S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat is the third installment of the stalker franchise. Before I start I'm going to get a few things straight. Firstly S.T.A.L.K.E.R. stands for Scavenger, Trespasser, Adventurer, Loner, Killer, Explorer, Robber". Secondly this game is a First person survival/horror type game. It does come with a multi-player and a REALLY long single player.
Game playThe game play is rooted in a sandbox RPG type of play. You can roam around freely and kill who ever you want. Unlike SoC factions won randomly open fire on you, besides monolith. When you help out a certain faction they will turn green meaning they are friendly. This helps as allies will can take you places or trade stuff for cheaper prices. The health function is cool because when you get shot you will bleed and loose health. You will need to use a lot of band aids to stop the bleeding sometimes. There's a lot of ways to get supplies. You can trade with mostly anyone in the game but traders have all the good stuff. There are 2 repair men that can upgrade your weapons and armor. This is a very nice future that was added in Clear Sky, and has been refined in CoP. There is a down side to this thought; you'll have to find the repair kits to have the repair men upgrade your weapons. This sounds like a good idea, but they put the last repair kit in a place you can't really go till the end of the game. Now in Call of Pripyat the AI has been upgraded a bit. The stalkers aren't too smart but the mutants have gotten a lot smarter. Instead of aimlessly trying to pounce and attack the player, the snorks attempt a more guerrilla-like style, where they try to flank you, or unsuspectingly attack from hidden areas. For example; if you're facing a lone snork in an area with lots of cover, the snork will attempt a hit and run style, where it will attack, flee, and use the cover to its advantage to unsuspectingly flank your back. Blood suckers will run off and cloak and try to get behind you to suck the blood out of you. You'll also see little battles between factions out in the zone as well as stalkers vs. mutants. It's really not a hard game at all unless you're playing on the hardest difficulty. On normal an average gamer could beat it in about 20+ hours.
Story The game starts off when the brain scorcher is turned off from Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. The military sent in a bunch of helicopters to gain control of the center of the zone, in a mission called Operation Fairway. To bad it failed miserably and mostly every helicopter crashed. The main protagonist is named Alexander Degtyarev, this is who you will play as throughout the campaign. You the player must go through the Zone and investigate the crash sites. As the player progresses he starts learning how the helicopters were shot down. This leads you certain locations in the zone that can help you find out what happened to these helicopters. One will lead you to the safe zone you started at and another to a secret bunker with some cool weapons in it. You'll find that some of the forces did make it out alive and turned an abandoned department store into a makeshift military base. You and the military forces find out why your helicopters crashed and meet up with the old protagonist Strelok.
Graphics and Sound Now, i played Call of Pripyat in Direct x 10, and i have to say the game looks good. The graphics in this game really make it interesting. The sky lights up when lighting strikes, the ground shakes as a huge mutant charges at you. Grass sways in the wind, dead bodies lay around in random areas. Now keep in mind that I only experienced the game in Direct X 10. Theres also Direct X 11 which brings out a whole new set of beautiful visuals. As for the sound? Well the music really immerses you into the game. You'll hear zombies mumbling in the background, and the gurgling of a near by anomaly. Sadly, while things like this are nice, the voice acting is not. You can get quite annoyed sometimes, all NPC's seemed to have the same voice actor and even if they didn't they all said the same thing. You can only have so many bros in one game before one goes insane.
DX10 vs DX11
Closing Comments This stalker game is probably the best out of the bunch and I highly recommend anyone and everyone to play it. Good news to some people, if you already bought a stalker game before you can get a nice discount on this one. So, if you like deep mutant packed crap your pants games then stalker is for you!
Keep in mind, after you beat it you'll probably rip someones jugular out the next time someone says bro.
http://silentkillerz.com/legend/reviews/callofprip/12426659901773.jpgFinal Score 9.5/10