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

Curious how the area that cordons off the disaster area around Chernobyl, know as the exclusion zone, has become a focal point for video games in recent years. Infinity Ward set one of the most poignant levels in Modern Warfare within the Zone, while GSC took a sharp left off the road to realism and invented a world brimming with mutants and supernatural anomalies. This 30 square kilometre stretch of land, a patchwork of fields, woodland and dead concrete forests usually shrouded in low cloud is almost indistinguishable from any temperate area in Europe, which is probably why it makes this an ideal setting for the series: almost anyone can relate to the area and the fact that it's far from exotic makes it all the more unsettling when odd things happen within it.

The Zone is still full of weird stuff - like this

Or in Call Of Pripyat's case, inexplicably weird and dangerous things. This is the second standalone expansion for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and for us, in many ways it comes closer to the spirit of the Russian science fiction novel the series is based upon. Its story is sandwiched between Shadow Of Chernobyl and Clear Sky, following the events immediately after the Stalker Strelok destroys the C-Consciousness and a path to the centre of the Zone becomes clear. The government's obsession with reaching the centre manifests itself as the large and carefully-planned operation “Fairway”, beginning with a scouting excursion of five helicopters, which promptly fly into the zone never to return.

Rather than forge ahead, Ukranian security wisely choose to send a trained agent to infiltrate the Stalkers as one of their own and investigate each of the downed choppers on foot... and naturally, you're the poor sucker that drew the short straw.
Upon arriving at Skadovsk, a hub for the early part of the game and one of several wrecked and rusted ships which have no business being so far inland, we were told by a man of some standing in the Bandit faction that there were three types of new blood: basically the green, the greedy and the careful. The first two varieties rarely last more than a couple of weeks and the last one joins a faction or becomes another Zone statistic.

The Bandits “tax” all three naturally, but survival for you is a case of making friends and trading with the right people rather than affiliating yourself with any particular group, as first aid kits, vodka and tins of cooked meat seem in endless supply and almost everyone is neutral to you. No-one objects when you loot the corpse of their comrade anyway, at least not unless you're the one that gunned him down in plain view.

Despite an ageing engine, the DX11 effects look great

Call Of Pripyat is much easier to navigate than the last two games and unlike Clear Sky, there's no equipment or technology barrier to stop you from moving to a new part of the Zone. Dangerous pockets of anomalies are frequent, but these areas are clearly delineated on your map. That doesn't mean you don't need your wits about you and picking a path through an anomaly field, choosing the right equipment and talking to the right people can't be rushed. It's a shame that your mission log doesn't update with appropriate snippets of information because we'd have to have the memory of an elephant to accurately recall everything we needed to know every time from the hundreds of conversations we had throughout our game.

… continued