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

This is my second foray into reviewing a PC game, and, somehow, I end up writing about a game that is basically the twin brother of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky. But you know how brothers turn out: One becomes a quite competent used-car salesman, while the other becomes a professional knife fighter who is married to a brain surgeon and studies Russian literature in his spare time. And that knife-wielding maniac would be S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat.

The third installment of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series is a straight sequel to the first. You play as a member of the Ukrainian secret service who is sent into the Zone to find out why a flight of military choppers vanished from the screens and why stuff is happening in the Zone that nobody can explain.

The game is much better that its direct predecessor, for many reasons: If you liked the other S.T.A.L.K.E.R. installments, you will love this game. The best parts of the two earlier games are allowed to shine. For example, you can hire mechanics to upgrade your weapons and armor and thus acquire heavily personalized equipment geared to your tactical style, just like in Clear Sky. Guides reappear who will get you to different places for a fee so you don’t have to slog it all on foot if you do not want to.

Artifacts are difficult to find in the earlier stages of the game, but worth having. Stashes do not have to be marked on your map to exist, but even with a marker they are hard to find - so if you go about your business with open eyes you might find them without plundering any old PDAs. Weapons sell for a decent price if they are in good condition – in fact, about a third into the game, money stops being a problem. The grinding is reduced, and the game is more immersive for it.

The game can be hard on higher difficulty levels, and the AI is quite accomplished. Enemies try to encircle you and flush you out with grenades, but this also means that your allies are not completely useless. There are two short sequences where you are railroaded along, but apart from that, you will be free to explore. And there is a lot to explore – while there are only three maps, they are the size of about three maps of Clear Sky each. The city of Pripyat makes a return, but no maps from the earlier games are recycled, so you are not traipsing along the Cordon again. As always, the atmosphere is striking, although the second map suffers a bit from theme park syndrome. Some of the places are eerily beautiful, and where the anomalies work their influence, the landscape can become quite surreal, without losing the bleakness that characterizes all S.T.A.L.K.E.R. installments.

Factions return, but not in the capture-the-flag mode that marred Clear Sky. But you will surely make some interesting friends and enemies. Some of the characters now have distinct faces, and what faces they are. My favorite mechanic looks like Vladimir Putin with anorexia and a silver earring. And if a character is named “Sultan”, well, you can bet he has a sultan’s face. The common aesthetic of protagonists in PC-games does not apply - these guys look like desperadoes and treasure hunters who don't mind braving the radioactivity for a handful of rubles. Each of these figures has his own story and motives. For this reason, this game is more of a RPG than Fallout 3 in some respects: You don't level up, you don't get to select skills and stats. But the interaction with the various figures in the Zone is believable: Characters like Sultan or Zulu seem much more realistic than their counterparts in normal RPGs. Some of them are assholes, but they are fascinating assholes. If you want to join a faction, you are free to do so, but the plot does not force you to. In retrospect, a lot less people start to shoot you on sight, but at least one of them pissed me off in a way that made me ambush him when he left the local sanctuary, which made his colleagues mad at me. There are also a few brand new breeds of mutants infest the Zone and some of them are really nasty.

So there you are, with very basic equipment and weaponry as well as 2500 rubles cash, at the edge of the Zone, and the world is your oyster.