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

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.