The real pleasure is when I'm out in the Zone wilds, creeping through the chilling environments and anticipating what horrors might be in store for me over the next hill. The story of each Stalker game has been the least interesting aspect. As much as I love their dark and unsettling nature, sometimes those bugs make it very difficult to be totally drawn in. Stalker starts with the familiar awkward dialogue and lack of direction. Though quality has been improved it's only in the latter stages of the game that the narrative begins to coalescence. This sense of dread makes the encounters with the freaks of nature in the Zone all the more terrifying and memorable. It still feels like the game is tied together with baler twine at times but that, as ever, is what gives Stalker its uncomfortable and disturbing soul. Investigating the crash of three military helicopters within the Zone, the game does a much better job of actually pushing the storytelling part of the experience to the fore than previous efforts. Here you find yourself playing as Alexander Degtyarev, a security agent for the Ukrainian military.
Familiar, yet still full of unsettling moments and dreadful horrors just waiting to pounce upon my highly-strung nerves.
Its technical competence vastly improved my experience and made the third instalment of the series the most memorable and disturbing of them all.Īs a veteran of the Stalker series - after playing through both Shadow of Chernobyl and Clear Sky - the fabled Exclusion Zone that surrounds reactor B has become a familiar place to me.
Stalker: Call of Pripyat is the pinnacle of the unsettling and buggy trilogy set within the wasteland surrounding the Chernobyl reactor.