Wednesday, September 23, 2015

S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl

For the past 4 weeks, I have been balancing my gaming time between Wasteland 2, Terraria and the game in the title. I have finished the latter of the 3 and feel that it is time to voice my opinions on it. To put it lightly, S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl is a must play for any avid PC gamer that can tolerate Dark Souls as this game is the FPS equivalent of Dark Souls. I bought the entire S.T.A.L.K.E.R series (which includes Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat) on GoG during their sales (75% if I recall) and it is worth a full-price purchase in my honest opinion though I recommend purchasing during sales to save money (Contrary to the views of pre-order obsessed individuals (excusable for those who buy collector's editions with physical merchandise of actual value), people need to save money as it does not grow on trees.)


S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl tells the tale of the Marked One, the player character, who was found and rescued off the wreckage of a truck in Chernobyl's Zone of Alienation where a second incident at Chernobyl had altered the Zone tremendously, spawning mutants and space-time anomalies of varying nature and lethality. These anomalies have also spawned artefacts that are of great value for scientific communities due to their peculiar effects. As a result, many individuals have entered the Zone with various motives in mind. The Marked One is one of such individuals that exist in the Zone and your motives are decided by your decisions. The only goal you have is a note on your PDA that tells you to kill Strelok. Who this is and why he has to die along with the mysteries of the Zone are up to you to find out.

What makes it
Challenge is something that should not be negated or removed from most gamse. When playing a game, challenge is needed sometimes to motivate the player to try again with a different mindset and tactic. S.T.A.L.K.E.R knows this and lives by this creed with high difficulty being a default in every level of difficulty. I played this on medium and before I got my hands on better gear, I was getting my ass handed to me by regular bandits with good grenade accuracy and an A+ in flanking tactics. The enemies of this game are smart enough to know the values of flanking and strategic grenade lobbing while having decent accuracy that often leads to my death. This game eschews classic FPS tenets by having no regenerating health (a positive in my opinion), requiring some level of skill with weapons (or at least, learn how to compensate for one's lack of skills with these weapons) and being able to waste ammunition. In S.T.A.L.K.E.R, any player will quickly realise how important bandages and medkits are when you realise that you can bleed to death and that a well-placed shot will result in a large loss of health or even death. The player also learn that using iron sights is not simple and that it is usually better to go for a confirmed shot at a centre of mass rather than going for the perfect headshot every time and risking your life unless necessary. In addition, ammunition has weight (like Fallout New Vegas' hardcore mode) but having a large amount is vital for survival which creates a dilemma every time you find a stash full of ammunition. As a result, typical FPS tactics of shooting wildly while relying on regenerating health and nearby ammo drops tend to fly out of the window. The game is hard but fair as any situation can be countered with a different approach to combat. A fire-fight with a large number of enemies may be handled with a shotgun and a lot of energy drinks,  a rifle with a scope or even a well-thrown grenade with a good pistol to finish off stragglers. It is also rather easy to learn the basics of the game though the challenge from there is finding the strategy to not die as fast. The game is like Dark Souls in the sense that it is both hard and fair to players and this is the main reason why I like this game a lot. Most FPS games nowadays seem to be too easy especially in the single-player unless you play multi-player. So having a game that is challenging in a genre that has grown stale in the single-player aspect is a very good trait. In summary, the game is challenging but fair and easy enough to figure out the ropes.
Immersion is an important aspect to any good game. A game that can immerse the player in the crafted world and allow said player to craft their experiences while giving them the challenge that does not go against canon is a very good game and can make up for flaws (such as outdated aspects, limited user interfaces, reliance on too much reading and others I can't recall right now). S.T.A.L.K.E.R is able to create this through its difficulty. Rather than playing as a walking metal box with a camera for a face, the player is a vulnerable human being albeit with similar platforming problems as the walking metal boxes. Once again, the lack of regenerating health helps as it emphasizes the dilemma of any traveller in a conflict-filled wasteland (albeit without the space-time anomalies and the mutants); whether you have more bullets or more healing supplies. In-game, I found myself dreading night-time travels due to the flash-light being a dead give-away in hostile territory and also due to my own fear of dealing with in-game monsters. Once I got decent night-vision gear however, I was more willing to travel as I was finally able to see those mutants that I was never able to see due to their speed. The difficulty of the game enhances the experience as you wind up feeling like an average human in a hostile world rather than a random super-soldier and as a result, little achievements such as bringing in high value loot to a trader feel like actual achievements for the player and navigating out of difficult fire-fights become crowning achievements without any achievement notification beeping in. The rewards in-game wind up giving the player in real life a form of relief and joy especially if it leads to a good Tunder or an SVD.
Intriguing locales exist in the many places of the Zone. Amidst the ruins of Chernobyl, the typical bandit encampment, neutral settlements and faction bases can be found, explored and looted with varying degree of reactions to each action. Other locales that can be found in S.T.A.L.K.E.R would be mutant nests, abandoned Soviet villages and old laboratories. While these seem like simple and typical locales, the Zone's anomalies and the inherent intelligence of the enemies of the game makes these more interesting sights as the approach to take when visiting such locales can vary depending on the presence of the two. When exploring the surface locales, the normal sandbox exploration style comes into mind with a lot of roaming and fast-paced shooting when the stealth approach fails though given more depth with actual NPC interactions when 2 rival factions meet and are forced into conflict with each other along with the presence of anomalies to make things more interesting to explore. The laboratories and the interior of buildings provide tight and narrow corridors where either a controlled fire-fight or a survival horror experience takes place depending on the hostiles present. These laboratories, as part of the plot, contain documents that detail more about the experiments that took place before the second incident; providing hints that there was more to the second disaster than a mere nuclear accident. In a nutshell, S.T.A.L.K.E.R provides the usual post-apocalyptic locale that is enhanced by the unique features of its own setting and possesses a backstory that will maintain interest in the game, if the player is not too busy dying a lot.

What breaks it
Difficulty can affect whether someone will continue playing a game as a hard game may be dropped due to the required investment to learn. S.T.A.L.K.E.R is a difficult game as a result of intelligent AI, the human constitution of the player character, the damage being relative to the location of the shot and the scarcity along with the weight of resources. Due to that difficulty, it has a steep learning curve that will deter casual players seeking out a short game for a brief evening or day of entertainment. I list this as a disadvantage as it is difficult to recommend this game to people who do not play games regularly though I will stress that those that can stick with the difficulty will learn that the difficulty of S.T.A.L.K.E.R enhances the game.
Awkward jumping is a staple for most first-person shooters as proven by the many corpses of Gordon Freeman and Faith Connors that cover the floors of most bottomless pits. The platforming mechanics of this game, like most first person shooters, are not revolutionary and are prone to odd collisions. I distinctly recall missing simple ledges due to the sudden imprecise jumping. Thankfully however, moments where jumping becomes necessary are far and few in appearance while tending to be optional as a ladder or staircase is usually nearby.
Bugs and glitches can harm any good game and may even ruin the experience if not fixed. In my own playthrough, I underwent a few crashes and freezes but these faded away over time and as a whole, I had a relatively bug-free playthrough, though that could be the result of installing the S.T.A.L.K.E.R complete mod (http://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-complete-2009) that came with bug fixes. I have heard of game-breaking bugs and glitches in unpatched versions without fixes applied so I pre-emptively sought out fixes before playing. This may vary and my advice when getting S.T.A.L.K.E.R; seek out the fixes.

Personal opinion:
I came to this game having heard good things about it and not doing any reading up about the actual game. I left the game very satisfied for having been challenged to think like an actual combatant with no power armour in a hostile location rather than a muscle-bound automaton who regenerates lost health like Deadpool during a Friday night out. S.T.A.L.K.E.R is a good game for avid shooters seeking challenge with hybrid RPG elements while wanting to see another post-apocalyptic landscape with its own back-story and tales. Aside from the few early crashes and some frustration from dealing with enemies with armour-piercing rounds, the challenge was surmountable though full disclosure here, I was playing on medium difficulty. I do want to replay this on hard once I have completed all three games. Readers who are currently waiting for Fallout 4 should check out this game if they enjoy the post-apocalyptic setting.

Summary:
What makes it?
Challenge
Immersion
Intriguing locales  
What breaks it?
Difficulty
Awkward jumping
Bugs and glitches


P.S: Sorry for the lower quality of this post. I am recovering from a fever that lasted 2 days so I am rather sluggish mentally as of now.

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