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

I f.ucking love this game!!! It's the best one of the trilogy and I just finished it, sadly I wish it would have been longer Even if I did all the side quests, main mission and pushed my gear to the best it was way to short, imo I love wandering around in the Zone, collecting artifacts, killing Zombies, Monolith and other 'things' Also, it's damn fun to watch from a distance the other Stalkers either fighting each other or defending themselves against a pack of dogs or some creatures, I really wonder why they get killed so often, damn losers :D more loot for me, I guess When an Emission hits you have to seek shelter and more than once I found myself in some cave where I had to fight some weirdo first so I could stay safe All in all, yeah, I wholeheartedly recommend this game! It was a blast and I for sure will replay at times 10/10

[h1] Truly, the best game in the trilogy. [/h1] There is quite the amount of reasons why when any S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fan is asked about which of the games in the series is which, with a high chance, he will name Clear Sky the worst and Call Of Pripyat the best. I will explain the good and the bad sides of this game, and why I consider a purchase of it well worth the money I spent. The review assumes you have played the previous installments of the franchise (Shadow Of Chernobyl, Clear Sky). If you haven't, I do not recommend playing this game first, but rather going through the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy as follows: Shadow Of Chernobyl → Clear Sky → [b] Call of Pripyat [/b] [h2] 1. Excellent story and immense player choice. [/h2] Call of Pripyat truly could be considered a great ending part of the trilogy. Dozens of interesting quests and quest lines, many ways to drastically alter the world and the lives of many stalkers, great deal of well written characters. The amount of times I had to save scum to save a particular NPC I liked already shows how well the characters were written: I felt shame and sadness over losing an even minor story character, grown to like them so much that I would go out of my way to ensure their safety. There were numerous quests that ended in such bizzare and unpredictable ways that left my mouth gaping, such as (spoilers) [spoiler] Tremor being behind stalkers' dissapearances, having to drink their blood due to his hemophilia and not just killing them because he was insane [/spoiler] and [spoiler] Snag not being dead in a ditch, but rather still alive and twitching, giving me my stuff back [/spoiler]. Almost any choice the player does has lasting consequences and effects on the numerous endings. [h2] 2. Vastly improved gunplay and added realism [/h2] The guns are much better than their counterparts in Clear Sky and Shadow Of Chernobyl. Weapons feel much heavier and more customizeable, now with attachments of different scopes with different zoom or installed night vision. Not to mention the added "Protecta", 12-round 12 gauge shotgun, the best in the game, being able to be outfitted with a night vision scope and modified into rapid, automatic fire. Speaking of modifications, they were finalized and refined. Any gun can be modified to your heart's desire, but modifying one thing locks you away from modifying another one, which prevents you from creating completely overpowered guns and gear, having to find balance between the modifications and many parameters, making the player give much more consideration to any potential upgrade (sacrificing accuracy for comfort, rapid fire for control and etc.). Not to mention that bullets trajectories' and weapons themselves behave much better than the constantly missing piss guns with barely any damage of Clear Sky or the immensely accurate horrors of Shadow Of Chernobyl, having achieved a good mix between accuracy and deadliness. The bullets are now able to go through some materials and ricochet off of others, while also leaving bullet holes according to the material they are on. [h2] 3. Refined artifact hunting and the artefact mechanics themselves. [/h2] Gone is the floor sweeping artefact "hunting" of the Shadow Of Chernobyl and the incomplete one of Clear Sky; CoP now has well defined artifact types, which have a chance to spawn at their designated anomaly types after a blowout or an emission. There is now a dedicated trader NPC, Beard, that gives out side missions to the player, which consist of finding a certain artefact. Beware: alongside you, other stalkers will try to look for such an artifact, as apart of the new feature for the stalker AI that allows them to find artifacts. Upon finding one, they will try to deliver it to Beard, which will result in you failing the mission. You can buy it off the stalker who found it, or just by killing him and taking the artefact. Delivering the artifact will give the player a hefty sum of 18.000-24.000 roubles (depending on the rarity of the artifact), which can be an insane amount in the early game. The artifact hunt side missions can also be failed if the player does not find the artifact in two days. The artifacts themselves have been balanced well. Now, there are no OP artifacts such as the likes of those in SoC (ex. +30% electra resistance), which lead to the player being able to equip 4-5 of these artifacts and not only heal in the anomaly that they grant the resistance against (ex. Electra), but also regenerate the player's suit and health. In CoP, there is no such term as unbalanced when it comes to the artifacts, each of them has an upside and a downside (except the radiation reducing artifacts, which I consider a flaw of the balancing of CoP). You cannot become invulnerable, just a bit harder to damage. You cannot possess infinite stamina, only being able to regenerate it faster. [h1] The flaws [/h1] [h2] Numerous bugs [/h2] An issue that has plagued all of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. majorly, at least CoP has been affected by it the least, albeit there is still a lot of annoying, sometimes game breaking bugs. Spoilerless/Extremely minor spoiler ones: In Skadovsk, stalkers constantly get stuck on the stairwells and prevent the player from accesing Nimble, sometimes Owl. The only way I found of dealing with it is asking the stalkers to lead me to an area not far away, and then returning to the Skadovsk and accesing the traders I need before those morons get stuck on the stairs again. Sometimes, stalkers can move and disrupt the real time cutscenes. I had stalkers randomly bump into Nitro during my first arrival into Yanov station, and Degtyarev circling around while stalkers talk to him. If you are to run against a big prop (monitor, beer case, crate, etc.) there is a chance that you might get launched a few fet into the air and get fall damage. The emission safe zones are pretty weird. Some of them have nonsensical placements (I'm sure in all of a three floor concrete building only a single room is emission-proof), though even those with sense are not properly covering their designated areas. There are multiple areas in Skadovsk, where if you stand even three feet close to the ship walls near Beard you can still die. I've also had a bizzare encounter, in which upon my travel to the Yanov station, there were snorks inside trying to get out, meanwhile all the stalkers inside and the snorks themselves were neutral to eachother. I opened the door and they peacefully crawled away. Spoiler ones: Medium Mid-Game bug: [spoiler] Upon getting the quest for the Compass artifact, Noah is supposed to give it to you. Thing is, in my playthrough, Noah gave me two compasses, which, I assume, is not supposed to happen. [/spoiler] Major Late-Game bug: [spoiler] If you have another quest active, you cannot start the One Shot quest. Upon explaining the situation with the mercenaries to Kovalsky, he will bug out and just stand in front of you, when he is supposed to radio a message to other soldiers. You cannot move, ESC does not work, only Alt+F4 does. [/spoiler] Medium Late-Game bug: [spoiler] Lt. Sokolov may get stuck in the Laundromat during the Evacuation, which allows him to survive and give a good ending of him. [/spoiler] [h3] In conclusion: I would recommend you getting this game. Even with all the bugs, I got my fair share of enjoyment of it. [/h3]

its old but if you think of it less like todays shooters and more like a roblox game its really good