It seems that everyone does their big “Game of the year lists” around this time of the year… we tried steering away from that jibba jabba but ultimately, decided that we could perhaps take the chance to spread a few soap-box top words for some games that do not get any attention despite deserving it. So here’s to those unsung heroes that kept the hardcore who embraced them glued to their seats in dim rooms illuminated only by their LCD/TV screens. First up is a personal favourite of mine, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. : Call of Pripyat After the breath of fresh air that was Shadow of Chernobyl, many PC gamers had amazing “Stalker stories” and fond memories coming back from the experience. The game had a decent enough story to tell, but the only narrative present worth acknowledging was that of the player’s experiences. When S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl was released after over half a decade of development and the trimming of several promised features, the game’s design managed to be a beast unlike any other that had been tamed by a game developer before it. A real breathing world filled with hundreds and thousands of NPCs, animals and monsters who followed dynamic routines that didn’t exactly crash and burn like the promises that Bethesda had made with The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Life forms weren’t the only thing that set the world of Stalker apart… Mysterious phenomenons known as ‘Anomalies’ rendered the zone a far more dangerous place than it initially seemed. Amplify that fear with pitch black nights screaming with thunderstorms that cast shadows over the entire terrain for fractions of a second, revealing you to unknown horrors of the night, or, to more skilled Stalkers, your targets to you. A great attraction to embracing all these dangers was the hopes of finding the next best weapon, suit of armor… or ‘artifact’. Radioactive objects that pop up around the zone and offer the player either monetary rewards as valued tradeables, or some serious stat boosters that brought such luxuries as ‘slightly regenerative health’ or radiation resistance. The game dared you to conquer the most hellish obstacles it could put you through in and rewarded you more than generously. Do what now? But after the misstep that was S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky (I’ll leave the laundry list of everything that went wrong with that game for another time), many believed that Shadow of Chernobyl was a fluke on GSC’s part. Such a game experience cannot be crafted deliberately. Like all things that go viral, the makers themselves sometimes do not know what they have on their hands until it lights up their skies. The guys at GSC set out to prove the world wrong with Call of Pripyat. Sssss-soakin'! In a way, the most perfect way to describe Call of Pripyat would be “A perfect distillation of the best features from the Stalker games prior.” – But that wouldn’t be all of it. When telling people about this game, you need to tell them about going out hunting giant, vicious monstrosities known as the Chimera in the dark of a night lit only by occasional lightning. You need to tell them about the non linear quests that one would normally only expect from Obsidian or Bioware games in RPGs where freedoms of gameplay like the ones that Stalker offers are lacking in turn. Speaking of RPGs, the game had its fair share of inspired elements. I say inspired because there’s no leveling up or spending stat points per se, but the game does give you a variety of loot to customize your strengths and weaknesses quite a bit. Because every foe you come against is more likely to be a wildly different kind of threat than the other. The game’s AI Life systems had been overhauled as well, populating the world with much, much more friendly and neutral characters with whom you can trade, collect quests or hear stories from (preferably with someone playing a guitar in the dark of the night huddled around a fire), making the world more than just a ‘shoot-it-if-it-moves’ experience that so many other shooters settle for these days. It is a desolate world, filled with more life than any other game world has been able to bring to the screen. If there is no unexplored patch of land remaining in this world, then this game would simulate it for those who seek such an experience. I wasn’t expecting to be blown away after the disappointment that was Clear Sky, what the developers did was under-promise and over-deliver on an exceptional game that fit right into my Steam account’s pocket for $20 (thanks to a discount offered to previous owners of Stalker games). I have 27 hours recorded in the game so far, closely rivaling the amount of time I’d invest in an open ended singleplayer RPG… which is saying leaps and bounds about the kind of Shooter this game is.
http://techspotlight.net/features/and-ode-to-submersion-the-best-singleplayer-games-of-2010-part-1-s-t-a-l-k-e-r-call-of-pripyat
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