As of 1986, 'Chernobyl' means only one thing, and it doesn't matter when you were born, you know what that thing is. The exclusion zone is still home to life but not quite as we know it, and the mysterious nature of an entire city being effectively frozen in time and swamped in radiation inevitably leads to other-worldly stories.
Video games are no stranger to the call of Chernobyl. We've already gone through the eery stillness in one of the greatest levels in video game history in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, and now, sort of via a book and film, comes S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, an alternate reality first-person survival horror game set in a region where nothing is quite as it seems.
Do we have what it takes to survive?
Fun Times
Not the best heading, that... Shadow of Chernobyl starts with a truck full of strange corpses being destroyed by a lightning strike. When the sun rises, a scavenger notices that we are still alive, and brings us back into what servers as a town in these parts. The only clues as to who we are - because like every other video game protagonist, we have amnesia - is a tattoo on our arm and a PDA with what we presume to be our to-do list: Kill Strelok.
The chicken-eating trader we were brought to is a guy named Sidorovich, and lacking any information on us, he calls us "The Marked One", the latest in a long list of stalkers, people who roam this place looking for mysterious artefacts but mainly just making sure they stay alive in what is a literal dog eat dog world.
In addition to our own objective, kill Strelok, we're given some tasks to do to get a little more acquainted with how things work here, and to pay some folks back for saving our life. We're going to lend our support to a guy called Wolf in an attempt to find and retrieve a memory stick and further the plot along - which is handy because we know effectively nothing.
When we emerge from our text dialogue - which is voiced here and there, though not always exactly as written - we're outside what passes for a village in these troubled times. The locals are all men in jeans, jackets, and balaclavas, but they're a welcoming lot, provided you don't wave weapons in their face.
The game as a little of everything, and you're near immediately introduced to the idea of reputation with the various groups, or some kind of morality meter. Are you going to be a helpful stalker, or are you going to make your life harder?
After sitting by the fire listening to some guitar, and helping an injured fellow back onto his feet, and fending off some wild dogs with a pea-shooter of a pistol, we see some of Wolf's men in the distance - identified by the mini-map as being my objective, more than anything.
I'm playing the stock Shadow of Chernobyl here and it looks pretty good. The texture detail is top-notch, the skybox and the lighting make me want to seek out shelter and hide from everything... The only things that let the view down are the dated animations and copy/paste character models, but I read that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a favourite of modders, so maybe that's been dealt with in the decade since.
Shadow of Chernobyl is a lot of things. First-person, survivor horror, and as we soon see rather open-world and full of AI that lives its own life. We're asked if we want to go in alone and quietly or loud and violently. Opting for the second, our new friends rush towards the farm buildings below and start to open fire on pretty much everyone they find.
Frustrations
I'm playing on the easiest difficulty, and I have since learned - though not confirmed - that the difficulty doesn't just lower the amount of damage you take, but also the amount of damage you dish out, too. This seems backwards, doesn't it? But it does help to explain how long it takes to bring a target down.
Reactions will help, yes, but it's proper planning and preparation that will win the day. Don't stand in the open rooting through a downed enemies possessions. Work your way around in a flanking manoeuvre, keep an eye on your sound and vision meters, telling you how obvious you are, sneaking up on the last guy with a double-barreled shotgun you took from his mate and watch our stalker ranking and standing with the surviving locals increase.
Finding Nimble hiding in the corner, we not only get the intel we came here for but the option of getting new side missions too. From what I read, a fair amount of the plot is to be found in this sort of content, or enough to make more sense of the main storyline, at least.
I'm not sure how founding a suit will help me understand what's going on, but I'll keep an eye out for it. I hoof it back to Sidorovich who gives me another task further out and can chat to you about all sorts of things about what now passes for everyday life - if either of you can be bothered to do so.
I can't, and forgetting to sell all the stuff I've scavenged to keep my encumbrance down, I head out once more to sprint across the countryside towards the next objective marker. The sprint really is ridiculous, let me tell you. If you're not careful, you can run straight into mutant wildlife or bubbles of radiation, which are nicely rendered as a wobbly visual effect that I, of course, only understood after standing right in the middle of one.
Further Fun Times
After shooing away loads more dogs, I had to stop and recover and get my bearings a little. My handy PDA holds all the important stuff, like mission objectives, our standing in the world, and importantly the map, which is pretty damn big, probably because you sprint so damn fast.
I've got to get to the green dot via some other marker that isn't shown, which takes me to a railroad track and a choke point.
Which they do, but with a ridiculous super sprint, I'm out of there in no time.
I met up with a contact who told me something about Strelok, I think. To be honest, I was rather distracted, as it seems the world still persists to some degree during these chats, and we were attacked by more bloody dogs.
While this encounter didn't tell me anything about my objectives, it did tell me how to navigate my inventory to use med packs and eat food - something we'll be doing a lot of to survive, I gather. I even hear vodka is good for radiation sickness. Not so sure about that, myself.
Anyway, we've got a roadblock to get through, and as I'm starting to learn, never assume anything is safe in this game.
I could do anything with my haul. Use them, sell them, scatter them across the landscape. It's an open world that is as alive as I am, so let's push on to the next thing of interest and-
I emerge on the other side of the loading bar witness to a hold-up. Should we intervene?
Further Frustrations
Whatever we do, we should have done it quicker. Our run with Shadow of Chernobyl has come to an end by the roadside, at the hands of people who don't even care to loot our corpse.
I understand this game is on the buggy, unpolished side, but I must admit that I never saw this side during my brief spell. The closest I got was that the world kept on living while I didn't, a new quest opportunity arising to help out some folks nearby, a message telling us we ought to respond to it.
Maybe next time, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Maybe next time.
Final Word
I supposed you could say I barely dipped my toes into S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, but what brief glimpse of this strange hell I saw was definitely interesting. From what I've heard of the development, it's an ambitious game that perhaps doesn't reach its lofty goals, but sequels and plenty of fan support give the series some life.
I'm not usually drawn to survival games, preferring instead a hint of threat, rather than actual peril. Think Fallout 3, which is perhaps a friendly depiction of a nuclear wasteland compared to the bleak nature of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. here. Bleak, but still enticing - as I say, I'm not usually drawn to these kinds of games, but this one seems different.
I don't quite know how to explain that. From what I've read and seen, this game is divisive in its quality, both in terms of gameplay and story, but still offers something worth trying out, even all these years later.
In reading up on this game, I've also looked into the film Stalker, which has its own incredible journey to the cinema and will probably be another one to track down after The Warriors. I've not read much about the book, Roadside Picnic, though. Book, film, or game, though, this is a story that's more human and more immersive than a flashy Hollywood offering.
Modern Warfare may have captured the feeling of a slow in, fast out covert operation set in this wilderness, but Shadow of Chernobyl has you live in it, day by day, threat by threat, all the while amazing you with the allure of the setting, though maybe losing you with the bizarre plot, from what I've read.
It's a long way of saying that I might end up watching someone else do better at this than I ever could, and definitely have the film on my radar, though the plots of all three different media entries differ. If anything about S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s description has caught your attention, you know what to do: avoid the radion pockets and rabid dogs.
Fun Facts
Development scope was so large that delays after delays lead to many onlookers declaring it vaporware, and publishers THQ had to come in a cut content to make sure it got out the door in the first place.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, developed by GSC Game World, first released in 2007.
Version played: PC, 2007.