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

Its the only STALKER game i have played, and from what i saw, the only really i need. Not because the others are bad, but this one just seems to me like a more refined, and stable, version of the stalker series.

You play as a newly arrived stalker on the zone, and your first objective is to investigate the crashing sites of 5 STINGRAY helicopters. This is only a very weak thread to lead on you on, as there are tons of npc with interesting side quests. These will give you money, that in turn can be used to buy better equipment.

The game is really masterful in creating an environment and making it believable. The zone is a highly dynamic location, with random events occouring such as natural disasters and fights between bandits and mutants. Its really the grim version of the wasteland. The game shines in delivering a bleak, scary atmosphere, without never recourring to jumpscares. I was legitematly terrified to play at night in game, as the noises you hear are genuinly terrifying.

The game could be called a RPG, but i dont like this definition. Its true that you progress through the story by aquiring better equipment, but you never develop skills as an individual. Besides, mechanically the game is very much an FPS first. The weapon handling is realistic, but never enough to make the game frustrating.

The game is really something else, and there is really nothing that brings this sort of atmosphere out there. The latter half of the game loses punch since it goes more in an action and militaristic direction, but its still enjoyable. Unfortunatly i couldnt enjoy this game so much at the time as i was playing Fallout New Vegas at the same time. That was too much wasteland for me, and New Vegas trumps this game for me. STALKER can be just too much one note bleakness, that makes playing for longer amounts of time uncomfortable. Maybe thats a sign that the game accomplished what it was intending.

The atmosphere is only a tiny bit weaker, but the gameplay doesn't suck this time around. By far the biggest improvement, however, are the quests, which are much more thought out than just "go there kill that" and are actually very fun in their own right (as opposed to SoC.) However, the scripted nature of the quests, as well as each major location having a quest tied to it, can make the world feel pretty shallow at times. I can see why some people prefer SoC, especially for replayability's sake.

only a bit worse than SoC, has everything that stalker games should, the world is big and really fun to explore, lots of subtle reminders of the hell you're in, the graphics can be beautiful (but not always) the gunplay and gameplay mechanics are fantastic. I love this series.

9/10

This is a game for people who want an open-world RPG FPS that is more of the former, and less of the later. When you start the game there is a story intro, then you are placed into a wide-open world. I hated the pacing of this game as soon as I started playing it, because unlike the first two games in this series, you are mostly questing and artifact hunting, and there's very little shooting.