I played many hours of the first Stalker game, not so many of the second, and I'm pleased to report that this third game in the series is the best of all. I dearly loved Shadow of Chernobyl in spite of a somewhat linear design, and I would have been happy with more of the same. But Call of Pripyat consists of only three very huge areas, each of which can be explored without loading screens. Granted, the areas are so vast, that to begin with, there is a bit of minor hitching as the engine loads assets, but this hitching disappears over a couple of minutes.

This game seems a bit easier than the first two, which is a good thing for me. Clear Sky in particular was sort of confusing, I thought. There are many missions to do in CoP, and this time, I'm having a much easier time following what's going on. The engine is a bit dated now, but the important thing is that it's very polished, and runs very nice on my Q6600 w/ 9800GT and 6 gigs ram at 1920 x 1200 Direct X 9 setting with most options set fairly high, and draw distance maxxed.

For me, the most notable thing about this series has always been the atmosphere of dread that permeates the world, and that atmosphere is back in spades here. I literally shivered walking into my first nighttime thunderstorm with my meager flashlight showing the way. It was a delicious shiver. The atmosphere is simply unmatched. In fact, the first thing I did when starting the game for the first time is simply go exploring. There is much to explore, and I had an extreme amount of fun for 2 solid hours just doing that while not taking any missions.

When I finally decided to get into the meat of the game, I was pleased to find a wide variety of missions, during which you can still explore to your heart's content. I've also had many leap-out-of-my-seat in fear moments, where I was scared so bad I thought about quitting. Well, if you can't tell, I really love this game. It is exactly the kind of game I've always wanted to play.

This game runs smoother and faster with higher settings than either Clear Sky or SOC on my system (a modest AMDX2 2Ghz w/8800 GTS and 2GB ram), no bugs whatsoever, they really have optimized the engine, improved the already great graphics and seem to have ironed out all the bugs.

All the Stalker games are pretty much the same, which is to say AWESOME...open world, total freedom, independent living world..sometimes i'll just climb to a high vantage point to snipe at far-away wild dogs or just watch a distant gun battle...but the heart of the game is the realistic, savage firefights and the atmosphere that makes you feel as if you're really there in the zone, alone most of the time, in the chilling rain or the hair-raising black of night, perhaps low on ammo or food, your only small sense of comfort coming from the bond you feel with your only true friend, the cold steel of your assault rifle.

But dont take my word for it, here is a direct quote from the Gamespot Review:
"Like its predecessors, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat is all about stretches of chilling stillness and thick dread, punctuated by the tense thrills of menacing mutants and the rush of discovery. If you've played either of the first two games of the series, you know that The Zone is a harsh mistress, and exploring it requires patience, thoughtful planning, and plenty of ammo. But it's also erupting with rewards as long as you know where to look. This shooter/role-playing hybrid oozes ambience by the bucketful, whether you're traversing marshes or skulking through dark crevasses, and the dread that accumulates makes encounters with all sorts of grotesque freaks feel all the more suspenseful."

And from the IGN review:
"The original Shadow of Chernobyl was an incredible game in many ways, offering players an opportunity to explore an exceptionally realized, radiation-blasted setting seeded with horror and entertainment. Yet it was also lacking in a few areas, one being polish, and another being a solid character progression infrastructure. With Call of Pripyat, GSC Game World delivers its most stable and playable version of the Zone yet. Though it's not quite as surprising as the original, it's still a standout game that deserves to be given a chance by anyone that reads this. There aren't many titles able to offer up such an affecting atmosphere mixed with enjoyable mechanics, and even if some bits of the game remain uneven, it's an experience that will stick with you long after it's over."

I decided I'll turn this review around and make it into a "play log": I'll keep updating this review, along with my rating, as I progress in the game (without giving away anything, of course - don't worry, I don't like spoilers either.)

Feb 6 1:30AM: Just received the game tonight and I'm only into it for an hour or so but I can say it has all the ingredients to become the best of all S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games... very nice graphics (except trees, their crown/leaves look like cartoons from a distance, something just isn't right about them - maybe they didn't expect someone max out all details in the game?)
As a huge fan of the series I started Call of Pripyat on Veteran - maybe it was a mistake, firefights are brutal at this level, enemies are like aimbots they shoot to kill and they are deadly, even with few bullets fired. With my military service behind me I'd say it's pretty realistic (hit registration) - of course I like it being realistic. :)
There's one exception though which I did not like in earlier S.T.A.L.K.E.R. episodes either and unfortunately it's still present: I don't recall either my early AMM (or AK-63D aka AKM) or regular AMMSz (AK-63E aka AKMS) to produce such a huge recoil especially not in the hands of a supposed professional Special Forces soldier taking aim, sent to an undercover mission deep into unknown territory (can't really imagine him as a thin-framed guy. :))
The map is HUUUUUUUGE which is truly awesome... it will certainly keep me entertained until Metro 2033 arrives. ;)
TBC

It's rather difficult to explain what really sums up the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. experience. Is it the haunting atmosphere and the ghostly landscapes? Is it the way-above average sense of realism and the real-life shooting mechanics? Or perhaps the overall feeling of being there? It's basically all of those and more. This game is not your typical shooter, in fact it's quite far from being just a shooter since most of the game time is spent on exploration and travelling the wide open and beautifully rugged landscapes of a dangerous place known as the Zone. The game is very free-form, so you're free to do what ever you want right from the start.
Probably the greatest aspect of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games is the fact that the world around you is constantly alive, meaning that you don't have to go someplace to make something happen. You might be staying in a safe-haven, tuning your weapons - a nice addition to the series - and at the same time hear a large pack of dogs attacking unwary travellers. Much later, you go out and find these travellers, dead and looted by bandits. You travel further, only to find those bandits killed by the same pack of dogs who then attack you, all the while a dangerous mutant jumps at you from the bushes. You never know what to expect so it won't get old fast.
One well-made aspect of the game is the dynamic day and night-cycle. You get to witness plenty of beautiful sunrises and sunsets as well as pitch black(I mean it) nights. Weather changes dynamically too and a thunder storm at night in the middle of the town of Pripyat is a sight to behold. Otherwise the graphics are somewhat dated, though it's not like they're sub-par. Also, the game is way more stable than its predecessors and it never crashed on me.
The free-form nature of the game along with realistic game-mechanics, interesting environments, well-designed quests and good, alive AI offers one hell of a gaming experience. It's somewhat unpolished here and there(especially the cutscenes) and the final parts of the game as well as the plot leave something to be desired, but the truth is; once you enter the Zone, you don't want to get out.

Stalker CoP was a much better game than Stalker CS was - but still has nothing on the original Shadow of Chernobyl. The graphics are updated - which was nice, but talk about a short game! There are 3 main areas - which honestly don't take that long to complete. The story is only OK, and the voice acting seems like it's been done by about 5 people - this for all the different people you meet in the game. I experienced very, very few bugs which was a nice change from all previous Stalker games.

However, there's a great mod out there - SMRTER (can be found through filefront - or a simple google search) - which added new life to this game for me and had me replaying and searching everywhere for extra goodies. The difficulty was increased, more mutants and more and varied weapons. There are some problems with the mod (it's still in its Alpha stage), but definitely worth the look if you want to breathe new life into CoP!

I gave 3 stars as it was still a decent game as far as games go - but honestly if modders can make the game a better overall experience than the original publishing & development companies - you know, the ones with the money and resources - there's something wrong.

First, this is definitely the most stable of all the STALKER games! The first crash I experienced was well after I had finished the game and was in freeplay mode. My old PC, single core Pentium 4 @ 2.3 Ghz, 2 GB RAM, and an ATI Radeon 1950 XP Pro video card, played it fine on high settings with static lighting. There is an occasional stutter when running but that happens pretty well across the board regardless of the PC according to forums I read.

On to gameplay! The game covers new areas with only Pripyat being familiar, but in name only. You don't revisit any of the areas from either Shadow of Chernobyl or Clear Sky. A few familiar names of people and places come up in dialogs, but it's all new terrain. The area is three maps, Zanton Creek, Jupiter, and Pripyat. While I read how huge the maps were I was somewhat disappointed. They really aren't all that big once you've been through them. Places to explore may seem numerous at first, but are limited. Underground caves can be maddeningly confusing, but the labs and othe facilities are not. Zanton Creek is very sparse being largely swamp with stranded ships littering the area and few structires. Jupiter has a bit more with Yanoc Station, a railroad station, being the center area. The Scientist bunker (think Yantar) is there. The name comes from the Jupiter auto factory that it in one corner of the area. Pripyat initially seems large because of all the buildings and streets, but soon you find exploring opportunities are limited. Most of the buildings are sealed and most of those you can enter are limited in where you can go inside. The one biggest disappointment for me was finding and exploring Oasis, a place that is mentioned in nearly every dialog with NPCs everywhere on all the maps. Being so embedded in the dialogs and spoken of in such mystical terms I really expected so much more than what was there when I finally found it. Like another full map. (Maybe a modder will do something with it.) One weird thing for me was the character you play is a military officer working undercover posing as a Stalker. You are investigating the crash of several military helicopters which is the basic story line of the game. The military were enemies and real jerks in both the other STALKER games so I didn't like playing one of them. One difference with Call of Pripyat is that other than Monolith, Zombies, and mutants, you don't have factions that automatically hate you. Even taking out Bandits won't get all of them mad at you. There is an opportunity to join Duty or Freedom. I didn't join either and kept both groups as friends throughout the game. Sadly, I though the game was too short but that may have been because i played the other 2 so many times I know "how" to play it.

While Call of Pripyat lacks the eerie atmosphere of Shadow of Chernobyl or the over the top combat of Clear Sky, it still has the STALKER feel. Enemies still include Bandits, Monolith (with an exception), Mercs, Zombies, Blind Dogs, Pseudodogs, Controllers, Boars, Fleshes, etc. all return. Bloodsuckers are back and more treacherous, circling closer and moving faster. The canines are amped up as well and are harder to hit. New enemies, Burers and Chimeras make an appearance and are a real challenge. Anomalies return but take a new variety of forms. Artifacts are still there and hunting them can be profitable. Weapons and armor can all be upgraded and maintained by technicians in each area for a price. There have been improvements to both, especially the pistols.

A bit of advice, continue to save often. There are places in the game where you can sell or give certain items to certain people which will change things in how the game plays out. Unfortunately, there is nothing that alerts you when you are involved in a game changing moment. I would recommend to play the game through and then read a couple walkthroughs to see where the decision points are and then play it again and take the direction that interests you. There are times, especially at the end, where missions come up one after another and you may feel rushed to complete them. This will shorten the game a lot so take your time. You can miss entire missions that won't affect the game ending, but may prevent you from getting goodies. You may not even know you are missing something because many need you to engage in a dialog with a specific NPC to start or continue a mission. At the end of the game you will have an opportunity to be evacuated from the Zone with the military. Save your game before the escort mission in Pripyat. Allow yourself to be evacuated by going with the helicopters to see how the game ends. Reload the save and next time chose to stay and you'll enter freeplay mode where you won't have any missions but can roam everywhere and fight at will. I use freeplay to master my favorite weapons.

If you played either of the first 2 STALKER games and modded them using the unpacker, the exact same unpacker works with this one. I always up my carry weight so I can pack a lot of firepower and ammo and I can make big hauls of loot to the traders. To conclude. Call of Pripyat is another interesting chapter in the STALKER story. If you liked the first two, you will like this. Best of all, it WORKS without crashing!

I ordered the game on Monday through Amazon and received on Wednesday (10 Feb 10). My first 2.5 hr session was completely bug free, and compared to both previous STALKER games, these are the aspects I really like:

1. Font and graphics are "softer" but crisper - e.g., more Mac-ish than PC-ish.
2. If I have to reload from a previous save, it takes much less time (although,I recently upgraded my DVD R/W drive).
3. The game motion if more fluid, kinetically.
4. Having loved Fallout3, I really dig the open environment; while the map is huge, I do hope that individual action locations are more involved than in Clear Sky.
5. The screens for equipment and mission info are also more current in style and look.
6. Artifacts are easier to come by than CS, but less so the SOC; potential artifact sites are identifed on the map, so obtaining them is more straight forward - if you have the better detectors.
7. Fire fights are more intense than previous versions too.

All in all, it appears to be a FAR MORE polished product than the first two games, and once I go through in Stalker mode, it will be fun to play in the most difficult mode. What a great genre - when will Metro 2033 be translated to English!!!

I've loved the STALKER games since the moment I first encountered SHADOW OF CHERNOBYL a few years back. CLEAR SKY was impressive once they patched it, and in many ways better than S.O.C. I hoped that CALL OF PRIPYAT would follow that trend and be the best STALKER game of the series. I'm happy to say that it is. The best elements of the original are still in tact, but they've polished out some of the glitches and bumps that took away from the first two. What's left is a very smooth FPS that feels deep, rich, and rewarding to play. With Direct X11, the game is impressive to look at as well, and isn't the resource hog that CLEAR SKY was. Visually this game is a 8/10 and better than many other games in the same genre.

The storyline is simple, and not quite as compelling as the first game. But I don't really play the STALKER games for the story as much as I play them for the combat, atmosphere, and environments. These are games you can really spend time exploring, and it's highly rewarding to do just that. Finding the perfect artifact or an amazing stash is awesome. The game is harsh, hard (if you play it on Master), and at times frightening. All of those elements provide a gaming experience that is immersive and which sticks with you after the fact. (The last hour of the first STALKER game goes down in my memory as one of the best final game sequences I've ever played in 20+ years of gaming).

Improvements:

1) Much better inventory system that is cleaner and easier to navigate. It's a lot easier to see what you have, what it is, and what you can use it for. Mousing over guns will highlight their corresponding ammo and vice-versa. This makes it simple to understand what ammo to purchase at traders and what to sell.

2) Mutant AI is much improved. Dogs, Snorks, Bloodsuckers, etc., will not just charge straight at you anymore. They will circle you and attack from behind, maul you from the side, and generally make you very frustrated at first. Tactics are much more important now, and using protection from cover is pretty much a must. Bloodsuckers are very tough because their invisibility is now nearly constant. They've also added in a very freaky ability for them to actually grab you and of course suck some of your blood. The first time that happened it totally freaked me out!

3) Weapon and equipment modifications are as awesome as ever. Guns really do feel unique, and a fully modified riffle is significantly better than the vanilla version. Finding a nice shooter is rewarding on so many levels. One of the best things about the game is slowly accumulating some good pieces of equipment and being able to engage tougher enemies, and tougher environments.

4) The maps are larger and more varied that before with plenty of new places to explore (along with many classics as well!). Map markers are a bit clearer, so navigating around is that much easier. I do wish they'd allow you to drop your own map marker, but that's a small complaint.

5) Side missions are as interesting and varied as ever. Many are much more complex than 'bring x to y" FEDEX missions. There are some really interesting asides to explore that allow earlier access to premium equipment and supplies. I especially liked the 'disappearing stalkers' mission you get early in the game.

6) There is a massive community of fans of the STALKER games who have released some really great mods for the game. It's worth noting this because many of the MODS are so good that they make playing the game the 2nd time a totally new experience. I'd highly recommend getting a few (I get those that let me run for a longer period of time since fast travel isn't perfect, as well as those that let me sell more types of weapons to the traders) and trying them out.

A few complaints:

No game is perfect, and there are a few things that just don't feel quire right in C.O.P.

1) STALKERS referring to each other as 'bro'? A Russian Special Forces Commando who says 'fughgedaboutit'? Some of the dialogue is just silly. Some of the English translations are rather odd as well.

2) Fast travel isn't set up that well. You have to go to a guide and have them take you places. It would have been much easier to just use the big map and click where you want to go. Someone will probably provide that in a MOD though.

3) Stashes are HARD to find. They used to be marked with some text that would at least make it slightly easier to locate them. Now they're just green map markers that don't tell you jack. I've only been able to find about half of those marked on my map. Seriously it shouldn't be this hard or frustrating to find a stash. The worst is when you spend a bunch of time to find one and all it contains is a bandage or something equally common.

Final thoughts:

I love the STALKER games because they hands down have some of THE BEST environments and set pieces in the FPS genre. Their blend of action and silence is fantastic. Strolling around THE ZONE is a chilling experience and the photo realism of many of the locations is impressive. I did a bit of reading on Chernobyl after playing the first STALKER game and was blown away by how the pictures of the ZONE look just like the game. STALKER games are eerie, intense, frightening, rewarding, and above all very entertaining. I highly recommend them all.

Skip to the bottom if you want to see a summary of what I though was good and bad in Call of Pripyat.

Having enjoyed the first STALKER game, I decided to skip Clear Sky, because most people seemed to think it wasn't worth the time (I did play a little bit of it, though). The reviews for Call of Pripyat were mostly positive, so I figured I'd check it out.

STALKER: Call of Pripyat is the third game in the STALKER series. It does quite of few things pretty decently, and it's really solid and stable, but it falls flat in plenty of areas, especially in difficulty and story.

One thing I'd like to say is that Call of Pripyat's side quests are excellent. They're not completely boring like a few of the side quests in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl were. Call of Pripyat's side quests were really well done, and a few of them actually had plot twists, which made them even more interesting.

Graphics: Call of Pripyat's graphics are a lot better than Shadow of Chernobyl's graphics, but for some reason the graphics didn't seem as good as Clear Sky's. I don't really know why, to be honest. Call of Pripyat's graphics aren't bad, they're just aging.

Singeplayer: Singleplayer is pretty much the same as in the previous STALKER games, although it's more of a letdown for various reasons. For starters, the introduction and ending 'slideshows' were poorly done. Second, while the atmosphere was still okay, Call of Pripyat just didn't seem scary at all compared to the first game. To me, Pripyat seems less of a survival horror game and more of a survival game, because I was rarely scared. Third, the areas are a heck of a lot smaller than they were in the first game, simply because a lot of the areas are fenced off. On the map, players are given the illusion that the three areas you can go to are huge, but in reality, they're pretty limited. Aside from that, the plot, voice-acting, and difficulty were also pretty bad, and quite a few features that were in the first game are gone. The new creatures are also kind of disappointing, and there are no random anomalies anywhere; they're all in set areas.

Multiplayer: I found Call of Pripyat's multiplayer to be pretty bad. It lacks the depth of the singleplayer game, and aside from that, most of the servers I went on were pretty laggy, even when I went on one that had a ping of 65.

I'd say that one of my biggest complaints concerns the artifacts. In Shadow of Chernobyl, artifacts were good enough to warrant filling up all of your artifact slots. In Pripyat, there's no point to even getting extra slots; the only artifacts I ever used were the ones that reduced radiation and increased the amount I could carry.

Without going into too much detail, I'll tell you that the plot is really, really bad. The presentation is just awful, and a lot of things either don't make sense, are never explained, or both.

DRM: Call of Pripyat has a tame kind of Securom on it. This kind of Securom only makes you have the disk in the drive, which is pretty much how games used to be, anyways. There's no installation limit of any kind, which is excellent.

Sadly, I'd say that Call of Pripyat isn't like Shadow of Chernobyl in the sense that you'll want to play it over again. Call of Pripyat just isn't everything it could or should have been.

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The Good: Excellent side quests, good gameplay, graphically fairly decent. The upgrade system is a lot better than it was in Clear Sky, too. DRM is also fairly tame compared to most games these days. Also much more stable than the previous STALKER games.

The Bad: Horrible voice-acting and plot, atmosphere lacking, a few prominent features in the first game have been removed, and the areas you can go to are a lot smaller than in the previous games. Pripyat City was also very disappointing. Also lacks the re-playability of the first game. Another thing: Major Degtyrev never wears a helmet. This is extremely annoying, but thankfully there's a mod for that.

Love the game.it has been rock stable no mater how long I play.
I agree that the story is week..But no biggie Pripyat's environment
Is good enough for me.Runs smooth at 1920x1200 in a xp OS
With a little tweaking in Nhancer my old school 8800GTX x2
Run in SLI well! There is a ton of mods available so replay
Interest for me will be high.The game captures the good ol'
Creepy sometimes terrifying environment I love in the STALKER
Series I am almost to the end of the game and up till now
Not one crash to desktop!...WOW! So far no broken missions
like ClearSky had.I do wish i could move between areas without
paying a guide.It's not a perfect game...But few games are. The
price is soft so i consider the game to be a bargain