Man made hell! Review of Shadow of Chernobyl and Clear Sky

First of all, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and stalkers is not about the social behaviour so often described in social studies from special spots in our present society. Our stalkers are different, and the abbreviation is for Scavengers, Trespassers, Adventurers, Loners, Killers, Explorers and Robbers. A very mixed lot that is, and there will be both honest people and rabid psychopats. They have only one thing in common, and that is the need to survive the manmade hell the Zone is.

Pripyat, the town housing employees of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, was one of the prides of the Soviet Union. Above: schoolbooks left behind the day it was all over.

The small Ukrainian game company GSC-Game World probably also felt a need to survive after investing years of work in the PC game S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Shadow of Chernobyl. But they had a few very strong cards to play with. One thing is to be inspired by such sources as an obscure science fiction novel and a movie few had heard about. Quite another story is to merge this with their own unsettling experience of being very close to the scene of the most brutal industrial accident until this time, the Chernobyl meltdown in 1986. They sold two million copies of the game, evenly divided between the western world and Eastern Europe. Fantasy elements from Arkady and Boris Strugatsky's "Roadside Picnic" (1972), a haunting atmosphere from Andrei Tarkovsky's movie "Stalker" (1979) and even the frightening spectre of the sarcophagued reactor of Chernobyl could hardly alone explain the success of the game. Let's see how the developers played their cards.

Most "First Person Shooters" are "corridor" games. The player has to follow a quite narrow path and basically must shoot to death any surprising enemy that pops into his (or her) view. After a while you will feel that even if this can be kind'a fun, it's also not only a little braindead. In contrast to this, Shadow of Chernobyl combines the FPS with role playing, and it opens the landscape. The player is free to roam, he is free to do what he feels for. Admittedly, there are a lot of missions to be done to further the main story, but after this the same scenes can be revisited and there is still life going on, often unpredictable, often dangerous and often involving people that are already known. Sometimes you feel as if you meet old friends, and that doesn't come easy in a computer game.

One of the few you can depend on. Bes is a real freedom fighter, an independent soul,

Shadow of Chernobyl of course has a lot of fantasy creatures of both animal and human origin. It's true to game tradition that way. But you always wonder where they come from, if they are products of the Zone emissions or if they are made up by mad scientists. And you don't have to shoot them. You can leave them be, at least sometimes, or you can run away from them. Likewise you are left with a lot of questions about people's behaviour. Some are friendly, some cannot be trusted, some shoot you if they can. It can be difficult to separate friends from foes and you have to find your direction through the society of stalkers taking all possible care of your own safety. And as you progress through the game, you will meet groups that with good reasons can be suspected of being agents of foreign powers, you will meet factions that strongly resembles political ghosts of the past, and you will meet adventurers with motives so unclear that only scavenging the Zone for all possible clues to their whereabouts will give you a picture of them at all. And the clues are not that many, and sometimes point in different directions. Yourself, you are thrown into the game as a man who does not know who he is or where he's from. You are named after a tattoo saying S.T.A.L.K.E.R. You will soon be known as the Marked One, and to your knowledge your only mission in life is to kill another man, for reasons undisclosed. (Cont'd below video window)

Video: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. - Mad World. I had another version of this melody here, but some restrictions came and took it away from my Norwegian visitors. So here's a new one. It's not that bad.

The gamers are often very dedicated. Above is a view of a coin made by the Canadian gamer Rhialto. (We are all known by our forum names. Mine is sunzi) Only 100 numbered coins were made, and they are among the finest collectibles in the gaming world. Like the game itself, it's made with great respect for the human suffering caused by the Chernobyl accident in 1986. The story of the coin and a video presentation can be found here.

Many will help you. That's what they say. But you very soon discover that the Zone is not just helping and being helped. You are most often taken advantage of, and you cannot prevent that. To find this man you must kill, and to survive in the Zone at all, you must often compromise. But then again you are also often faced with choices. You don't always have to be a hitman for the Zone mafia. In one scale is your conscience, in the other the money.

Many have tried to find an explanation for the very special immersion experienced in the stalker games. They mention the scenery, the uneartly sounds of huge powers surrounding you at all times, the echoes of the desperation that must have plagued those who in 1986 sacrificed their lives to "liquidate" the dangers of the radioactive Zone, and the sudden changing of the weather from the most beautiful day you can imagine to a feeling that all nature is against you. And all this can explain a lot. But add to this the everpresent likeness to "Zones" in the world at large. There are zones of environmental hazards all over the world, there are war zones by the dozens, there are "zones" within societies where you have to mobilize all your cleverness to survive 'til the next day. And there are "zones" within ourselves where we hardly dare to tread. The game maybe touches strings in our inner feelings that resonate with what is going on as the Marked One strives to find his own way. I'm of course not sure if this is absolutely right, but it might explain the fact that the stalker games, and especially Shadow of Chernobyl, have such dedicated gamers all over the world. They laugh about newbies that are boasting that they can "beat the game" in a few hours. Why beat the game, we want it to last, we want to stay there!

In Clear Sky, "artifact" hunting is no longer easy. Finding the first, like here, is a walk in the park. Later it can be almost impossible to catch the things.

Staying in the game was not always an easy task. Both Shadow of Chernobyl (2007) and the "prequel" Clear Sky (2008) were released with so many technical bugs that they could destroy the commitment of even the most dedicated gamers. Only after series of patches could the games be considered stable enough to avoid regularly occuring CTDs, "crashing to desktop", and other catastrophes. This reduced the number of gamers and it probably hurt the economy of the developing company and their distributors more than they liked. But the die-hard gamers used every new patch as an excuse to start the game from the beginning yet another time...

When GSC-Game World announced that Clear Sky was to be released, hopes ran high. And many were disappointed. This was not the Zone they were used to! Clear Sky is the story of how the Zone became what it is in Shadow of Chernobyl. And it is different. The paramilitary "factions" have hundreds of soldiers and the Zone is almost crowded with people. Regular wars are fought. You no longer have the feeling anywhere that this was a place real people fled from in desperation, hesitating ones already dying as they came out of the area. Stalkers are enjoying joints more than vodka, and around the Zone campfires the songs of troubadours sound a little less lonely and sad. But it's still a great game, and only compared to Shadow of Chernobyl and very few others can it be considered a little disappointing. In some respects it is better than Shadow of Chernobyl. (cont'd below video window)