S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat

If you could only play one Call of Chernobyl game, I would tell you to play Pripyat. I started on Pripyat and it drew me into the rest of the series, so I'll tell you about my first impressions of the game coming into it blind. The game is very difficult. Not as much as the previous two, but difficult. Even with end game equipment it still takes seconds to die if you don't pay attention. This goes a long ways into immersing yourself into the world, as if you aren't living and breathing the zone the horrors and people of it will quickly send you back to a loading screen. The game uniquely manages to blend excellent first person shooting with survival horror in a way I've never seen done properly elsewhere. You can just shoot many of the zones creatures, but ammunition can be hard to come by for an early player. And there are some things in the zone that aren't so easy to take down. Artifiact hunting is unique and incredibly fun. Environmental dangers can either outright kill you or greatly inconvenience you, and artifact hunting gives you a reason to brave them. Your ability to successfully find artificats is greatly dependent on skill. Environmental hazards in the wider world, like emissions, also give you both a challenge and increased immersion. Overall, I highly recommend this game to anyone who likes FPSs at all and doesn't consider jumpscares a dealbreaker. I came into it with a modern eye for graphics and was able to play it without issue, but there's always mods for those who want to pretty it up.

I started playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. here at GOG buying Shadow of Chernobyl. I still remember the joy of buying and playing it for days. Then i got Clear Sky and got disappointed and after a time away from Stalker, i bought Call of Pripyat. What a excellent surprise!! I loved the game. It is a great mix of survival horror/FPS/RPG. The visuals are so good ( i can't believe that this was made in 2009) and the atmosphere is so unnerving but confy at the same time. With Call of Pripyat, i got the same feeling of pure joy i had when playing Fallout: New Vegas. Play it. You won't regret it. Good hunting, Stalker...

When Call of Pripyat was first released, it turned out to be the most surpisingly stable S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game up to date. Of course it still had its fair share of problems, but those are fairly easily fixed with the help of mods that improve on an already great game, just like the previous entries in the series. The game itself is set a short time after the events of Shadow of Chernobyl and you play as Major Alexander Degtyarev, an experienced S.T.A.L.K.E.R. now working for the Ukraine Security Services, who has been tasked with investigating why an operation planned by the Ukrainian army that involved getting to the center has failed despite all the safety precautions and supposed safe routes in the air. As usual, the atmosphere is outstanding, especially when you get to the ghost town of Pripyat where you can almost sense the original inhabitants still living on in the abandoned buildings, the music also adds plenty to the game as well. Also, if you're gonna mod the game, do check out the Complete mod as it is basically a compilation pack of some of the best mods for the game and it ain't hard to install either as it comes in an installer program, the previous games have also gotten their own Complete pack from the same team and are recommended there as well.

So, I bought this (probably like most) based on the exceptionally food reviews on this site. It's got a 4.7 start rating currently, which is, to emphasize it, almost --perfect--. Yeah. It's good. Very good at times. But that's it. I know about the difficulty debate and it kinda makes sense to me, but more deaths and more careful planning would not change this review. It's an atmospheric shooter. The action elements are very well implemented, feel real, tons of fun. Magical Upgrades come on the form of so called artifacts, which give you special powers. They're used mostly to find more artifacts. You explore the world, kill zombies, mutants, dogs, whatever. All fine. I read somewhere there's a deep lore.. must have missed that. Cough. So, here's my problem. I expected an open world survival game where you could actually do stuff. You can't. There's nothing to do. No crafting, role-playing, and most of all no real exploration. It's a shooter first. The map, which is quite small compared to other titles, is mostly empty and, of course, ugly as hell (well, post-apocalypse, but still. You want to show ugliness, put it next to something nice). When I got to Pripyat I wandered through the city and found nothing. Empty buildings, some enemies, a new gun, mainly dogs. Went back and finished the main story. Sigh. I completed this game in 10h. I did not try to beat it this fast, and was pretty disappointed when it ended. I did as many side quests as I could without getting too bored. Go there, fetch this, kill that. People will say 'you missed so much!'. Problem is, I don't care. The quests I played do not make me want to go back for more. There are a couple of scripted sequences which are a lot of fun though. So, all that sounds very negative. But as a shooter, I really liked it. Just wasn't anywhere near the experience I had hoped for when reading these reviews..

I've always been fascinated by Chernoybl and urban exploration and this game is the closest thing to scratching that itch for me. The atmosphere (sometimes literally!) is great - storm clouds, oppressive rain, fantastic ambient soundtrack (look up "STALKER Call of Pripyat theme of Zaton Day" on YouTube) and you're surrounded not just by decaying and brown vegetation but the feeling of disaster that Chernoybl should. Wrecked boats on a now-drained bay...Rusted power substations, crashed HIND helicopters. There's so much to explore and discover. But within that death the game somehow has created a living, breathing world. The NPCs are lively and have their own agendas that seem realistic and your choices have consequences. I remember I cleared out an area of tough NPCs in an epic gunfight and while hiding in a tunnel during an "emission" storm, some bandits moved in to the building - only to leave after they say I stripped it clean. Many of these games have repetitive side quests but I felt the ones here were not only engaging and showed excellent effort in their design, but were actually more interesting than the main storyline. And that means a lot in a game like this. As a newbie to the series, it gave me no tutorial - dropped me in a forest with a vague mission guideline and told me to go. That was amazing as I started to figure things out on my own. Also, the game has the right balance of combat and exploration to feel like a "realistic" game world vs. a shoot-em-up. But to call it a walking simulator is very wrong. Highly recommended for FPS RPG fans or anyone interested in urban exploration or Chernobyl itself.