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

I bought this on sale years ago and then forgot about it. When my gaming laptop died, I had to look for something that would run on my other laptop, and this one caught my eye. I went in with no real expectations, never having read a review of it. What a game. Immersive and complex and with a terrifying world to explore. The first time there was a radiation event I actually panicked. Exploration of the sandbox world is well rewarded. Resolving quests gives you real benefits. And there are elements of real terror. The graphics are fine, perhaps not as polished as you'd see in more recent titles, but these are still good enough to carry the game.

For some context, this is my first S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game, and I've only started playing it recently. At first, I was just lost. Roaming around with little purpose besides exploring as much as I coud, tackling some quests on the way, dealing with the usual STALKER business: trying to get rich and avoid being mauled by roaming mutants or bandits). As I kept exploring, the game just clicked for me... I grew to love the atmosphere. From the (relatively) cozy shelters, the abandoned power plants, the old decaying railways, among others, the environments carry a wealth of character and, at times, ooze history. The encounters only enhance the sense of danger, and they can be satisfying to overcome. Discovering new anomalies that piqued my curiosity as I continue patrolling the zone has always been a treat. All in all, despite its faults—such as poor voice acting (which can be charming, I must admit), occasional bugs, and a forgettable main story—I love this game and believe it deserves the praise it has received.

Played this game for the first time in 2024, after I completed Shadow of Chernobyl and used the openXRay mod. The core gameplay has been improved and finally delivers on the vision of the first game. Looking for artifacts, avoiding anomalies, killing mutants, sneaking in enemy bases... everything works together and the world truly seems alive and not centered around the player. It also was less buggy, with only a few minor bugs and glitches. The difficulty was also more consistent and fair. However, it's not perfect, the story is pretty bad and far less interesting than SOC, the final area is pretty weak, there are some rough edges (no traders in the final area and you need to pay 5K to travel back and forth), loading stutters while traversing the map, which get worse the longer you play... However, it is still definitely worth playing! Now I just gotta wait until I get a giga gpu so I can play STALKER 2...

I just really like CoP because of some new mechanics and completely new areas in contrast to the predecessors, but with a heavy heart I have to rate this negatively. There are minor (some quests) to very massive bugs, the latter currently ensure that in the German version (so if you play in German) the intro and outro are broken, sentences are cut off here and not completely read out by the speaker, that's just bad and together with the points that are about to come, the german version of the enhanced is definitely much worse realized than the original. The really big problem are 2 bugs, which don't let you go to pripyat at the end of the underpass at the ladder, because the game always crashes there, also there is a bug in one of the last missions that the commander kovalsky doesn't want to react after a certain dialog, these are plot stoppers and don't let the player continue the game, the solution for both cases is to switch the game to english in the menu here (after that you can set it back to german), so i have the feeling that nobody has ever played through the german version at GSC, because the bugs are reproducible, very clear and serious. The game can also crash when you go up ladders or look into the sky (i could only partially reproduce it). My tip here would be to try a fps limiter (e.g. 60 or 120).

Can't say what isn't already said about this game. If you like post apocalyptic scenarios, ego shooters and you don't mind some survival feature (eat, drink, sleep) this game might be for you. However it can be the case that this game might not run (or for some reason only on random occasions) with Win 10. If so, you probably find a solution here: https://www.gog.com/forum/stalker_series/call_of_pripyat_wont_launch_1