"Wish you were here..."

I knew nothing about STALKER when I picked it up from the shop, I knew nothing about its long development history or any of the hype and expectation. Learning of these things since playing it didn't change my mind about the game - I love it but I can't really say why. Other reviews and opinions of STALKER have been embittered by what those people think (based on press releases from the company that made it) the final game should have been / had. Many people were disappointed by STALKER because it didn't live up to what they had been promised it would be. Being totally ignorant, I had none of these preconceptions, and so when I first played STALKER I had no idea what to expect. Days after completing it (with only one of the seven possible endings), I was still thinking about it and itching to play it again. I have since installed Bioshock, UT3, Crysis and Gears Of War this month, but I didn't stick with any of them; I couldn't resist reinstalling STALKER and starting another game instead. When I think of my favourite FPS games ever I'd put this one under only Unreal Tournament and Thief 2, and I've played tons of FPS games, Halflife included. I don't know if STALKER is a better game than Halflife, but I know I'd rather play STALKER.

So, why is this? Atmosphere is one reason. I've never played any other game (of any genre) where I found myself so intent on pure survival. Sudden death lurks everywhere in STALKER and you are never totally safe. Sometimes it seems like everyone and everything is out to get you, including the environment. You are unlikely to stop and look at the scenery for too long in STALKER, as there is not a pretty sight to be seen; but it wouldn't be feasible anyway, not with windstorms howling at you, mutated dogs chasing you in packs, bandits taking potshots at your head, radiation hitting your Geiger counter, anomalies trying to suck you to your death, soldiers flanking you in groups, and eagle-eyed faction members with twitchy trigger fingers just begging for you to make one wrong move so they can unload a shotgun blast in your face. STALKER is not your friend, it would like nothing more than to watch you perish violently; and your death is not a question of 'if', merely 'when'.

And that's just in the outdoor areas. Head indoors and you have a whole new set of problems, unless you're in friendly territory or in an area you've previously cleared out - even then you may not be truly safe. This is first illustrated, to spine-tingling effect, when you are invited to enter the subterranean tunnel network underneath the Agroprom Research Institute in order to recover certain items which will allow you to progress through the game: in other words, you HAVE to go in there, no matter how much you really don't want to. Assuming your PC can handle the game's various graphical and audio effects to a decent standard, this is the moment when STALKER truly begins to push ahead of the competition. Atmosphere: it's so important, especially in the FPS genre whose games are supposed to be the most potentially immersive. Without giving anything away about this tunnel maze, STALKER nails it. It will leave you shivering and desperate to get back to above ground. Radiation-hazed skies and shrivelled trees will never have looked so appealing when you finally re-emerge, if you ever do. You certainly won't get out with clean underwear (I know I didn't). And this is only the first area, and as such it's one of the least scary. Unbelievable.

I hope I've established that this game is the most immersively atmospheric I've ever come across, and if I haven't then just bear in mind that I'm comparing this game to the Thief games, the Halflife games, the... oh look, it's just perfect, believe me.

Second most important for me: gameplay. Is STALKER actually fun to play, regardless of how hard it pulls you in? The answer is 'yes' with a hint of 'argh'. The positive aspects come mainly from the combat, which is frequent and challenging. I have read many gripes about the inaccuracy of STALKER's guns, but if I can shove my oar into this debate it'll have 'STOP WHINING' written on the paddle section. There's nothing wrong with the guns and there's everything wrong with the people firing them. I'm not going to go on about this, but I've played STALKER right to the end, using every gun, and they're damn nice if you're willing to accept that STALKER isn't Unreal Tournament. True, the guns (and armour) will wear down with use and will eventually have to be replaced, but this only adds to the reality factor (for me anyway). Some of your shots will miss, just like they would in reality; sometimes your gun will jam, etc. If you're crap at STALKER then it's pretty certainly your own fault, not the game's.

Battling with your many foes will take up the best part of the game, and they come in many shapes and sizes (mostly human though). The game takes it easy on the monsters, which makes them all the more memorable when you do encounter them. Wild dogs and boar, etc. can mostly be ignored; just run away and don't waste your ammo on them. Human enemies all come with guns, and they generally take no prisoners. Some are better shots than others, of course, but there are no genuinely indestructible sniper gods, just as there are no weedy nooblets. Everyone has to survive in the Zone, not just you, and you won't get an easy time of it if you're going to be causing trouble. Everyone can shoot to kill, and it's up to you to make sure you're the last one standing; a steep learning curve isn't a bad thing in a game about all-out survival.

STALKER introduces various monsters into the action too, but these tend to be rare. Rather than making them forgettable, the infrequency of monster encounters ends up making them more terrifying. You will never forget your first skirmish with a controller, for example, and the fact that you will only run into one or two more in the entire game leaves you all the more impressed. The monsters would not be nearly as scary as they are if there was one around every corner, but happily this isn't Doom. Savour these run-ins when they come along, then pray you don't have to go through any more when you come out still breathing.

Aside from all the gun battles, there is also a fair bit of exploration. It's really nothing like Oblivion, there is no great wealth of arbitrary and poorly-hidden treasure troves, underground dungeons, monster-infested caves or anything like that. The closest you get is the occasional pinged cache of goodies, which you will be notified about as reward for completing certain sub-quests. About 75% of the areas in the game you will probably visit either as part of a quest or as a means to get to somewhere else. The other 25% is the out-of-the-way areas which may or may not contain goodies, interesting sights, monster lairs, whatever. The Zone feels more believable and insular as a result of this economical approach, and it's not for players who like to spend weeks just hunting around for another abandoned temple to loot. These incidental areas were fun in Morrowind, but nearly every place in the Zone has a purpose and a story, and each is dangerous in its own right. That's not to say that exploring in the dark corners can't net you some serious goodies...

The goodies in STALKER are mostly weapons and armour, both of which never cease to be useful. But its 'magic amulets' come in the shape of artifacts, weird blobs of matter which have been affected in various ways by the radiation. They usually provide positive effects when you clip them to your belt, but they also come with negative attributes too, meaning you have to decide if it's worth taking the extra radiation exposure for the sake of better protection against electric shocks, etc. Some of these artifacts are very valuable, and the most worthwhile are both very rare and very useful.

One common complaint about STALKER that I would half agree with is that there is too much running around, going back and forth between all the usual areas. With no fast travel option and no vehicles you are reduced to sprinting about with one eye on your fatigue bar, lugging all your equipment backwards and forwards endlessly. The game only has four or five real quest-givers, and these people are spaced out all across the Zone. They are the ones whom you need to speak to for quests and to further the plot, which means you're forced to visit them repeatedly; not to mention the fact that they are also the only decent traders. Constant but necessary treks can become tedious and this is perhaps my biggest gripe with STALKER. This is particularly true later in the game, where you have to keep going all the way back through an enormous area to buy more armour and anti-rad kits, then push a little farther through towards the end, then go all the way back to the shop again because you don't have enough equipment to survive the full journey.

There are certain other problems, though none were massive for me. Bugs occur during quite a few of the sub-quests, sometimes producing weird results, sometimes crippling the quests altogether. The game is open-ended, but it's too open-ended for its own good. So if you do a quest a certain unorthodox way the game often can't cope and can't figure out what the hell you're doing, so it doesn't know what to do next. For example, you may hunt for and find a certain rifle for a certain person, but when you return it to him the option for him to accept it doesn't appear and you can't get the quest reward. Sure, you can just sell the gun, but this is unsatisfying and you won't get the boost to reputation. There are other bugs, though I should stress that no quest is totally impossible to do, and the main quest didn't have any bugs in my game, so there's no chance of getting totally stuck, unable to continue.

There are other problems you'll have to put up with. For example, you are crouching under a window-sill, waiting to ambush a bunch of incoming bandits, and there are friendly faction members around you, also trying to hold off the bandits to stop them from taking over their base. You're peeking out through a gap in the wall when suddenly you being sliding unstoppably left. Why? Because one of your mates is shoving you, trying to get past. Rather than go around you he just walks to his left as though you're not there, and this probably results in you being pushed out from behind your cover and getting pinged in the face by a bandit's rifle. This happens quite a few times and it never stops getting annoying. There's a similar problem involved with speaking to friendlies or neutrals - they may suddenly decide to walk away mid-conversation, and this automatically closes the dialogue window, so that you're forced to chase them until they stop, then quickly restart the whole conversation again. Inexplicable.

Another thing that has irritated many players is the time limits on mini-quests. There are many mini-quests to take on, but they all come with restrictive time limits, so that you have to go and do them sooner rather than later. If you perform the task then that's fine, but you still have to return to the person who gave you the task in the first place before the quest can be completed and your rank and money can go up. You may have killed that rogue soldier in time, but if you didn't manage to haul your arse all the way back through three different areas in time you've failed. This does not seem fair - I understand that you have to collect the money from the quest giver, but I don't understand why this should involve a time limit. STALKER already has far too much travel on foot - often at a very slow pace, since you're loaded with useful weapons and equipment - and this just aggravates the whole matter. In the end you will probably be better off ignoring the more long-winded mini-quests and just hoarding and selling equipment for the gold you need. Rank isn't all that important in the game, and your reputation is nothing much to worry about either.

And there's the PDA, your sort of laptop extension that stores all the info you receive while travelling in the Zone, including a nice map. This PDA has its uses, and it also has its problems. The map is 2D for a start, so if you're hunting around on the ground for something blipped precisely on your map and yet you can't find it, it's probably either above or below you, either in a room of a building or in some underground tunnel - yet your PDA will not point this out. Certain sub-quests will contain PDA related errors too, such as a person you need to talk to not being blipped on the map, even though the map does move to where he's supposed to be standing (this is still not much help). The PDA takes a lot of getting used to, and the issues with it will become obvious fast. Even after installing two patches, all the problems listed above are still not fixed.

Much has been made of the factions in STALKER, and how you can join one to adversely affect your reputation with the others. I wasn't too impressed with this aspect of the game, and it really seemed to take a back seat when I played through it. There's a few factions in the Zone, but only two you can join (I think): Duty and Freedom. Since Duty control a central hub through which it is absolutely necessary for you to pass, you have to get them on side (at least neutral), if not actually join their ranks. This makes it difficult to join Freedom, who are less influential but who still have an impressively fortified base farther north. I managed to join both, though I dunno how I did it, since they are meant to be mutually exclusive. The friendlier you are with these two factions, the easier your life in the Zone will be; friendlies from either faction will sometimes help you fight off bandits or monsters. The bandits are another faction; and there's also the Military, the mysterious Monolith, and the Stalkers (generally lone mercs like you). The bandits, the Military and the Monolith are always hostile, so make friends where you can get them elsewhere.

Anyway, this review is getting long, so I'll try to finish it quick. The story in the game is hardly fast-paced, since occasions when it is furthered by completing quests are pretty widely sprawled out throughout the duration of just one game. I continually forgot why the hell I was doing what I was doing, though I had great fun doing it. It's not that the story is bad, it's just that it's too short and yet spread over a big long game, and it's therefore impossible to effectively pace. It all comes to a head when you reach the final area, beyond the Monolith. This was my favourite part of the game, and it's the memory that will always stay in my head. Even if you hate the rest of STALKER, it will be worth reaching that final lair, just to hear that voice. Oh my god, that voice...

Graphics fit the game tremendously well, though high quality settings are not worth hitting your PC for when compared to medium quality, which were still fantastic. Everything is hazed with radiation and streaked with grime. There is no out-of-place cartoonishness in STALKER, it's all about desolate grittiness. Character models and faces are acceptable, for a change; monsters are gruesome; environments are dilapidated and wasted. There are no jarring, why-the-hell-is-that-there moments, and the game's best graphical achievements generally come in the subterranean areas, where the lighting can really be put to good effect.

Sound was very good and really ramped up the ambience. You can hear distant gunfire from a long way away, reminding you that life and battle continue in the Zone, whether you're involved or not. Dogs - and other things - howl over that hill on the horizon, men shout, the wind whistles. The outdoor areas are better than indoors in audio terms, though the indoor areas have their own range of eerie noises to keep your heart racing. Not since Thief has sound been so important in terms of staying alive; was that shuffle you just heard behind you a scurrying rat, or was it that soldier who's been hunting you for the past five minutes? My only gripe with the sound is that its volume in relation to distance seems to be way off - a dog barking away on the horizon can often sound like it's within ten feet of you, and this constantly throws you off, making you think you're in more danger than you really are.

Anyway, numerous niggly problems aside, I haven't been so impressed by a game in a very long time. Any FPS fan must own this game. Not a 10/10 but a tremendous achievement all the same, especially in a genre already heaving with classics. You may not want to live in the Zone, but it's a wonderful place to visit.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 01/29/08

Game Release: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (EU, 03/23/07)