker is really quite demanding. I tried playing the game with my then existing Pentium 4 system with 512 meg of ram, and an AGP Geforce 6200 card, and the experience was just gruelling. Incessant pre caching of the virtual memory halts the game at every turn, which completely took the sting out of the play, and drove me to insanity. A thousand dollars later, with a dual-core system with one gigabyte of ram, and a decent PCI express video card, I managed to derive a pleasant experience.

Admittedly many elements of the game which were to bring new levels of immersion and realism forward has been substantially reduced in importance, and the game is ultimately more in the favour of shooting at things. Whether or not you will find this to be ultimately - resounding plus, off-putting, or just simply generates a feeling of indifference, depends entirely on your own viewpoint.

I personally had expectations of a more deep experience, and this is where those compromises I mentioned earlier on hurt the most. The things that were to define this game uniquely have been downplayed to what is generally accepted, rather than taking the risk of creating something that may have been truly innovative and original, and perhaps even genre defining.

The Bottom Line
Biased reflections aside, my bottom line is that I enjoyed Stalker. It makes for very compulsive gaming, and can easily consume any and all of your free time. The game world is very distinctive, with a great deal to explore and take in, and proves very easy to get lost in.

You can get as far side tracked as you like, and dodge the games’ grand scheme in favour of side missions and general exploration for absolutely ages. And I think this is the biggest part of Stalker - the freedom and expansiveness it brings forward, and not the often somewhat plodding and obvious plot developments dispersed throughout.

The role-playing side of Stalker is rather basic, and never reaches the level of complexity brought forward by earlier first-person perspective outing - Deus Ex, which I still feel to this day is the most complete package in this regard.

Stalker is an entertaining game, which has a unique atmosphere, and some original touches, but I don’t think can be considered a classic in my opinion, because it just isn’t consistently strong enough in all areas.

This is GSC Game World’s biggest title to date, and certainly shows a lot of promise, so I think future entries expanding on this universe should go from strength to strength, and Stalker will remain a title to keep an eye on for the years to come.

The Good
While most first-person shooter games always make promises of realism and immersion, none of them -- not even Half-Life and Deus Ex -- even come close to accurately simulating real life. Of course, this is largely because developers are afraid that making a game "too realistic" will suck the fun out of it. But if developers like GSC Game World can take the time to make it as realistic and fun as possible, squeezing in the details that you'll find in real life, they'll actually end up with an unbelievably great game like S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is an open-ended game, which means that instead of a linear gameworld where you follow the same path every time, you can freely roam around the gameworld and accept missions from other people that you find. Most of these missions are completely optional. This freedom, coupled with the fact that everything happens in real-time, ensures unparalleled replay value. Further adding to the immersion is the really intense nature of the combat. Since your weapons are inaccurate to start out with, and you don't take much damage before dying, you need to use tactics and stealth to survive against your extremely cunning AI opponents. Whether you're fighting mutant or human enemies, these guys use cover and tactics more efficiently than anyone can ever dream of. They also act differently depending on various attributes, like how hungry they are or even the weather outside! You really feel like you're in an actual gunfight. Heck, you could avoid combat altogether by using stealth tactics to sneak past your enemies...it's all up to you.

Attention to detail is very characteristic of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. A first in the shooter genre is the inclusion of food and sleep. Just like in real life, you'll need to eat food to stay alive, and get sleep in a safe resting spot. Dynamic weather and real-time alternation between day and night settings also help to fool you into thinking that you're truly in the game's alternate reality. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. also corrects the cliché of having to walk over items to pick them up. You press the Use key on items to add them to your inventory, and when you loot a corpse, you're presented with a menu so you can choose which items you want to loot. You're also limited to how much you can carry, and heavier items take up more space in your inventory. While this has been attempted in previous games, players would be frustrated when they had to pick up items in the heat of battle. This isn't an issue here, as you only have to pick up items when you're not in combat.

Just when you thought that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. couldn't get any more immersive, it presents you with photo-realistic graphics using GSC's own X-Ray engine. While the engine doesn't really have any graphical features that we haven't seen before, it more than makes up for this by having the best detail and lighting that you will ever see in any game. As expected, the great graphics come at a cost: even on my high-end PC, the game ran pretty slow unless I toned it down to minimum settings. If you have the rig to play it with the settings turned up, though, you'll constantly be amazed at how lifelike these graphics are. The audio is also spot-on. The weapons sound almost exactly like in real life, adding even more flavor to the combat. Since most of the characters are Ukrainian, they speak in actual Ukrainian accents, which adds to the authenticity of the game. Some characters just speak Ukrainian, so you'll see subtitles to be able to understand what they're saying.

The Bad
You're kidding me, right? This game rocks!

The Bottom Line
Mixing the best elements from games like Half-Life and Deus Ex with brand-new innovations, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. sets a new standard for future games to follow. Forget all those games that guide you along the same path each time. Forget all those games with rough level transitions. Forget all those games where you can snipe with a chaingun. Forget all those games where you don't eat or sleep. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. will become the new obsession of gamers everywhere, and will do to the gaming world what The Wizard of Oz did to movies. My suggestion is to finish every game that you haven't beaten yet, as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. will truly make all your other games lose their luster...