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

Friends! What we have been waiting for a long 6 years have happened. S.T.A.L.K.E.R., whose release was postponed so many times for one reason or another, finally saw this light. There were moments when even the most devoted fans doubted whether the game would reach the shelves or would die, never born. Remember the promises of the GSC: a huge territory of tens of square kilometers around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, complete freedom of action, self -regulating ecosystem, stunning graphics, realistic weapons, vehicles and dozens of other ambitious plans. During the development, much has changed. I had to sacrifice some ideas because they could not realize, other brilliant ideas were strangled by the publisher for the sake of a mass consumer. A transition to a new version of the engine supporting DirectX 9 was made. By 2007, the initial concept became almost unrecognizable, but still everyone was waiting for a miracle. And it happened … almost.

The diary of one stalker

The first day.
Who am I, where am I? What kind of person leaned over me? He says that there was an accident, the truck rolled over, and I miraculously managed to stay alive. But … I don’t even remember my name! And what kind of place is this? The merchant who saved my life calls the area around the “zone”. Some artifacts, stalkers, military-I do not understand anything. This is all a nightmare and it is worth waking up, as I will find myself in the normal world. You just have to wake up ..

I went to the camp, a dozen two guys gathered there. They are, it turns out, stalkers – hunters for the treasures of the zone. Completely green, however, barely a gun in their hands can hold. And in my palm, for some reason, the handle is like a glove, and the sight does not tremble at all. Those guys poison the jokes, brackets on the guitar, only their eyes are doomed, as if the next day they knocked death. This gray sky and dog howl drives crazy. In the evening we attack in an abandoned warehouse of the “brothers” who took ours, but for now to Jahnu vodka. I’m scared.

Terrible. There were four of us against eight, and it was not possible to take the bandits by surprise. The first shots were hooked by Pashka of the Jew, and he writhed on the ground, bleeding, and we could not help. While the other two distracted the fire on myself, I went into the courtyard from the rear and dumped the reptile from my PM, I wounded the other in my stomach. Realizing that they were surrounded, the gopniks rushed at all, each for himself. Here we killed them one at a time. Here are just a bald, a brave fool, with a cry of “Hurray!“He ran the first to the warehouse and received from the cut in the face … that captured stalker was alive, for his salvation, they and I will pay well with Seryoga. But the jerky will have to be finished, it will not last until the morning. Yes, and it is better to divide Habar for two.

The sixteenth day.
Yesterday, again, these stupid warriors tried to beat off the agricultural industry from us, which was so pulling here, as if they were smeared with honey? When everything was subsided, they collected trunks and cartridges from corpses. I got Abakan with optics, a noble trophy! Now I’m sitting on the roof, I shoot mutants from it – here everyone is so fun when there is nothing more to do. Who has a tightly tight with humor, they generally hunt people like animals. Scum. By the way, I see on the horizon, there is a group of such a forest belt, judging by the sports pants and sneakers – “real boys”. So aak, now have fun! They do not know that this forest was chosen. I’ll go binoculars, otherwise Abakan has weak glass, the “show” will be poorly visible.

It seems the third month, not sure.
I’m an idiot, what am I an idiot! After all, not the first day in the zone, so many things have seen, and it’s so stupid to get into the “pie”. Acid burned a protective overalls in several places, barely managed to drop it, otherwise the meat would have cornered to the bone. Well, I did not think at that moment that the radiation is also in the basement, and when I realized – it was too late. So it was not cooked in acid, but received a dose of irradiation a hundred years in advance. The guys say, I will not live to live until the New Year.

I have long lost time.
Damned bartender. It was he who thought me to go to the sarcophagus, they say, you will find there a “desire executor” and ask him to heal from radiation illness. He still muttered something about the “burner of brains”, but I didn’t listen. He took with him a beloved thunderstorm, cartridges, food, put on artifacts and rushed to the north. At first everything was fine, the base of “freedom” went through without special incidents and already fell into the territory of the monoliths. And tonight I dreamed of a nightmare: I see myself, as it were, from the back, as I make my way through a thick forest, suddenly a wild scream is heard from behind, turn around … But I have no pupils, some proteins rolled up, and my mouth is skewed, all in the foam! Woke up in sweat, with a terrible headache, pills do not help. Probably the consequences of irradiation. And it seems, hallucinations have begun. I hear the voice of a long -dead jergery, like his bandits shot? An hour ago, Snork jumped out of the bushes, I gave the turn along it, and he dissolved in the air like a phantom. Rather to the north, otherwise this radiation will kill me.

There is no more strength to write ..
… this … not radiation … radiation … my head ..

You ask what this diary has to do with the review? Yes, the most direct! In fact, these are travel notes, impressions in pure form, emotions from the very heart of the zone. “WITH.T.A.L.TO.E.P.“It is so much different from everything previously seen that just a hand does not rise to judge him with the usual categories and lay out the plot, graphics, etc.p. Atmosphere is what the ball rules, everything else works first of all for it. When compared with other games, then Fallout will be closest. And not only because post -apocalyptic scenery, or rather, just because it is not the scenery. Around the living world that you believe. He is very harsh, often cruel, but logical. Only physically and morally people can survive in hell, where a considerable part of the territory is still infected with radioactive emissions, and deadly anomalies are waiting at every step.

In such a situation, there is a struggle not for life, but for death for resources for survival. These are food, weapons, medicines and just a clean area for the camp. Someone retains the human face and creates a kind of civilized village, guarded by the militarized structure of the “debt”. Others, expressed by the words of one stalker he met, “get down into flocks, like wolves”. Cowardly creatures, gathered in a gang, they rob and kill everyone who turns up by the arm.

Each group has its own ideology and attitude to the zone. For example, scientists consider it an invaluable gift to all of humanity and, despite the deadly risk, regularly organize expeditions for collecting rare gizmens from anomalies or catching samples of the mutated fauna. The anarchists of “Freedom” want everyone to have free access to the protected territory, could collect Khabar and then sell it to people from the outside world. Mercenaries do not think about high matters, but they work out their salary efficiently. They will ask you to get an artifact – get it, order to kill – kill. And the soldiers even in a dream count the days until the end of the contract, so they want to get out of this meat grinder.

Yes, the system of fractions in the gaming industry is old as the world. But in the Stalker, relations between different groups received a fundamentally new development. Fighters no longer fight among themselves only at the command of the script. The situation is frequent when, in a hurry about your business, you suddenly hear a violent shootout between army special forces and a group of free shooters. Or the same stalkers repel the next attack of the lads at the dilapidated railway station. You can go to another location, and then return and inspect the battlefield. You will find corpses, weapons, and sometimes wounded, although usually the winning side immediately finishes them. Or it turns out that blind muttants are already vine of the dead man-this is the promised A-Life system in action.

On my memory “WITH.T.A.L.TO.E.P.“Perhaps the first high -budget action with such a bewitching picture. It’s not about the density of special effects per square meter or number of landfills in the frame. Objectively, X-Ray engine in many parameters has already begun to obsolete. However, due to photorealistic textures (by the way, based on photographs from Chernobyl, where brave people from GSC Game World were not afraid to go) and excellent dynamic lighting creates an indescribable effect of presence. Just go outside on a thunderstorm, look at the shadows discarded by grass with lightning outbreaks, and you will understand what it is about. The residents of the CIS generally feel like at home: a rusty skeleta of Zila next to the abandoned armored personnel carriers, dilapidated boxes of factory shops, overgrown with stormy. And also rotten huts, sculptural monuments in the spirit of socialist realism, poster “Fighter! Take care of a rifle, like your life!”In the old army warehouse – all of his own, dear, from the not so distant past. We saw something similar only in “Half-Life 2”, But if there the“ scoop ”was very mixed with science fiction, then here is one hundred percent authenticity.

There is one brilliant moment in the game, which many tried to implement before, but only Ukrainians were fully done. It’s about weapons, more precisely about sensations during shooting. Speaking in simple language, you get used to your “gun”. There are no abstract glasses of experience at all, everything is on a purely subjective level. I will give an example to make it clear. For a while I ran with the usual AK-74, and then switched to Abakan with an optical sight. But here’s the bad luck – the sight seems to be much better, good approximation, but I can’t get the enemy in mind. And then suddenly I understand that, firstly, the return is less, and secondly, when using this optics, you need to aim exactly in the center. After about half an hour of training, the percentage of hits reached about 80%. But there is still a ricochet, an amendment to the distance, different types of ammunition, rifles break and wedge at the most inopportune moment. There is no way to list all such trifles, you just need to play yourself and see. And the most pleasant thing is that these “chips” are not screwed up for a checkmark, but harmoniously fit into the gameplay.

To survive in the area, you need to have the right equipment. Yes, you did not rush – it is “correct”, and not just good. Since the amount of transferred cargo is limited to its weight, you will have to think carefully before going to complete a serious task. A conventional set – a gun and an assault rifle (the benefit of the choice is just huge) and about a thousand rounds in the load. Why is there a lot, you ask? Yes, it’s just that you are not Diablo, where you can teleport to the city at any time and bun away health bubbles. There are very few merchants, and the spaces are large enough, and the situation sometimes changes so that it is impossible to return along the same road back. Therefore, you have to be prepared for any layout and always have a first -aid kit in stock, pills from radiation, food, bandages for bleeding and several grenades. If you forget to take one thing and die either from irradiation, or from hunger, or even even remain an empty mug against a flock of hungry dogs.

And I sincerely advise playing in the headphones, since otherwise your neighbors can cause a police outfit. The fact is that the shots were specially recorded at landfills in the United States, so we can now enjoy a living sound. The author of these lines has not heard such a juicy fir for a very long time, since most developers have long abandoned all their strength to create a technological picture, forgetting about high -quality voice acting. But if shooting is more likely to give a taste of realism, then a sudden terrible roar and sniffling in a dark corridor is guaranteed to deprive you of a certain number of nerve cells. I will not go into details, just believe me – terribly. The gloomy Dark Ambient sums up the deplorable result: you will go to work or study with red eyes from lack of sleep, as the “stalker” sucks without any chance of returning to the real world.

They didn’t want to? Could not? Before they had time?

Here I would finish and put the well -deserved five points to the game. But alas! Not everything turned out to be as smoothly as we would like. To begin with, the developers fulfilled a quarter of promises by force, being hostages of their own advertising campaign. Remember the breathtaking statements that the zone will constantly change, they say, no permanent landscape? Of course, they did not master. Moreover, instead of a single huge card (in the manner Operation Flashpoint or “Gothic“) We have to be content with one and a half dozen albeit in detail worked out, but still not very large locations. There was a zilch from vehicles in the final version, although we saw them more than once on the rollers. But this is a mild nonsense compared to how other promises are “fulfilled”.

Take at least the same A-Life. At first glance, life really boils around, something constantly happens without our participation. But after several hours of game, it becomes clear how this mechanism works. Banal, vulgar repaun. Monsters do not breed, they just appear from the air, sometimes right on the player’s head. Other stalkers usually honestly come from the side of the neighboring level, but there are places where people are materialized from nowhere. Due to this, it becomes impossible to clean up the territory of the enemy camp: there is a permanent battle with all the new and new waves of the enemy. In the very first days after the release, the “responds” caused a storm of protest at all game forums dedicated to the “stalker”, so, most likely, this oversight will be corrected by a patch.

With quests the situation is much sadder. If the main story branch causes interest almost to the very end, then with side tasks is simply a disaster. In the best case, they will be offered to participate in the assault, and mainly random tasks such as “Bring the foot of Snock” or “kill such and such a stalker” are generated. Boring, gray and mediocre. The possibilities of a detailed, absolutely unique world are used by five percent strength. Fans are lost in conjectures how this happened and who is to blame. But this problem is also solved – soon the free editor will come to open access, so amateur mods and additions will take a new life into a somewhat damp zone.

And yet. The influence of the Western publisher of ThQ negatively affected the realism and seriousness of the gameplay, as it was made too much skew towards the action. Opponents are sometimes poured simply in bucks, so you will approach the final credits with several hundred corpses on conscience. And if at first this situation is extremely rare, then at the later levels the action in the spirit Call of Duty Frankly infuriates. This is not what we were waiting, not that. So that the “stalker” does not turn into a stupid shooter, I advise you to put the difficulty on the maximum and turn off the crosshairs of the sight. In combination with excellent artificial intelligence (except “”F.E.A.R.“It can compete) These simple manipulations will give fundamentally different impressions of the battle.

About the shutter of Kalashnikov on the left, the identification marks of the Ukrainian Air Force on helicopters, resting in a landfill since the liquidation of the 1986 accident, and other annoying bloopers will not write in detail. For the little things.

Final comments

A great game worthy of taking an honorable place next to the first parts “Doom” And “Half-Life“. A new word in the genre and the best that they created in the post -Soviet space since the time of Tetris. GSC Game World is almost alone for all sorts of instincts, wolfhounds and other nastiness, posing the CIS in front of the rest of the world. Guys, you did it! Thank you very much and bow to the ground.

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