Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl

With Call of Pripyat due for release sometime soon in UK (Where I currently live) I thought I would spend time to review the first game in the series. Shadow of Chernobyl or SoC as I shall be calling it in this review is set around the area of Chernobyl where in 1986 (True story) a nuclear power plant exploded and lots of people died from nuclear fallout. Many brave people went into the area of the explosion to help people get out there and help clear it up, knowing full well they would never return. Anyway, in the game the area is sealed off by the military, many people still live in the sealed off area around Chernobyl which is called ‘The Zone’, there are various factions vying for power and mutants roam the area. It’s a brutal dog eat dog place. Rumours spread round the zone of a mysterious device in the centre of the zone at the Chernobyl power plant called ‘The Wish granter’. It’s said that anyone who reaches the Wish Granter will be granted whatever they wish for at the cost of the zone expanding.

The game starts with your character being found unconscious by a STALKER. STALKER’s are just people that roam the zone on their own, looking for artefacts which are items created in extreme radiation areas that give the user benefits such as more health or endurance so you can sprint for longer, they also sell for a great deal and are worth a lot in the zone. Anyway, the STALKER takes your character to Sidorovich, a trader with a lot of connections in the zone. They decide to spare you because your character has “The Mark” on his arm and they find a PDA in your characters possession with the words “Kill Strelok”. The mark is a tattoo of the word STALKER. Your character wakes up with amnesia and from here you have to find out who you are, who Strelok is, why you have to kill him and the secrets of the Zone.

Now, amnesia is a boring cliché plot device but I can forgive its use here because IT WORKS. The Zone is a mysterious place with many secrets, you really feel like a stranger in a strange land. This is the most atmospheric game I have ever played, one of the scariest too and I’ve been gaming my life. Something else that really hammers home this is the facts that if you run into a room full of enemies in the mindset of say… Halo, guns blazing that is; YOU WILL DIE in about half a second. You need to use the lean function a lot to survive. Ammo can be hard to find at times, especially early game, you can’t carry a lot of stuff so you have to really pick and choose what you carry.

The various areas of The Zone vary quite differently, and you will be exploring abandoned research facilities which are unbelievably scary and atmospheric. Just random noises you hear in these places, every time you approach a corner you get filled with a slight sense of dread about what will be behind it. You can go off and do random side quests if you want so you can get paid and buy ammo etc. You can go wherever you want in the world depending on where you are in the story mode. Some areas need certain main storyline missions to be completed to access them without dying.

One of the scariest, most atmospheric games you will ever play and unlike most games these days it doesn’t hold your hand and patronize you like a child. It’s part of a dying breed of games that are genuinely hard to play. You owe it to yourself to check it out.