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

Dying in games is never nice, but it is worse in some games than others.  For some reason, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games are among the worst.

I think it is partly because I have often forgotten to save for ages.  There are more frequent autosaves in Call of Pripyat than there were in Shadow of Chernobyl so it is not quite as bad, but you can still lose a fair bit.

For the uninitiated, I will set the scene. The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games are set in our own time in a grimly fantasised version of the region around the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. The meltdown at the plant has caused mutations of both humans and animals into vicious creatures that are the most common enemies in the games. There are also bandits to contend with.

Another bleak day dawns in The Zone

The reason you, and others like you have gone to The Zone is to search for valuable and mysterious artifacts with strange properties which have also been brought into existence by the accident.

That is the case in the first game, anyway.  In the second game, you are a military Colonel masquerading as a Stalker but really trying to find out why several military helicopters crashed in the area.

Returning to the series after very long gap between playing the first game and playing this one I was surprised by how little had changed about the look and feel of the game.  From the pale, two dimensional leaves on the shrubs to the selection of guns and ammo to the icons depicting the items in the backpack a lot is the same.  A few things have been added to the HUD and they are generally an improvement.  The graphics are also a bit of a let down and it fails to match up to Call of Duty 4 which came out two years earlier.

It has taken me a while to get into the game.  This might be because it's murky hopelessness is not new this time around and so did not immediately grab me.  I am not so fond of being the more purposeful military man on a mission as I was of being one of the misfits who through up life in normal society to go and seek his fortune in the worlds most hazardous environment.

Nevertheless, I am starting to get into it.  I am starting to care when I die unnecessarily at the hands of Zombies or Bloodsuckers when I still had four medkits and I just didn't notice how low my health was.  That is my worst failing while playing this game and I'm going to give myself a low score for observation partly because of that and partly because I don't pay attention to what is said in conversations (either in life or in this game) and this is a big hindrance.

So these are my scores:

Speed through the game: 5

Intelligence: 6

Reactions and accuracy: 5

Observation: 4

Initially my speed through the game wasn't bad but now I'm starting to mess about too much.

I started to play Space Marine last night and will now carry on and report back soon.