As a person who is passionate about building games and its history, I am working on projects that are interesting for their influence on people and the creation of a “fan” community around me. I consider C to be one of such projects and series in general.T.A.L.TO.E.R., since I have heard more than once about the love for her from the players. The only problem is that nothing went beyond talking about the atmosphere. So I went to the Zone myself to find out why people like it so much. I decided to stop at the latest and most perfect game in the series, C.T.A.L.TO.E.R.: Call of Pripyat.
Feelings from the plot.
I don’t want to focus on the plot, it’s too simple. WITH.T.A.L.TO.E.R. not a purebred RPG, therefore there are almost no forks in it, and the ending will be influenced not by the choice in the dialogues, but directly by the player’s actions during the tasks. Even taking into account its straightforwardness, the story stalls at turns and sometimes can throw in a new plot-important character at the very end.
Yes, Shooter and Guide?
https://theviccasino.co.uk/bonus/ Gameplay quality.
Let’s start with shooting, shooting was done at a fairly acceptable level, even if it doesn’t bring much pleasure. The ballistics of the shells works well, it’s a pity that opponents don’t always react to bullets. If people still twitch and whine somehow, then most mutants do not react to hits, but continue to push at you until you are defeated. By the way, about the artificial intelligence of mutants, it should be noted here that… they are stupid, seriously, as soon as you climb a small hill or run into a doorway, they become helpless, or even immediately lose all interest in you. As for zone creatures that use telekinesis or firearms, things are a little better with them. During the passage, people are a dangerous opponent, as they use some kind of strategy, try to surround them and like to hit on the sly (At least in story missions). Hunting for artifacts is perhaps the most overrated aspect of the game, where behind the variety of anomalies there is one essence, throw bolts and bypass the damage, although this is not the worst option, the alternative to this is to run right through, rarely an anomaly kills you right away, so there is no need to worry when you can use a first aid kit. In general, the economy of cartridges and first aid kits is broken, until the end of the game I did not have a situation where there was no medicine or food in my backpack, only occasionally did I run out of cartridges, and even this can be avoided by using a starting Kalashnikov assault rifle and collecting cartridges from enemies who often carry this caliber. This is exactly how I went through most of the company. Because of this, I can’t say much about the modification system, since I had no need for it, I always upgraded what the “engineer” had. I also didn’t use artifacts, their radiation was too strong.
Variety of tasks and assignments.
The orders to advance the story in the first two locations are the most boring, often their principle is “Go from point A to point B and see what happened there or take something there.». All the fun in the story missions begins with gathering a team and sending them to Pripyat, after which there will be the theft of secret laboratories, and the study of occultists of the “Monolith” group, and running errands through buildings with the largest number of enemies and anomalies, and of course, a breakthrough through the city to the evacuation site with the incidental shooting of all the fauna of the outskirts of Pripyat. As if all this were not interesting and exciting, the first 2/3 are the side missions, in which we are told and shown the whole essence of the Zone and its inhabitants, we conduct investigations, communicate with different factions, delve into local stories, listen to the characters and become imbued with their well-written characters.
The atmosphere of the Zone, game design and the world around.
It’s time to talk about the well-known “A Life” system in an open world cube. To be honest, I did not expect such elaboration from a game of 2009, dogs are hunting, stalkers are walking, opposing factions are fighting, you are always celebrating the life around you, and against this background one small detail sags, the dialogues with the participants in the events, they are quite poor and have only a couple of prepared remarks for each version of the question that appears in the plot, but I would like for each skirmish to have at least some kind of story, so that the usual the shootout became a battle for a tactical advantageous position or an interesting, albeit prepared story, then there would not have been such a dissonance between a believable world and cardboard dialogues with oncoming people. The world looks nice and varied, there are three large locations that differ in the terrain and wildlife around them – the Zaton swamps, the fields in the vicinity of the Jupiter plant and the abandoned city of Pripyat. And now speaking about the atmosphere of the post-Soviet apocalypse, I’m honestly not a fan. I can’t spend hours listening to jokes of stalkers sitting with a guitar by the fire, but I admit that even this has its own charm. As a result, I focused on cleansing from the world in general… and I was disappointed, the whole inhospitability of the Zone felt like a cheap move to force the player to do all the work for everyone. The broken economy and the monotonous annoying “creepy” ambient play into this, which in moments of its absence does not try to intimidate, but gives a break from itself. After which the illusion of the Zone as a dangerous place disappears completely, and you already think that everyone around you is simply lazy, so they entrust everything to you! Overall it was a shaky atmosphere. There’s nothing to say about the game design, it’s simple and has its rough edges, like lazy back-tracking while running errands around the Jupiter plant and the very predictable X8 laboratory, which I ran through without firing a single shot, dodging anomalies and stupid “zombies with gas masks,” simply following the rules “If there’s a hole in the floor, then jump.” and “In scary laboratories, all the most important things are on the ground floor.”, but this should be a difficult and frightening location.
Yes, you can play it in 2020?
Even knowing about all its disadvantages in the form of a couple of too primitive level design, periods of lazy back-tracking, sometimes stupid AI of opponents and not a constant atmosphere, I got quite a pleasure from the game, a feeling of something unusual, because I completed the game simply “Good”, not because they didn’t initially put anything extraordinary into it, but because in my efforts I didn’t manage to follow everything and something broke along the way. This is strange, even after writing a blog about the game I can’t understand why I liked it. Why do so many flaws add up to such a pleasant experience?? Maybe it’s in the “A Life” system? It still remains a feature worthy of 2020; it is what distinguishes C.T.A.L.TO.E.R. from other series. WITH.T.A.L.TO.E.R.: Call of Pripyat is good in its individuality and unlike anything else, throughout the entire blog I could not compare the game with anything else, not in individual mechanics, not the whole work. I think that even in 2020, these ambiguous qualities and resulting emotions are worth a try. Hell, this game even made me write a blog about it, crazy.
Yes, I know about the Metro, but I haven’t studied it thoroughly to fully compare it in detail. They have a full-fledged apocalypse there, which does not allow us to fully appreciate the liveliness of the worlds relative to each other. Except that shooting in Exodus seems more enjoyable to me. Piece!