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

After running the gauntlet of useless threads, I highly recommend saving yourself the headache and get OpenXRay (the community improved version of the X-Ray Engine) from the GitHub repository. It fixes compatibility issues on modern machines and provides QoL features such as a FoV option and tabbing to Windows. [How to install and play] https://github.com/OpenXRay/xray-16/wiki/%5BEN%5D-How-to-install-and-play

Let me start by saying I'm a very finicky gamer. I tend to buy games and only play them for a few hours before moving onto something else. I was expecting the same from this game. I'd heard enough about it to spark my interest but hearing it was a bit of a janky european game I expected to be done with it after a few session. This was not the case. I finished the whole thing. That doesn't sound like much but if you knew me personally you'd know that I never finish games. So that's really the highest praise I can give.

First of all: Call of Pripyat works. There are no noticable bugs even in the vanilla version. It looks great and has a better UI and tighter gameplay than the previous games. Just don't expect a full-sized game that blows you away like SoC. All things considered, CoP is smaller. (Yes, the maps are huge but there are only three.) CoP is more linear. Also, the Zone has become a bit too 'safe', or better, too 'orderly': Whereas SoC had 'randomly' placed anomalies all over the maps, now they're clustered in large anomaly 'fields'. They look damn impressive, but it also means that most parts of the maps are anomaly-free. There seem to be mods which rectify some of that, so my crticism may be unfounded. I haven't tested them, so this review refers to the vanilla game and the 'Complete'-version. Apart from those points, CoP is a fantastic game and a worthy successor. It's still open-world enough to stand out and it's much more convenient to play than SoC.

If you're looking to try S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but are only willing to commit to one game, Call of Pripyat is easily your best bet. It does come chronologically after the previous games, but you can play it and really not ruin the experience. The reason I say to play this one, is that it has the most polished, modern experience, with the fewest bugs (and the ones that do pop up tend not to be game-breaking), the most reasonable learning curve, the fewest out-of-left-field moments where the missions or the enemies are either so strange or so unpolished that they feel like the game is broken. The atmosphere is incredibly spooky, multiple factions, playstyles and a pretty impressive active world make replayability pretty good. The game has enough conventional FPS elements that players of the genre will pick it up fairly quickly, but otherwise the game has a very large semi-open world, a story that requires *just* enough digging to find that it feels like an accomplishment rather than an afterthought, and a good, if harsh, combat and enemy AI system. Gun and gear customization adds lots of depth to an already pretty big game, but having to find tool kits adds just enough grind to this process to make it feel, again, like you've achieved something. Even after you have top-shelf guns and armor and loads of supplies, the game really never allows you to feel like it's become easy though. It is bleak, melodramatic and unforgiving, typical of Russian narrative. The post-apocalyptic aesthetic and the iconic bandit faction add a lot of silly, fun, cult-favorite appeal to the game. Even if you don't "get" the whole cult following and the silly in-jokes, fans of Fallout looking for something that gives you a little more direct control over the narrative, or fans of Metro looking for a less linear experience will still probably enjoy this a lot. Now geet out of here, STALKER.

O...K.... Seeing the previous reviews I realise there's a lot of love for these games out there. This sort of game is my favourite genre (system shock, bioshock, fallout, Metro, Witcher - you get the idea). I gave it a good shot but after about 3 hours I just felt like I had no purpose - the quests seemed generic and the travelling was tedious. Yes, I know the lore is deep and the actual game is unquestionably well put together but I just didn't feel that I needed or wanted to continue. By all means give this a go - I seem to be in a significant minority here. I just felt I had to put my views out there to give balance to the others. Perhaps one day I'll return to C.O.P and give it another go. If so I'll post again if my mind is changed.