STALKER:Call of Pripyat

So it's late at night, and I've been tossing around the idea to review STALKER CoP, a game that recently, I've been playing an aweful lot, and that god has been denying the existence of. So here it is! STALKER Call of Pripyat.

I'm just gonna start this off by saying that in the past I've shown particular distaste for the survival horror genre, and had written it off as some sort of horribly perverted mess, that nobody can seem to get quite right, save for what I've heard about silent hill 2. However, rarely does a game come along that sticks a person with no real hope in the middle of a war-torn wasteland, gives them all the guns, armor, bullets, and grenades they can carry, and still manage to be scary. Not since I played Doom 3 at full volume, graphics set to their highest at three in the morning have I been as worry about what might jump from the shadows at me, or what might be waiting for me down a hall, or what might be stalking up on me at that very moment, but the atmosphere of Call of Pripyat was one of a destitute city, practically devoid of any life, save for the tens of thousands of wild dogs that love to jump out at you in packs. Fog hangs around huge structures, only adding to their foreboding nature, causing them to look like giant monoliths in the background, overcast skies with lightning striking every so often, all adds to the atmosphere of the game, and that is one of a mostly empty city, abandoned by humans, which in itself is fairly intimidating, full of hungry mutants waiting to murder you at any possible moment.

The game starts out on a strange note. You play as a Russian military investigator working in the Zone, or, all of the Chernobyl area, and all areas effected by it. You've been sent by the military to find out about an "Operation Fairway", when all hell breaks loose, and without so much as a tutorial, you're thrust into combat, as your helicopter crashes, and you're forced to fight off a ravenous pack of what I can only describe as wolf bear combo beasts. Grab your AK and shoot them in the face, and you've had your first taste of how this game is going to treat you. Poorly.

The very beginning stage of this game was probably the most difficult, as you have no health kits, limited ammunition, a gun that jams every other shot, and you have to fight your way out of a minefield, to an old abandoned boat, where they hate you. However, it will give you a glimpse into the rest of the game, introduces you to your inventory (Thankfully, one that is large enough to hold any amount of treasures), the weapons systems, and the weight system, borrowed directly from many well to do RPG's, not that I'll name any names.. *Cough* Oblivion *Cough*.. And all of it seems to work relatively well, until you realize that your character is a weak little bitch who couldn't hold more then a rifle and a single box of ammunition in a backpack, not to mention the twelve pistols you're bound to pick off corpses, and the twelve million bandages and sausages. Needless to say, this game doesn't want to be your friend, does you no favors, and pretty much just spits on you whenever you're in trouble, which is all the time.

The entire point of this game is to complete your investigation of Operation Fairway, an odd premise, because I'm sure any military force in the world would just send in more helicopters to save the folks from the ones that crashed, and scrub that particular mission, but like a good communist, you prevail! And crush the American capitalist pigs!

The first folks you will run into are the following!
Stalkers, the folks who run around the area, searching for useful stuff.
Bandits! Pseudo tough guys who think they're all that, AND a bag of chips..
Freedom! They love the disaster area, and everything in it, except the people.
Duty! They hate the disaster area, and everything in it, including the people.
Mutants! ..They're dicks
Wild dogs! I guess they didn't castrate their dogs, because you can not run two feet without running into a pack of wild dogs..

Some interesting points that this game tried to make was to get you off of the mentality that you are an invincible super soldier, capable of defeating an enemy force en mass with just a toothpick, and shows you how useless you really are. In just stalker mode (Medium difficulty), I had to rebind my quick-save key to my left mouse button, as there is no auto-save function, and you will die. A lot. Another turning point was the weight system, where in the beginning you can only carry 50 kg worth of items, this may seem like a lot, but in the STALKER world, the weight system is so ..Wrong, a loaf of bread weighs more then a full scientific medical kit, and a rifle weighs less then the ammo for it. Another way that they make you feel so inferior to everyone else is the different environmental effects that will occur, be it you run through a field of radiation, and get radiation poisoning, or you stub your toe, and begin to bleed profusely from every orifice, the gradual damage system of bleeding, radiation poisoning, psi-emissions, or your own fear propelling your heart into cardiac arrest, will be your biggest cause of death throughout the game.

Artifacts and mindfucks! In STALKER, the universe as we know it is drastically altered, and there are environmental hazards called anomalies. These are your best friend, and your worst enemy, as in anomalies, artifacts are spawned! Artifacts are objects that you can find, that pretty much just boost your stats, think of socketing gems into armor in WoW, and can be very helpful, however, they do emit strong radiation, and will give you cancer at the worst possible moment, which is why I tended to stay away from them, despite the artifacts that do absorb radiation, which are rare, if not non-existent. I always sold my artifacts for anywhere from 2,000-20,000 RU (Rubles), and bought moar boolitz.

STALKER is hailed by those folks who like accurate recreations of firearms in video games as one of the best, given the concept of weapons wearing down much faster then they actually should, bullets ricocheting off of dirt, trees, and people and even the whole bullets that fall towards the earth as they go down their flight path. The only thing about the shooting that is not realistic, is how ineffective a 7.62x54 (In other words, a big ass round) is against a human target. It seems like no matter what weapon I use, short of the gauss rifle, nothing is effective towards mutants, zombies, mercenaries that you run into about half way through the game, or bandits.. Another issue I had with the weapons system was that towards the end, you could upgrade your weapons more and more, until you wound up with crazy mythological super weapons capable of destroying the human race, and all of the earth. My final two weapons in the game were an automatic shotgun with a 20 round drum magazine, scope, silencer, and an effective hundred meter kill range, and a galil, scoped, silenced, shooting 2000 rounds a second, that was amazingly accurate, and could kill even the most durable of mutants in a few measly shots. The unfortunate part of the weapons systems though, is they tease you with them to no end. In the very end of the game is when the final tier of weapon and armor upgrades become available, but by the time you get them, you're on the very last mission of the game, and have only a small amount of time to see how amazing your weapons are before they just take them away, and give you one of those endings that hails you for being good, or in my case, the case by which I shot every person I met in the head with my super crazy shotgun o' death, hails you for being good.

All in all, I'd say STALKER Call of Pripyat was a fun game, even though it doesn't exist, according to God, and it's definitely worth a try if you've got a few days and need a game with a good, scary atmosphere, fun and extremely challenging gameplay, and wtfcrazy gun physics. If you've ever liked guns, or FPS games, or if you've ever liked RPG's, or survival games, STALKER CoP is a game I heartily recommend.

Fun - 7/10 (Because dying every ten seconds gets old)
Difficulty - 10/10
Playability - 9/10
My ability to make up random scores - 124/12312563
Packs of dogs - 9001/10

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