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

Some Historical Context

I played Shadow of Chernobyl several years ago. At the time, I had fallen in love with Stalker. I hadn’t played anything like it, it felt dated but fresh. For me, the exploration and atmosphere stuck in my mind the most. The zone had a character of its own, the sounds of dogs in the distance, wind rustling through the trees, and gunshots ringing out across the wasteland are truly iconic. Combined with the unique visual style of humans and mutants with their goofy proportions and boxy animations, the goal of these games is not entirely realism but immersion. After playing SoC, I was unable to get into Clear Sky or Call of Pripyat. I had some fun with several mods out at the time most notably Call of Chernobyl, a sandbox overhaul that combined all three installments. But I was unable to recapture that true draw I felt to my first playthrough of SoC.

Fast-forward a couple years and I had fallen in love with a couple other big name eastern European, atmospheric, exploration-based FPS games, Escape from Tarkov and Metro most notably. I was not sure if I’d ever need or want to come back to the Stalker games at this point, but that turned out to be very wrong. What drew me back in was actually a mod, Stalker Anomaly. I had heard how it made significant upgrades over its spiritual predecessor Call of Chernobyl and was interested in re-entering the zone after craving to return to EFT but also being burnt out on its multiplayer experience. I remember thinking to myself I want singleplayer EFT. So before diving into Anomaly I decided to give CoP one more shot.

Bringing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. into the 2020s

I decided to try out Call of Pripyat again, hoping to be drawn in again. But upon starting a new game, I was immediately distracted by the gun and hand models/animations. Coming from EFT and Metro, this is where CoP felt severely dated. It’s definitely an unfair comparison but the whiplash felt by going from the near-realistic look of gun models in EFT to the dated textures of the starter AK in CoP was rough. This is when I found Gunslinger mod, an overhaul to the entire first-person perspective. This mod was exactly what I was looking for. Gun models and animations are near EFT in quality, but that’s not where it stopped. The upgrade trees for each weapon now had matching visual upgrades, the PDA is now a 3D model, all food and medications are animated, and a bunch of other hand animations are added for suit related actions, the exoskeleton being a particular highlight. This mod alone elevates CoP to nearly a 2020 level of visual fidelity and style.

Go Where You Want, Do What You Want

So, with that hurdle overcome, I set out to play CoP in full. CoP builds upon much of what its predecessors accomplished but differs in one big way. Where SoC had small, interconnected areas that you would pass in and out of quite frequently, CoP has 3, large areas that you travel between infrequently. After experiencing both, I prefer the latter. Exploring freely in these areas is a huge part of the game and by far my favorite aspect. Gunslinger’s hardest difficulty turns off the HUD by default so the only map you have is in your PDA. This is a great decision, as traversing the zone feels unfamiliar at first. But as you grow used to landmarks and memorable locations of the area you start having to check your PDA less and feel more comfortable with navigating yourself. The Zaton and Yanov areas both feel expansive yet dense with points of interest, while Pripyat is a fully explorable city. All of this feels like to Metro Exodus’s world design, so it was very cool to see what that game clearly drew inspiration from. Metro Exodus was designed around a train moving from area to area and when it stopped, acting as a sort of hub. In these areas you had a goal but how you went about it was up to the player. You could beeline it for what you suspect to be the path forward but along the way you were most likely going to get distracted. For me, the main draw of Metro and CoP is the diversions and the time spent simply traversing the zone/metro. It’s freeform, you can come and go as you please, working with who you want when you want and critically in Metro/CoP there’s no mission marker telling you to go somewhere. However, when you spot a tall waste processing plant in the distance with your binoculars and can see mercs patrolling the balconies, what stalker wouldn’t want to change course and investigate. I love how the these games enable the player to make their own decisions and goals by having world and gameplay design that incentivizes player curiosity.

Verdict

★★★★1/2

CoP is a gameplay, atmosphere driven experience with the Gunslinger mod bringing the first-person view into this decade. The main story is pretty forgettable, something about crashed helicopters, but it was enough to keep me moving from one area to the next. I recommend this game-mod combination to anyone wanting a vanilla S.T.A.L.K.E.R. experience with just visual upgrades. And yes, I do recommend Escape From Tarkov and Metro Exodus if that was not obvious, perhaps I’ll do write ups on them in the future.