Stalking the Zone  

Wow, is Stalker ever an easy game to underestimate.

First, a bit of history. I had followed the story of Stalker's development ever since it was announced back in...2004? It promised to deliver a great post-ap styled experience in an extremely atmospheric real-world setting that holds a lot of...well...romance might be the wrong word, but if you love anything Soviet and remember Chernobyl I think you'll understand why the whole setting is so compelling. Even Call of Duty 4 couldn't help but explore some of post-Chernobyl Pripyat.

I think the event has some kind of iron hold on the collective consciousness of those who grew up in the 80s. I was 10 when reactor #4 suffered a meltdown and spewed radioactive dust high enough into the sky that it quickly spread over the Atlantic. I still remember when we were told in school about the cloud creeping towards North America. In our young minds, it was probably only superceded by full-on nuclear war as our prime concern.

Those memories are galvanized into something almost tangible as soon as you enter the zone in Stalker. It easily ranks along with Half-Life and Deus Ex as one of the most atmospheric FPS games I've ever played. No game comes close to delivering the promise of exploring a decaying, abandoned nuclear wasteland (although, I'm going to give my friends at Bethesda on Fallout 3 the benefit of the doubt).

Unfortunately, my enjoyment of this experience was delayed -- for almost a year -- for the simple fact that my initial impressions of key game systems were rather negative. It's too bad that over time, I've become so much less patient and willing to invest time in learning how to play a game. My first play sessions with Stalker turned me off, mainly because it was buggy and the quest system was truly perplexing. Also, the whole game had a patina of clumsiness that caused me to turn my nose up at it. This less than triple-A experience was certainly not good enough for my palette.

A month ago, I went back to it. I fired it up again, persisted, and -- to my surprise -- was richly rewarded. I worked past the initial areas of the game (which are somewhat weak and uninteresting), and broke through some parts that had turned me off before, and managed to get -- literally and metaphorically -- to a new place, a new level of experience and immersiveness that I don't think I've felt since playing Half-Life 2.

I definitely encourage anyone who, like me, was turned off by the early levels and bugginess of the game (much of which has been addressed by subsequent patches), to find the time to return to the game. Keep searching. The richest rewards only come to those brave enough to persist to the depths of the Zone.
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Oh, and even if you don't have time to check out the game (again, or for the first time), have a look at this amazing footage filmed by the Ukrainian filmmaker Shevchenko, who died a couple of weeks after taking it. It shows some of the response teams called in to deal with the disaster, and is haunting and unforgettable.

Here's another bit of footage, this one a Greenpeace film, from 2006, 20 years after the original disaster. It shows some of the recent work to improve the sarcophagus around Reactor #4, as well as some great footage of the actual reactor itself. Incredible.

And finally, in case you didn't know, a sequel (prequel actually) to Stalker is coming out at the end of this month. It's called Stalker: Clear Sky, and looks to include many enhancements to both visuals and gameplay.