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

Just for posterity and because I enjoy it, here are some impressions so far:

PC Specs: 3.2ghz dual core Pentium 4, NVIDIA 8800GT 520mb, 4gb RAM, Windows XP.

Settings: Steam version. All "high" at 1600x900. Not running DX11 though, obviously.

Drink of “choice”: Forgettable Swedish vodka and cranberry juice from concentrate. The cheapest I could find. Hey, we’re in a recession.

Played so far: About 16 hours. I’ve made it to Pripyat and completed the first mission there after goofing off for hours in the first two zones and running around confused by all my quest markers disappearing. (See below) Your mileage will certainly vary. I’m estimating I have 33% left in terms of missions.

Heads up: Minor Spoilers are present below concerning the plot.

Single-player: Performance is fine, if slightly worse than Clear Sky, but that’s probably as much my machine getting old as the game itself. Frame rate is not smooth, even at 1600x900, but combat is at least fluid enough that I’m not at a disadvantage. When the wind kicks up and blows all the foliage around, things really stutter. The game has crashed on me three times, including a bugged quest that I could never turn in; overall not bad for a series famously plagued with bugs and glitches.

Also on the plus side, only three zones equals hardly any loading screens compared to the previous Stalkers, and loading screens are no longer than one might expect; nowhere near The Witcher. *shudder*

The plot is standard. Some helicopters have crashed in the Zone and as a military man I’m supposed to investig OHMY&#*! there’s a pack of slavering pseudo dogs about to chew my face off!!!

As in any good Stalker game, things quickly devolve into “how do I survive the night?” GSC Game World has perfected the art of abandoning the player in an irradiated hellhole with a minimum of hand-holding, coddling or explaining. Call of Pripyat moves more toward helping the player develop a sense of narrative and progression, with some cinematic cut-scenes and many more scripted encounters than before, but it still very much errs on giving you too little rather than too much. One mission started out giving me specific map indicators on where to go next while searching for documents, only to suddenly change tactics and just put a dot in the middle of an inaccessible patch of land, in a new “it’s in this general vicinity” approach. The mission tracking also apparently doesn’t like it when you start a mission and then get distracted by another, as the PDA eventually gives up on you and erases the map markers, causing you to either wander aimlessly or hit the net for the walkthrough.

The factional warfare circus of Clear Sky has been toned down for Call of Pripyat, although you still have to choose between the bandits and the stalkers, and also have the option (although you can very easily ruin this chance without even knowing it) to choose between Duty or Freedom, although you’re never permanently flagged as hostile to anyone. Except maybe those darn zombies, but nobody likes them anyway.

If you’re coming into CoP from Clear Sky, here are a few tips: You can only sell weapons that are mostly in good condition. If a weapon is yellow or worse, unload the ammo and ditch it. Most of your money will come from artifacts, and decent artifacts can only be found with a Veles detector, so get one of those as soon as possible, or advance the story until you do. Many times you’ll receive a quest in one area but have to complete it in another. Get used to paying the guide to take you back and forth, and once you start making enough money, get the stalkers walking around to fast-travel you directly to the areas you want to visit. It’s much faster to visit anomalies and harvest artifacts if you can warp straight to them. If you’re wondering why nobody is selling better gear, advance the plot. Don’t automatically sell every scrap of information you come across to Owl. And finally, yes there is a way to survive an emission out in the open. You’ll have to stumble upon it or look it up online.

My favorite memory so far: Huddling in some crumbling basement in the middle of God knows where, clutching my rusty shotgun to my chest and praying some new and hideous mutant doesn’t find me as I wait out an emission - the sky pulsing cherry red and heat lightning crackling overhead.

My least favorite memory: Wasting 7 hours running all over the map trying to figure out where to go next when all my quest markers have inexplicably vanished; only making progress thanks to Lukasz “Terrag” Znojek, who apparently wrote the walkthrough that is now my Bible and my Consolation in the bleakness of the Zone.

Final Obligatory Overgeneralization: Call of Pripyat is more of the same, which is great if you loved the first two games, and even better if you haven’t played either in over a year and so mostly forgot about all the rough edges. Pick it up now before Spring arrives and underground concrete bunkers no longer sound appropriate. Unless you’re a southern hemisphere goodjer, in which case why aren’t you at the beach right now?

Multi-player: I haven’t touched it and probably never will. It’s not why I play Stalker games.

Montalban:

Thanks for the review. I appreciate the...

Hey! That's what I usually drink, that 'forgettable Swedish Vodka'. If that's the cheapest you could find, you're living in a high-falutiun' town! I'll slide some 'Country Club Vodka' from the South your way if you want to taste a truly cheap vodka, though it is certainly not forgettable. You'll not forget the hangover you get the next day on that crap!

The factional warfare circus of Clear Sky has been toned down for Call of Pripyat

Excellent! I always that was out of place. Glad to hear they've taken the focus off of that and back on the dangerous, mysterious zone.

Puce Moose wrote:

Hey! That's what I usually drink, that 'forgettable Swedish Vodka'. If that's the cheapest you could find, you're living in a high-falutiun' town! I'll slide some 'Country Club Vodka' from the South your way if you want to taste a truly cheap vodka, though it is certainly not forgettable. You'll not forget the hangover you get the next day on that crap!

No offense intended or given actually because it just indicates how little I know about vodka. It was on sale at Jewel and I wanted to try something different, but I should have been honest with myself and admitted that any vodka tastes like paint thinner to my southern-Indiana palette.

Puce Moose wrote:

Did the lighter arrive in the box already filled?

Nope.

Montalban: Were the markers gone completely? Even if you changed the active mission? Did you try turning them off and then on again?

Minor clarifications and quibbles pertaining to Montalban's excellent review:

Traders won't buy your guns if they are missing any more than two "blocks" off a full bar. So while it may still be green, two blocks and a sliver means no sale.

As far as I know, the only way to go between areas is to fast travel using a guide. Other than that I would advise against using random stalkers to fast travel. Much like Fallout 3, a great deal of this game is in the environment. The chances of stumbling across that cool abandoned building or creepy cave are far less likely to happen if you're only hitting fast travel spots.

This brings up one of the things I think CoP excels at that hasn't really been touched upon - The zone feels much more alive. It feels right to find mutants fighting each other. Or, to stumble across a armed group and to have that moment of anxiety as before you realizes that they too just want to "be cool" and just keep moving. And selling some crap to a random stalker has saved me from being overburdened on more than one occasion.

...And I just want to reiterate that I only experienced a few hangs in game play. Running maxed out DX10 at 1680x1050 with a 2.6ghz Core 2 Quad Extreme, GTX 260 896mb, 4gb RAM, Windows 7 64-bit. (Steam)

Yeah, my performance issues are definitely related to my older machine more than bad game coding. I'm in the process of backing up all my files so I can wipe the hard disk and see if that helps. But it's about time for a new comp.

I went back into the PDA to see if I could figure out what is/was going on with those quest objectives disappearing and couldn't find anyway to turn them on or off either way, but it's very possible I'm missing something. My experience at the beginning was that you don't have an "active" quest, you just get markers all over for whatever missions you have accepted. But halfway through suddenly I had a long list of missions but no markers to tell me where to go for them except the yellow markers for the helicopters and the main storyline. It's probably just user error if no one else is having the same problem.

I'm starting to enjoy the game; for some reason I had a hard time warming up to it, even though I loved the first Stalker. I whipped up a mod for it that drastically reduces the amount of ammunition available/found on corpses, which I think makes things a bit more tense when you're out of ammo and have to switch to a sub-par weapon because it's the only gun that can use what ammo you have left.

Anyway, made it to the Sawmill and it started to feel like Stalker again for me. I've only finished a handful of missions, but so far at least one has had a nice twist on the standard Fed-Ex stuff, making it a good deal more engaging.

Montalban: You seem to have put a pretty good amount of time into this one, so I thought I'd check; have they toned down the respawn in this one? I liked the first Stalker quite a bit, but there were certain segments where bandits *always* respawned in the exact same place whenever you went past it. Are there less of these obvious 'spawn a bunch of bad guy' points that you've seen? If those little nuggets of sadness are still in there, which faction did you see the most of? I'll probably ally with whichever group respawns the most annoyingly, simply to cut down on the constant shootin'.

Montalban wrote:

Yeah, my performance issues are definitely related to my older machine more than bad game coding. I'm in the process of backing up all my files so I can wipe the hard disk and see if that helps. But it's about time for a new comp.

I went back into the PDA to see if I could figure out what is/was going on with those quest objectives disappearing and couldn't find anyway to turn them on or off either way, but it's very possible I'm missing something. My experience at the beginning was that you don't have an "active" quest, you just get markers all over for whatever missions you have accepted. But halfway through suddenly I had a long list of missions but no markers to tell me where to go for them except the yellow markers for the helicopters and the main storyline. It's probably just user error if no one else is having the same problem.

There are buttons above the map that say something like "Main Quests", "Side Quests", "Areas" and something else.

Moose: You can stay neutral to all parties except zombies and Monolith soldiers. Regardless, the dynamic nature of the game seems to keep things moving. Remember to put your gun away and you should be fine.

Puce Moose wrote:

have they toned down the respawn in this one? I liked the first Stalker quite a bit, but there were certain segments where bandits *always* respawned in the exact same place whenever you went past it. Are there less of these obvious 'spawn a bunch of bad guy' points that you've seen? If those little nuggets of sadness are still in there, which faction did you see the most of? I'll probably ally with whichever group respawns the most annoyingly, simply to cut down on the constant shootin'.

Fortunately, enclaves of guys (no one is technically "bad" in this version) will stay dead if you kill them. For example, there's a building controlled by bandits in the Jupiter zone that if you kill, won't come back. Part of a quest is to decide if you pay them and keep the peace or refuse to pay and have to kill them all. The only people that re-spawn are those that go to and from the area bases, searching for artifacts or just wandering around. But I don't even think about re-spawn in this version, so that says a lot for how well they've hidden it.

As Captain says, you won't ever be hostile with any faction, ever. Only if you shoot at someone, or wave your gun in their face for a while, will they turn red and attack. But let's say you are out in the middle of the swamp, and you decide to gun down a group of bandits just for the heck of it. That won't ever permanently flag you as hostile with the bandits. At least, I don't go around shooting people so it has never happened to me.

Imagine Clear Sky's mechanics stuck into Call of Pripyat's mixed-faction bases. They would immediately erupt into anarchy and one faction would be wiped out completely as soon as you started the game. Everyone is much calmer this time around since Clear Sky.

However, once bandits and stalkers head out in the morning to go hunt for artifacts, as soon as they get a certain distance from the base they start shooting at each other if they run into each other. So you'll still come upon groups fighting, but you can stand right in the middle of their battle and not get shot at as long as you don't shoot at anyone either.

Choosing sides only amounts to choosing which groups you want to run quests for. That opens or locks certain events/missions to you, but otherwise doesn't get you shot at by anyone.

I've played about eight hours of the game, but coming from SHoC and skipping Clear Sky, I think I have a little different experience. To me, Call of Pripyat is what the original STALKER should have been when it was released a few years ago. Desolate, barren, scary, realistic. It's futuristic and just alien enough to be normal and believable which is a daunting task for any developer and it's done even better in this iteration.

I'm digging the upgrades system which is new to me since I skipped CS and the guns are very well balanced. I keep several different weapons in my stash to suit situations. Rough AKs for standard expeditions for artifacts, sub-machine guns and silenced pistols for assaults, shotguns for infiltration into zombi/mutant infested areas. Just coming back to my trunk and trading out the equipment to prepare is an awesome experience.

The AI is tight. It reacts in ways I would expect bandits to and the flanking and grenade flushes are pretty amazing sometimes. The way the story is loosely scripted in certain events and instances is phenomenal.

Spoiler ahead:

Spoiler:

When the guy named Tuna rips off my first artifact find for Beard and I found him afterward selling it in my stead, I was actually pissed. He said 'Hey Bro, that's how things go in the Zone. 'Yeah' I thought. I saw him chilling around the boat with some buddies and I was just waiting for him to make a move. Then, a few [game] days later, I saw him wandering out and about near the swamps with a lone bodyguard. I murdered him and his bodyguard with no witnesses and was loving every step of the emergent fun. That's life in the Zone, tuna. Tough luck.

I wouldn't recommend stalker to everyone. But on my PC which is a few years old (Dual Core, Radeon 9600, 2 gb ram) running maxed out in Direct X 9 I'm getting smooth to barely stuttering performance with load times for each HUGE map in under one minute. If you liked Shadows of Chernobyl, you would be shooting yourself in the foot not getting this one. Now I just hope they make a language mod so I can have the original Ukranian or Russian in it so I don't have to hear them yell 'Howdy Ho!' like Mr. Hankey every time I run across a straggling stalker.

So... The Idle Thumbs guys talked this game up. It sounded pretty great.

That said... I stalled out about three or four hours into Shadow of Chernobyl and never could get interested in playing it again.

Should I even bother with Call of Pripyat?

I just talked to a friend from another message board about it, he said there were only three large areas to explore, but they are much more detailed now, so there is a lot less running to do. I really liked SoC, despite never completing it. That sounds like a pro to me though, less running. I'm sure I'll buy it, but not until I get some other games I've paid full price for completed.

Thin_J wrote:

That said... I stalled out about three or four hours into Shadow of Chernobyl and never could get interested in playing it again.

Should I even bother with Call of Pripyat?

Why do you think you didn't go back to it, Thin_J? Mechanics? Atmosphere? Not interested in the story? Lack of direction?

If I had to really point to something specific I'd probably lean toward a lack of direction. I believe I had managed to get a little lost where I stopped. IIRC, I had wandered back and forth between the same two or three places over and over and never figured out where I was actually supposed to be going or what I was supposed to do.

Hey bro man! How's it cool, yeah?

I'm going to spoiler tag this because it's a quest, even if it's super early on.

Spoiler:

So the shady guy wanted me to join the bandits and jump the STALKERs, and Beardo wanted me to join the bandits to help ambush them with the STALKERs, and so I did that and then shooting happened and I'm not sure how it ended but the next day a bunch of bandits showed up at the boat and killed a bunch of STALKERs. So I killed them. Now the balance seems to be restored... just with fewer STALKER patrols. I'm not sure what really happened and hope it's not all that significant.

Then later I found some bandits walking near the boat and opened up on them. They locked down the boat, everyone went hostile, and the STALKERs started shooting at ME from the boat, despite the fact that I just did them a favor. What gives?

I've also started finding artifacts. Should I save them for when Beardy McBeardson needs them, or just sell them to him now, presumably for less than I'd get if they were quest items? I have no use for them. Armor is insanely expensive and the radiation they give off poisons me so quickly they're useless to me.

Something very cool happened to me, and it's not related to a plotline, more atmospheric, but I thought I'd spoiler tag it in case someone wants to experience it fresh for themselves.

Spoiler:

After the ambush I was headed back toward the boat, encumbered with loot. It was just after midnight so extremely dark, and I figured I couldn't run with all that junk and didn't want to attract attention so I'd just walk casually with my light out. Now, that's pretty damn spooky on its own, what with not being able to see. Then I heard some growling close by. I turned on my light and there was something... just hideous, directly in front of me. Melee range. It bolted, presumably afraid of the light (if I were that ugly, I'd be, too). I left my light on the rest of the way back.

OK cool guy, talk to you later!

Thin_J wrote:

If I had to really point to something specific I'd probably lean toward a lack of direction. I believe I had managed to get a little lost where I stopped. IIRC, I had wandered back and forth between the same two or three places over and over and never figured out where I was actually supposed to be going or what I was supposed to do.

On the one hand, CoP is better at giving you direction. Right when you start things aren't entirely clear, but soon you have found the main mission hub "city" area and are running to and fro based on PDA markers and blurbs that remind you what you're looking for. You'll stay in the same area for a while too, so you'll get used to navigating your way around it, rather than going between areas (and loading screens) as frequently as in Clear Sky. So that's good. And there are only three areas total.

Specific missions, however, still have that signature "guess I'll just have to figure it out as I go along" feel that Lobster experienced with his spoilered quest. I had the same issue, and ended up accidentally joining the wrong faction.

But within a certain area it's much easier to figure out where to go next, even if you still have to run around a bit. As long as you enjoy the atmosphere and emergent fights, it shouldn't drag too much.

LobsterMobster wrote:

Hey bro man! How's it cool, yeah?

Then later I found some bandits walking near the boat and opened up on them. They locked down the boat, everyone went hostile, and the STALKERs started shooting at ME from the boat, despite the fact that I just did them a favor. What gives?

I've also started finding artifacts. Should I save them for when Beardy McBeardson needs them, or just sell them to him now, presumably for less than I'd get if they were quest items? I have no use for them. Armor is insanely expensive and the radiation they give off poisons me so quickly they're useless to me.

OK cool guy, talk to you later!

Heidy ho!

They'll lock down the boat if you get in any fight close enough to it. And they consider it an affront to the free love and tolerance atmosphere they have so carefully cultivated within 20 yards. Otherwise they'd all massacre one another, and there's no profit in that.

For artifacts, ask Beard what he needs (because he'll pay you about 2-3x normal price), and if you don't have it, sell whatever you have to him anyway until you can use them. Once you can start using them, sell him or anyone else your junky ones and keep the good ones until you have duplicates.

Money for armor will come from missions and artifacts, slowly but surely. Getting better detectors and tagging along for free with other stalkers looking for them will make it go a lot faster. Remember that every new emission potentially re-seeds the artifacts, so you'll never run out if you play the game long enough. Your main competition is other stalkers beating you to the punch.

Take it easy, brah!

And you'll find other artifacts that will negate radiation, allowing you to wear artifacts all the time.

I bit the bullet last week after finishing my first run through of Dragon Age, so I'm installing now.

I picked this up, I'm a big fan of "emergent" gameplay. Idle Thumbs and GWJ recommendations are more than enough for me.

Yeah I just picked this up a couple days ago as well. I am probably 5 or 6 hours in, and I have had a ton of great "emergent" moments as I wander through the Zone. I really enjoy the emission storms mechanic. I love the sense of urgency I get when a emission storm is imminent. The other day I found myself holed up in the bottom of a dark, dank sewer pipe watching as the little circle of sky above me turned red as the storm passed. Sometimes it will drive warring factions together into the same building as causing firefights to break out in these small, confined areas. Lots of fun.

EriktheRed wrote:

Yeah I just picked this up a couple days ago as well. I am probably 5 or 6 hours in, and I have had a ton of great "emergent" moments as I wander through the Zone. I really enjoy the emission storms mechanic. I love the sense of urgency I get when a emission storm is imminent. The other day I found myself holed up in the bottom of a dark, dank sewer pipe watching as the little circle of sky above me turned red as the storm passed. Sometimes it will drive warring factions together into the same building as causing firefights to break out in these small, confined areas. Lots of fun.

This....This x 1000. I would have been so much very happy had the periodic emission storm made the cut on Stalker SOC as was originally intended. I'll see when I can get this one and get my long overdue-fix

Has anyone else had the X-Ray Engine error when trying to run this from Steam? I can't even get past the splash screen, and none of the stuff I found on Google seems to help.

Vague sweet memories of Tarkovsky and the first STALKER and Idle Thumbs and everything Montalban's said in this thread make me wish I had a rig enough for this game. Rock the artifacts, guys.

Tigerbill wrote:

Has anyone else had the X-Ray Engine error when trying to run this from Steam? I can't even get past the splash screen, and none of the stuff I found on Google seems to help.

I just finished this game up and I didn't have a single crash, which is impressive for a STALKER game. Vista 32-bit, C2D 8500, 4870 512 meg.

This was much better than Clear Sky. The game felt like it had more direction and there was actually a bit of character development which was surprising. I would have been annoyed if they busted out the old "you have amnesia. go wander around for a while." There were no repeated areas from the previous games (as far as I could tell). I also liked the achievements for finishing quest lines.

I'm not sure if GSC is growing up or they've hired some new game designers (or both), but this is a marked improvement. This was a steal for $20.

Spoiler:

I really like how the ending had a "where are they now" for characters and storylines based on your actions in the game. It was one of the most satisfying video game endings ever. Strelok showing up at the end was a nice way to bring all three games together and make me look forward to Stalker 2.

Tigerbill wrote:

Has anyone else had the X-Ray Engine error when trying to run this from Steam? I can't even get past the splash screen, and none of the stuff I found on Google seems to help.

I can't even get it to launch. I try to launch it from Steam and... nothing happens. There is an xrEngine.exe process running in task manager but the game itself is a no-go.

Got it from Steam because of my "loyalty discount". Guess I should have bought retail after all.

tanstaafl wrote:
Tigerbill wrote:

Has anyone else had the X-Ray Engine error when trying to run this from Steam? I can't even get past the splash screen, and none of the stuff I found on Google seems to help.

I can't even get it to launch. I try to launch it from Steam and... nothing happens. There is an xrEngine.exe process running in task manager but the game itself is a no-go.

Got it from Steam because of my "loyalty discount". Guess I should have bought retail after all.

Google is your friend. I'm sure you're not the first person to have the problem.

OK, didn't find the answer on Google but it did point me in the right direction.

Found someone who said they had the same problem and got it to work by disabling Xfire. Now, I don't have Xfire but I do have Raptr and guess what? Disabling Raptr did the trick.

Dunno why having Raptr running would cause the problem since it has never affected anything before but at least I'm running now. Anyone else who is having a problem, try disabling Raptr and/or Xfire.

Nice one! Enjoy the game

Citizen86 wrote:
tanstaafl wrote:
Tigerbill wrote:

Has anyone else had the X-Ray Engine error when trying to run this from Steam? I can't even get past the splash screen, and none of the stuff I found on Google seems to help.

I can't even get it to launch. I try to launch it from Steam and... nothing happens. There is an xrEngine.exe process running in task manager but the game itself is a no-go.

Got it from Steam because of my "loyalty discount". Guess I should have bought retail after all.

Google is your friend. I'm sure you're not the first person to have the problem.

Well I guess it will just reinforce the pile until i can find an answer.

Did you try disabling Xfire/Raptr/anything like that? That fixed my problem.

I also saw people reporting success with...

Uninstalling Securom if it was floating around your system from another install. Apparently there are instructions on how to do it on the Securom site.

Disabling FRAPS. Someone reported that as a problem.

Starting the game with no DVD in the drive and letting the game prompt you for it. Obviously you can't do this if you downloaded from Steam or whatever.

Now that I'm in I'm loving the game. It's odd, normally I get frustrated at a lot of FPSes because I'm really not that good at them but I loved the original STALKER and am loving this one despite the difficulty (to me). I think it is because of the exploration/discovery aspect of the game.

And now I've added the STALKER movie to my Netflix queue. Yeah, great game.