S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl (PC) (gamespy)

- gamespy -

There aren't many games we'd literally travel to the other side of the planet to see. But when a game sits near the top of our annual "Most Wanted" list for a few years and then goes underground -- well, we couldn't pass up the chance to play S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, even though it meant a long trip to the Ukraine, the home base of developer GSC Game World. While we left with many questions still unanswered, it's clear that the genre-bending shooter is alive and well and (yes, it's true) poised for a 2007 release.

While it's a first-person shooter at heart, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. borrows elements from roleplaying games and even the Grand Theft Auto series to create what in some ways feels like a single-player MMORPG. Set in the year 2012, the game is based on the premise that there was a second Chernobyl meltdown in 2006. As the surrounding zones have been closed off, and strange creatures start to appear, you play a "stalker" -- a mercenary hired to sneak in and retrieve objects and information from the area. You start on the outer fringes of the area, taking on "quests" from various characters, slowly making your way towards the reactor, where … well, we're hoping to find out what happens soon. For this trip, we had a chance to play several single-player missions as well as getting a taste of the game's multiplayer.

The first mission we tried was set in Pripyat, a ghost town outside the Chernobyl area. We began with the simple goal of following a team of fellow stalkers into the area, but it quickly turned into a crash course in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s various game systems that might take some getting used to. To start, for a zone that's been closed off by the military, it turns out that there are quite a lot of mercs running around the area, and there are several factions of stalkers you can align yourself with (or become hostile with, over time). After a few moments, we found ourselves under fire from competing stalkers, both in the streets as well as sniping from abandoned apartment complexes, so we quickly needed to get out of harm's way.

Once we found some cover, there was the matter of actually attacking enemies. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. has an inventory system not unlike many roleplaying games: you have a limited number of slots you can fill with weapons, ammo and items like health kits, so there's a limited amount of junk you can scrounge from the environment (i.e. dead bodies) before you're out of space. Step #1: realizing weapons didn't automatically equip themselves, we actually had to find a weapon and drop it into the "active weapon" slot.

Just in these few early moments, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. managed to distinguish itself from the usual lot of first-person shooters. There was some initial confusion trying to figure out where to go, but being able to roam anywhere in the wide-open outdoor environments was a nice change of pace from the usual linear shooter. Then there was the matter of figuring out the inventory system: the game didn't pause when we opened the inventory window, so you'll need to find cover anytime you want to switch gear. Since there were several snipers sitting atop many of the buildings, we spent some time scrounging enemies for weapons with better zoom capabilities to pick them off with. In a lot of ways, it felt a lot like a roleplaying game, where you've got a lot of gear to choose from but become attached to a few pieces that suit your style.

Once we'd sorted out the basics, we eventually became separated from our team of stalkers and needed to make our way to a stadium in the area. While we were funneled through several choke points, we were pretty free to maneuver in the wide-open spaces -- imagine trying to cross a Battlefield 2 map populated with hostile soldiers, and you start to get the idea.

The next mission in our playtest tasked our character with sneaking into a facility where some fellow stalkers had been pinned down by the military. Approaching from a distance, we were forced to do a good deal of sniping, and quickly found that the facility offered countless options in how to infiltrate it -- we could stay on the ground, climb across low-level rooftops and pipes, or sneak around outside in several directions. As much as we'd have loved to explore, our limited time meant we needed to clear the area out, retrieve a special white case, and get back to the NPC who gave us the mission in the first place.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. aims to keep players pretty busy with a bevy of quests as they make their way towards the heart of Chernobyl. You'll start the game with access to basic weaponry, but as you take on side missions, you'll earn cash, which will allow you to buy better gear from certain characters. Missions generally fall into one of a few categories: collecting artifacts, finding information, finding a character, or killing someone. In turn, as you improve your gear, you'll be able to take on tougher missions and work your further into the zones.

Part of what GSC Game World hopes will make the world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. feel alive is a system called ALIFE, an AI module that controls every character and living thing in the game. Characters will obviously react to you, but when you're not around, they have their own life cycles that they go through, such as eating and resting, etc. The game also has day and night cycles; we're told an average day should last around 45 minutes, with the game likely taking anywhere between 40-60 hours to play through. (We were also told the game should have at least 7 distinct endings, depending on the choices you make.)

Graphically, we were happy to see that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. still holds up. The engine that was once touted as the next generation of graphics technology has since fallen behind other games like Half-Life 2, but as you can see by the screenshots on these pages, it still looks sharper than most games. The main questions we have now are how well the game will scale on your average PC. When asked, the developers told us that no enhanced features that take advantage of Windows Vista or DirectX 10 are planned for release, but something they're eyeing down the road.

With our single-player testing done, we settled down for some multiplayer mayhem in a wide-open deathmatch. With the exception of having to manage our inventory, this played out a little closer to a traditional shooter. Here, the ability to sprint becomes huge: it only takes a few bullets to put you down, and big open areas only make it easier for would-be snipers to pick you off from afar, so quickly found a good strategy was to sprint from cover to cover, only running out into the open when it meant a likely kill.

Aside from our playtesting, we also had the unique opportunity to actually visit the city of Chernobyl and the surrounding ghost town of Pripyat. Over the course of our visit, it became clear how much attention to detail and history GSC Game World put in while creating the environments; we visited several areas of the city that looked like they'd been dropped into the game lock, stock and barrel. Lingering radiation means the areas still unsafe to live in for long stretches, and it was somewhat sobering to see office and apartment buildings in various stages of decay, left abandoned for 20 years. (Don't worry; a single day in the area isn't anything the human body can't handle. At least that's what they told us.)

We left the Ukraine with lots of lingering questions about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.. The game's been in development for a long time, surely because of the scope of the game, with its huge world and numerous innovations. Will it all make sense when it's done? But as we found through our playtests, the game is indeed alive and well, and all the elements are there for what could still be one of the most innovative shooters to come along in years. At the moment, there's no official release date for S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but we're hoping we could be making our return to Chernobyl as early as spring 2007.