Running around the first areas of The Zone, doing quests for NPCs, trying not to die to anomalies, hostile stalkers or mutants feels really nice. And that mood manages to shine through many of the game’s issues, including the outdated looks. That said, the game opens with a fantastic cutscene, one of several, that sets up the mood of the game. You can feel that it was development since 2001, as a lot of its visual elements feel quite dated for the release year. Despite being launched in 2007, right when the transition to 16:9 resolutions as a standard was happening, all of the 2D/UI elements in this game are designed only for 4:3/5:4 and get stretched and slightly broken (some 3D render things require a quick settings file edit too). Launching Shadow of Chernobyl immediately reminded me of how long that game was in development. Those, who do it constantly, and often live inside The Zone are called stalkers… Curious about the place, and excited to make money on selling the artifacts, many people try to get into The Zone and explore it. Yet, The Zone is a much newer phenomena with origins you get to learn about in the games. The territory of The Zone vaguely corresponds to the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone and the 1986 nuclear disaster still has lingering influence on The Zone with pockets of dangerously high radiation levels. Very loosely based on the ideas from Tarkovsky’s movie Stalker (in itself loosely based on Strugatsky’s novel Roadside Picnic), it’s focused on The Zone – a place full of anomalies, mutants and mysterious artifacts. games are Soviet sci-fi horror themed open world titles, mixing the mechanics from FPS, survival (before it became a genre it is now), RPG and the “immersive sim” into a unique blend. Let’s see how they feel in 2019.įor a quick overview, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. No mods, no enhancements, no fan patches, just the final versions of each game as they are. And I finally got in the mood to do that. When Call of Pripyat was announced, I originally took it as a joke and then simply ignored the game altogether.įor years I wanted to give the series another go. Yet, I still bought Clear Sky as soon as it got released and… never finished it. I admired the game for what it was, but I didn’t have fun.

Despite following the development of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl ever since GSC set out to create “our own Ukrainian Fallout”, I wasn’t really into it when it came out.

Clear sky faction wars