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

Preview - Back to Chernobyl we go

The Zone is a hostile place. If it's not the mutants, bandits or aggressive weather conditions putting an end to the player's expedition around Chernobyl nuclear power plant, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s unoptimised, uncompromising engine will routinely throw its own spanner in the works and spectacularly crash to desktop.

But S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (let's dispense with the punctuation) is also a very special game. Modern shooters tend to be tightly packed, linear expeditions that force the player's hand through dramatic pre-scripted events. STALKER does not: it relies on its expansive maps to provide atmosphere, and trusts its complex AI system to hand out spectacle. In one legendary instance I found myself informed of an imminent Blowout - a radioactive anomaly that lights the sky red and causes fatal damage to anyone unlucky enough to be outside and needing shelter. I ran to reach a nearby dark, cramped bunker, arriving with seconds to spare. Relief turned to concern when I realised I was sharing the area with a handful of Bloodsuckers - one of the game's more terrifying opponents, complete with eerie tendrils handing off their face and lambent eyes. Without the constitution to tactically handle the situation I fired at anything that so much as looked creepy until I ran out of ammo.

In Call of Pripyat, Blowouts have further impact on the world. They often spawn in a fresh batch of mutants to avoid whilst also changing the position of the game's dangerous anomalies. Walking through these near-invisible patches of land, receiving a near-fatal blast of the elements, was one of the prime sources of the original game's dangerous atmosphere: you never quite knew what you were going to step on. Time and experience eroded these moments, however, and by the third pass of an area these cautious blips of terror were effortlessly avoided - randomising the elements in Call of Pripyat nicely ramps up the tension.

Call of Pripyat builds on the same atmosphere that made Shadow of Chernobyl feel unique: Pripyat and its surrounding areas are frequently eerie and perpetually menacing. It's also quite beautiful, and modelling the environment loosely on the real world conjures up one of the bleaker experiences I've ever experienced in a videogame. STALKER's Russia is a splintered and destroyed continent, and the area around Chernobyl is devoid of typical life. All that remains is splintered clusters of humanity, generally exiles from society, and creepy mutants.

The main appeal of the sequel, at least technically, is the bevy of tweaks and fixes that come with the latest update to game's Xray engine. Graphics have been given a good polish, the lighting engine especially, and there's DirectX 11 support if you're one of the ten people with a card that supports it. Hiccups, whilst occasional, appear to be far less noticeable than in the original releases of Shadow of Chernobyl and still-busted Clear Sky. New, subtle improvements which sound less than remarkable on the back of the box turn out to be considerable game changers. The game's AI has been extensively fiddled with, for instance, which adds plenty to a game largely reliant on the emergent gameplay afforded by its dynamic world. A less stupid Pripyat is definitely a good thing.

It could, and undoubtedly will, be pointed out that many of these advertised-as-new features found their way into Shadow of Chernobyl many years ago thanks to groups of supremely dedicated modders, who themselves were adding in features originally intended by the developers to begin with. In that respect it can sometimes feel like GSC are playing catch-up, but it's also worth remembering that the community patches added in these features for a simple reason - they make STALKER a better game. Dramatic new features aren't always required, such as the unpopular and unnecessary addition of the faction war dynamic in Clear Sky. Thankfully that's been gutted from Call of Pripyat - neatly explained away in the game by pointing out that Duty and Freedom have had their numbers dramatically culled and are now giving peace a chance.

It's still clearly STALKER at heart, so anyone who found they couldn't get on with the original game will unlikely find their opinion swayed. It's a fiddly game, with fussy combat - it's easy to die at any time, so perpetual usage of the quick save button is an absolute necessity. Gunplay requires a steady ability to execute headshots, which is easier said than done with the game's starting weaponry. Still, the character does get an essential AK-47 from the very beginning - more of a lifeline than Shadow of Chernobyl ever handed out. I didn't get a chance to take the preview build too far into the storyline, but the weapons I did manage to peruse had clearly been optimized from their broken Clear Sky states. The balance feels natural out of the box, which marks a first for the series. Shotguns are now useful - there are more mutants to take out, for a start - and new-fangled customisation options offer some much needed depth to inventory fiddling.

The world is now dramatically larger, too, and there's clearly more of a focus on navigating the area from the offset. A quick travel mode has been added to ease the pain: find a travelling group of fellow STALKER's and you can mosey along with them to the destination. The new version of Pripyat is bigger, and allegedly more of an accurate portrayal of the area - although, understandably, I couldn't really validate that fact. More importantly is the claim that quests have finally been deftly crafted. They all purport to be unique, promising an end to the tedious MMO-esque 'Shoot Five Monsters' events that were so depressing in the other games.

It seems to be more of the same, then, but GSC are clearly responding to former criticisms and developing a fitting sequel to Shadow of Chernobyl. My time spent with a test build leads me to believe that the final product, currently available in Russia and making its way here in January, will still be somewhat buggy, forever difficult and completely wonderful. Fingers crossed it'll be first game in the series not to be unplayable until patched.

The translation is terrible, mind. That'll definitely need to be fixed.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat is released for the PC on 29th January 2010.