Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 – “Can you spot the differences?”
Back when I did my “World at War” review I mentioned how the “Call of Duty” teams, despite taking small strides in terms of capturing the essence of a powerful, dramatic scenario like war, were still clinging to an essentially game-y experience, laden with obnoxious elements, the most displeasing of all being the HUD. Well, someone at funny or die must have read my mind, because they edited a video of what would it be like to “play” – “Call of Duty” style – the Normandy scene from Spielberg’s “Saving Private Ryan”. It’s not only a funny video clip, as it ends up posing the same questions I (and others) have been making. Think about it, sooner than you think, we’ll have quasi-realistic graphics in video games, and despite the emotional, aesthetic potential of these superbly rendered images, games remain ever focused on crude notions of “fun”, rather than tapping the possibilities that come with that potential expressiveness. The “Call of Duty” brand is an excellent example of this. Despite their huge success, their creators are still delivering, detailed graphics aside, the exact same game as they were back in “Allied Assault”. And whilst their games are increasingly visceral and continue to establish powerful ambiances with their over-glorified engines and whatnot, all those elements remain effectively meaningless in terms of the interactive experience. It’s still a game about shooting lifeless dummies as well as you can. It’s still the game about becoming a macho warrior. It’s still a game about feeling empowered and invincible. And it’s still a game about saving the world from the big bad men. Admit it, we’re still playing “Wolfenstein 3D”. There is still no point to it, no emotional sub-text or rhetoric involved in the games’ discourse.
Which is why all the controversy surrounding the “Modern Warfare 2’s” infamous “No Russian” level just seems absolutely ridiculous to me. It’s crude, silly and completely out of context in the game. I guarantee you that any emotion you might feel during that sequence will vanish after five seconds of you understanding what’s going on. Under the guise of forcing you to face the horrors of terrorists, the game developers simply deliver the exact same game-y experience, but for one difference, your opponents have no weapons, and bleed more than your typical grunt. They shout screams of horror, but we are talking of the same mass of generic, cardboard beings which you happily kill during normal levels. When was the last time you felt disgusted from killing a cardboard image? Were those you kill real characters, with a story, a livelihood, an expressive behavior… creatures that had some sort of emotional involvement with us players, and maybe the scene would go beyond mere shock value. Video games have done it before, even in the first person shooter genre. To add to the detriment of the scene, those strange ethereal stars and cross-hairs are still flying above them, and it’s still a level in which you have to kill to “win”. The whole matter is as controversial as funny or die’s video. It doesn’t matter at all how realistic the characters look, because they’re still over-glorified targets in a shooting range, as Eurogamer so elegantly put. There can be no drama in killing virtual plastic dolls, let alone when you’re supposed to be some super warrior out to save the world, who just happens to have shot those same models thousands of times before, only with different clothing and less screaming. Killing them is as controversial as watching “Rambo” hack away the innards of some poor schmuck that just happens not to have an AK-47 lying around. It isn’t dramatic. The schmuck is just a schmuck – an impersonal abstraction without any lifelike character, just like any other of the thousands of terrorists in line for a bullet in the brain.
This isn’t the same as saying that “Modern Warfare 2″ is just another piece of trash the industry spewed at us. Infinity Ward may take itself too seriously for their own good, they may not know how to write or tell a story that goes beyond the most naive patriotic bull or paranoid of conspiracies and they may not grasp the most basic aspects on how to create a character with some mildly nuanced form of emotion, but… but they do know how to make things blow up. Even Naughty Dog pales in comparison. Which is why “Modern Warfare 2″, aside from the lackluster initial levels, is a trip worth taking, if only for the pure excitement it can deliver. Its authors have gone to great lengths to replicate some of the most enjoyable experiences from many other pop references, from “Black Hawk Down” and “James Bond” to “Resident Evil 5” and “Metal Gear Solid“. Sure, it’s dumb, rude and stupid, but it’s also a superbly well paced, stylish and epic spectacle. Alas, when the game does end, nothing will remain except for the notion that you just experienced the most guilty of pleasures, the kind that leaves aught behind except for a kindling sparkle of warm adrenaline. We’ve seen this before, it was great then, it is great now, but honestly, this is not what we need right now. We need more, and this just ain’t it.
score: 3/5
“The Year of …………” – Action
Besides casual affairs such as “Rock Band”, “Wii Fit”, sports games or the occasional MMORPG (read “World of Warcraft”), action games have become the last bastion of the industry when it comes to the aptly named “hard-core” gamer audience. FPS or third person, linear or open-world, whichever the case, action games have become the norm for most gamers. The trend continued last year with an onslaught of shooters hitting the market: “GTA IV”, “Army of Two”, “Dark Sector”, “Dead Space” (yes, I am also inserting it in this category), “Crysis Warhead”, “Gears of War 2″, “Resistance 2″, “Far Cry 2″, “Left 4 Dead”, “Metal Gear Solid 4“, etc. Not only is this trend concerning for those who appreciate quality as well as diversity, as it hides another heinous trend in video-games – the continuous launch of sequels. Amongst the ten named beforehand, only four are original video-games, which amounts to less than half. Because of that fact, you can’t expect much creativity from this batch, nor any true surprises.
“GTA IV” is, in essence, “GTA III” with a dramatic, socially aware story, which is one of the best of the year (if you forget about its atrocious structure, that is); “Army of Two”, “Dark Sector”, “Dead Space”, “Crysis Warhead”, are all mediocre shooter games, mostly well designed, but with little (anything?) to set them apart from the rest of the pack; “Resistance 2″ and “Gears of War 2″ are sequels in the worst of senses – they look like exactly the same game with buffed up graphic engines… and well, they’re both “bigger, better, more badass”, whatever that means; “Far Cry 2″ could have had an interesting, fresh take on its genre, and yet wastes it with a simplistic interface, bland artistic assets, and a bucket load of generic quests; finally, “Left 4 Dead” the less formulaic of all these titles, showed an on-line mode with a great deal of care in forcing interesting group dynamics unto its players, in the process perfectly translating the defining notions of survival horror (the movie genre), but unfortunately, lacked any of the formal requirements for it to be a memorable experience (decent level design and pacing, ambiance and character design, etc). Curiously enough, of all these games, the only one that sticks out to me… is the one with a big fat “4″ stamped on its cover.
“Metal Gear Solid 4” – Despite all my criticisms towards Kojima’s farewell ode to Snake, it is still the only game in this category that at least tries to tell something, to convey a story, to spark some sort of intellectual, emotional reaction in its audience. The care with voice acting and character rendering alone (the facial animations are probably the best of the year), are proof that Kojima is trying to tell stories with his medium; stories about people, of humanistic concerns, and not some random rambling about war with explosions and firefights. It’s a work of superlative beauty as well, conjuring up carefully orchestrated images and sounds into a brainless genre that thrives so much on grey-washed color palettes and bass-filled soundtracks. And notice how inhabiting the popular aesthetic of shooters such as “Call of Duty 4″, “Metal Gear” still comes up as more balanced, aesthetically convincing game in every way. Kojima simply plays with video-games’ expressive elements as much as he can, bending the preconceptions of what defines a genre, and what defines a game even, in the process delivering notions of dramatic construction, aesthetic ambiance and contextualization that go far beyond the crude matter of its peers. In the game’s formal structure, for instance, Kojima divides the game into acts, but instead of being content on establishing different narrative points to match that structure, he went as far as adapting each of the game’s expressive vehicles to the context of each act, establishing different aesthetic moods and game-play styles to fit the story – in essence, altering a dramatic structure (originally designed for theater) to blend with the interactive medium. Who does that? Whether inside or outside the genre? Very, very few designers. And doing all this, while also presenting an entertaining game which even the most simple-minded of gamers can appreciate, makes this title soar high above the rest of its pack. In such a bad year, it’s definitely one of the best the medium offered.
“Biggest Disappointment” – “Metal Gear Solid 4“ – You must be thinking – “What? How can the same game be the best and the most disappointing of the year?” The answer is simple: despite all its qualities, “Metal Gear” is the best also by demerit of its peers; it’s a disappointment because it’s beneath the grandeur of its author. Think about it, here we have one of the best designers of this industry, the man who did “Snatcher” and the original “Metal Gear Solid” – someone who we’ve come to look up to in awe, for his quality both as a script writer and as a revolutionary game designer – and the best he can come up with is a safe sequel, one in which he surrenders creative freedom to please his die-hard fans. “Metal Gear Solid 4″ has details of sheer genius, and yet it wastes them on the silliest of plots, one that stinks of fan-service in every cut-scene, just so that the fan-boys can be content with a neat little ending to their precious ten year old saga. The notion that the audience can decide the fate of a work coming from such an influential author is, to say the least, frightful. The game’s form and overall tone only serve to make it even more of an insult, reveling on low humor and tons of silly Anime tropes that break the otherwise tragic tone of “Metal Gear Solid’s” story. And thus, a game that could have been labeled a masterpiece is, in many ways, a mediocre title polluted by all that is wrong with the medium. Which begs me to think that though Kojima is an incredibly talented man, he is now chained to a successful product, dictated by the most prosaic and demeaning laws of franchising – if that is not a reason to despise the state of the industry, I don’t know what is.
Call of Duty World at War – “Call of Duty four World War II”
If there’s anything that sticks out in the “Call of Duty” series, is its focus on delivering a thrilling, cinematic in-your-face depiction of war. It’s not by chance that the first major inspiration for the series was Steven Spielberg’s opus of the Normandy landing in “Saving Private Ryan”: the shaking of the camera, blurring the gritty colors of war-machines and destroyed landscapes, with red sprouts of blood emerging in the bloody onslaught of human life, bullet by bullet, explosion by explosion… limb by limb, man by man. Capturing that chaotic experience of horror and sacrifice is the kind of thing you’d expect games would be known and respected for. But it isn’t, and we all know that. In that sense, “Call of Duty” was definitely a small step forward. Firstly, with its audiovisual fidelity, which successfully established the same atmosphere that Spielberg’s film became known for. Secondly, because the game adapted the classic FPS formula to the war context. Most FPS games forced you to go for point A to point B, while obliging you to, single-handily, kill every possible enemy in sight. “Call of Duty” (like its predecessor “Medal of Honor: Allied Assault”) opted to encompass the player in an army, making him choose ways in which to avoid direct confrontation with enemies, through flanking and the use of indirect fire. Also, player’s comrades take some of the burden into their hands, killing a considerable amount of enemies. Stripped to its barest, “Call of Duty” forces the player to accomplish a certain objective (break a defense line, clear a location of enemies, plant a bomb, protect a convoy), but framing in it in a convincing way that doesn’t make it (too) ridiculous. You still play a hero like in most shooters, but it isn’t a lonely or utterly invincible hero. “Call of Duty 4″ tuned the series’ formula to near perfection, by harmoniously weaving Level, Art and Sound Design to produce a rising tension in each set piece, and in the overarching experience. It was still the same game, but the audacity and scale of its confrontations, coupled with great cutscene directing, made its campaign a glorious ode to war… in a videogame-y kind of way. “World at War” is the same. No more, no less. It stumbles in the same faults as its predecessor, and can be lacking in some of the more creative assets which made it a success, but “World at War” really is “Call of Duty 4″… in a World War II scenario.
Using the same narrative vehicles as its predecessors, “World at War” presents each set piece by utilizing snazzy power-point-ish presentations, as your ranking officer briefs you in on the details concerning the upcoming battle. You get to experience two campaigns: one in which you fight on the pacific front to crush the Japanese armada, following the steps of a traditional American style hero, the compassionate, yet tough Seargant Roebuck, played by Kiefer ‘Bauer’ Sutherland in his already cliched monotonic voice; the other storyline, more interesting and provocative, places you as the right-wing man of Seargant Reznov, a vindictive, cruel hearted Soviet, who seeks revenge against the Germans for the destruction of Stalingrad. It’s immediately clear that the first campaign is more of the same epic set pieces in which great American heroes go about freeing the world from the dreaded enemy, in this case, the Japanese, herein portrayed as vicious monsters bent on winning a war at all costs, whether it involves sneaking techniques, kamikaze attacks or plain old backstabbing. You’d think that in a war, killing would be a despicable act whichever the surrounding conditions, but apparently the Japanese kill in an “evil” way. The Soviet campaign is more original, as it does try to portray a different side of the war. The Soviets are depicted as more realistic characters, in the sense that their personalities reflect the unquestionable fact that they are fighting a bloody war. They are ruthless and moved by selfish goals, unbent by hypocritical notions of moral or military conduct, which ends up making their campaign more truthful and moving… and of course, Gary Oldman’s amazing voice-work can really make you wanna go kill some Nazi scourge. However, it needs to be pointed out that in both plot-lines, the subjectivity of American perspective is prevalent, so expect a great deal of prejudice, xenophobia, social, and historical inaccuracies. Like Churchill said, History is written by the victors.
As you’re thrust into the battlefield proper, you get to presence everything in first person, your presence diluted with that of the mute and otherwise irrelevant main character. The action unfolds on screen just as it did in “Call of Duty 4″, in which the barrier between cutscene and gameplay was blurred to a degree which made you wonder if you could change the course of certain events. Some you can and some you don’t, which doesn’t really matter since it never really changes how the story ultimately unfolds. It’s a bit less linear for that, and it adds to the notion of immersion and false choice that helps create a sense of a credible world. Because the transition between story and action is seamless, the breathtaking action pieces are made all the more emotional for it, especially in the Soviet Campaign. From Stalingrad to Berlin, you’ll be in constant awe with the scale of each war set, fleshed out by a beautifully crafted mise en scène, courtesy of the Infinity Engine, which once again provides the same ambient lighting and particle effects that made “Call of Duty 4″ so visually captivating. The final showdown in Berlin gives a whole new meaning to the concept of destroyed beauty, as you endure the ravishing of the opulent Reichstag, covered in smoke, dust and flames, a stark palette of death and war covering the landscape. Trust me when I say that images don’t do it justice [for some strange reason, I could only find one image that accurately represented the graphics of the game (the one above, click on it to see it in high-res), as all of the images available on the net are blurred out or badly compressed; so sorry about that]. But the multitude of moody color palettes can only serve as background for the cacophony of raining bullets, explosions and frenetic shouts of pain and camaraderie. Once again, the soundtrack steals the show, thanks to its pitch perfect fidelity, and the smart use of musical crescendos to enhance the epic grandeur of war. The score (by Sean Murray) is still a competently mixed miscellany of electronic, industrial, metal and classical sonorities that successfully punctuate the emotional impact of the game. And yet again, the Soviet portions of the soundtrack are the best: you simply cannot beat the visceral impact of a beautifully orchestrated chorus.
Despite the arresting power of the “Call of Duty” games, they still have a long road ahead in terms of creating meaningful and realistic war experiences. Their more important fault still lies in their dramatic core. Though the Soviet Campaign does take it a step forward, by trying to introduce nuanced characters, the series is still lacking when it comes to true drama, because it has no real characters, subtext or emotion. And “Call of Duty” does need drama to make the experience feel genuine, because the essence of war is death and loss, and the emotional responses associated with those events are missing. Only when the player hesitates before mindlessly shooting an enemy, or resents his inability to save a comrade, will the War FPS genre achieve plenitude. Unfortunately, the series never went in that direction, and continues to lethargically tread in its own FPS convention laden path. But, even forgetting any aspirations the series’ authors dismiss, the fact is that this episode doesn’t improve the series one bit, allowing easy to fix flaws to maintain one more year. The most glaring of which is the stubborn use of a noisy, aesthetically displeasing HUD… a baffling notion for a 2008 top tier game that puts so much weight on immersion. And though it can be useful in terms of helping the player move along, there are a number of available alternatives that don’t break up immersion (see “Peter Jackson’s King Kong” game). Just imagine “Saving Private Ryan” with golden stars, numbers and icons flying about the screen like in a football match transmission; if that doesn’t remind you that “Call of Duty” is a game, as opposed to a 1st person war-experience, then nothing does. And sure, there are still AI problems, level design model eccentricities that need fixing, and the overall sense that this is just one more World War II FPS. But, truth be told, forgetting the game’s lack of originality can be simple while playing the game. It’s just entertaining, and sadly, in this medium that’s really all it needs to be. Personally, I’m still wishing they can someday come up with a dramatic first-person experience that is akin to “Saving Private Ryan”… in more than just the aesthetic qualities of the film. But I know, it’s a hopeless dream.
Overall: 3/5
Call of Cthulhu Dark Corners of The Earth
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents… some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new Dark Age.”
H.P. Lovecraft, in “The Call of Cthulhu”
The depth of the human imagination might seem endless to us, but humanity seems feeble when grasping concepts that go beyond its existence, beyond that which makes itself apparent. No matter what most scientists might tell you, even science has limitations. We are small; a mere spec of dust in the grand scheme of the World, our existence equivalent to that of a microbe when put into perspective with the vast great unknown that surrounds us… so how could we ever aspire to understand it? To control it? To surpass it? Lovecraft was aware of these great truths; his tales of alien civilizations, strange cults and the shaping of humanity’s history are all defined by the insignificance and meaninglessness of Man’s place face the infinite, unknown Universe. His characters, when faced with the grand truths of the Universe, go on to become clinically insane, as true knowledge becomes so horrifying to them that they feel it would be best to shun it. Ignorance would be bliss face the horrors they come to know, and still, they try to grasp them, in a folly’s quest for true knowledge. Lovecraft’s cynicism towards science and human knowledge is pervasive in his tales, thus molding dark, brooding worlds where no light can be shed about its ancient, occult secrets, and where mankind faces indescribable horrors, powerless to defend itself against them. If anything else, “Dark Corners of The Earth” is an accomplishment because it manages to replicate, on a certain level, the strange, menacing world of H.P. Lovecraft. Lovecraftian lore is priceless, and one can only imagine why it hasn’t been translated more often into new media formats. There are a few videogames based on his works, from “Alone in the Dark” (the original, quite obviously) to “Eternal Darkness”, not forgetting “Shadow of the Comet” (which I never had the pleasure to play), all of which are classic games that are still revered as of today. “Dark Corners of the Earth” follows in that tradition; developed by a small, British company, Headfirst Productions, it was meant to be the first of many horror themed action adventure games to use the Cthulhu mythos as influence. Sadly, due to poor results, they were canned, and never got to complete the other games. It’s a tough medium, especially for small developers with little resources, constantly forced to compete with big leaguers. It doesn’t help that gamers and journalists are quick to rant about small technical flaws which are common in low budget productions, and frequently despise any game that isn’t meant to be “fun” through and through. And it’s a shame really, because despite all its glaring technical and design flaws, there’s a great work hiding beneath “Dark Corners of The Earth”.
A dark New England port town named Innsmouth: that is where you enter Lovecraft’s nightmarish realms. It’s a rainy, foggy night, the sky is brooding, the sound of the wind and the waves can be heard from afar, the old 19th century industrial revolution buildings loom high in every street, their sepia-toned bricks barely lit by small street lamps: it’s an oppressive, menacing scenario. You play a detective looking out for a missing young man; as you arrive in town, you instantly know that something is fundamentally wrong with it. The citizens that roam the streets are ugly and grotesque, their features distorted, their skin pale and grayish, their eyes emotionless and sickening. To investigate, you take on the role of Jack Walters in first person view, questioning the strange citizens of the town and searching for clues in hopes of finding out the truth about what’s really happening. At that point the game feels like a masterpiece, faithfully depicting the dark ambiance of Lovecraft’s Universe, the air so thick and heavy that you know you are entering a “Dark Corner of the Earth”. The moody adventure pieces are carefully punctuated with precious (yet sparse) action sequences, that help keep up pace and establish a sense of imminent danger. You might have to sneak by a guard, or escape the attack of the menacing villagers, running through winding, old corridors, nervously shutting doors behind you, jumping through balconies, and hiding in the shadows as your pursuers pass by. The use of the first person perspective provides these action sequences a real sense of panic and stress, and also allows the adventure portions of the game (the dialogues and puzzle solving), to feel more personal and lively than in traditional point and click games. However, as the game progresses, the first person perspective goes from a blessing to a curse.
At some point, the game starts giving you weapons. At first they are small and powerless, but with time they start to ramp up, until they become traditional first person shooter weapons (there’s even a lightning rifle near the end). The game dynamics change as these weapons are introduced, the adventure elements are toned down: dialogues disappear, puzzles become rarer and exploration gives way to shooting sequences and boss fights. It never fully becomes a shooter, because the game still relies on stealth, exploration and the odd puzzle, but it gets too close to a FPS for my taste. As it does so, the game loses heart: the environments become bland and uninteresting, levels’ sizes are increased only to make the game longer, the story crawls to a halt. All the while, Headfirst limitations surface and become more obvious, making the game a real pain: there are showstopper bugs, faulty AI’s, clunky shooting mechanics, trial and error sequences with poorly placed savepoints, etc. All of these problems unnecessarily destroy the experience of the brilliant first act of the game, offering as a replacement a derivative horror themed FPS that constantly forces you to repeat shooting sequences ad-infinitum due to a bad check-pointing system.
Fortunately, the overall experience has a lot of small details that will stick with you. There’s a thoughtful plot to discover (despite the odd voice work) that not only is faithful to its references as it quotes profusely the works of one of the greatest 20th century writers. There are also a number of really powerful set pieces, such as the epic survival struggle aboard a ship attacked by sea monsters, or the eerie nightmares of the main character, in which you’re thrust into the Arkham Asylum (with a black and white grainy filter), to witness strange hallucinations that will surely send chills down your spine. Still, these are details that don’t change the fact that by the end of the game, the magic of Lovecraft’s Universe has given way to the “magic” of videogamish nonsense. And despite all efforts at making such an interesting world a commercial venture, the game tanked… there’s a certain irony to the affair. However, there’s still a wondrous first act to discover here, one that transcends genre trappings and can feed on H.P. Lovecraft to produce brilliant moody environments and a twisted tale of the occult. So if you’re capable of suffering a poor game to experience Lovecraft’s world, then “Dark Corners of the Earth” is a brilliant game you should definitely play. But if you’re not, then you can always buy his books, and if “Dark Corners of the Earth” can at least achieve that sprout of interest in its universe, it’ll be a success.
Overall: 4/5
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – “A Closed World”
“Open world”, “Sand Box”, “Free Roaming” – all of these expressions have become powerful and common buzz words in the industry ever since “GTA III” (re)created the notion of open ended gameplay for the masses (in truth, the concept had been implemented long before, both in online and offline rpg’s). I am a skeptic of these so called “open worlds”, as I find there’s nothing truly open about them. There’s no freedom in choosing your path in a game-world, if it does not respond in any meaningful way to that choice (in that regard, a branching path RPG is much more “open”). MMORPGS and GTAs (and their clones) are all videogames where actions are of an inconsequential nature, where narrative is broken down into small blocks that have little connection between (generating conflict and lack of consistency), and where the only real choice you have is “to do” or “not to do” and “when” to do it (you can choose to take on a quest and when to do it, but that’s about all the choice you have). There’s as much interactivity there as in a book. What you should be prompted for in these games is “what to do”, and thus allowing the player different forms of expressing themselves in the game area. Unfortunately, the idea of MMORPGS on “what to do” is reduced to a simple-minded “use magic A” or “stealth kill B” to assault a nameless NPC. Talk about choice. This is not to say that open worlds aren’t a type of game that’s full of potential, but to fulfill it requires *consequence* and *choice* to truly be part of the equation.
“S.T.A.L.K.E.R. – Shadow of Chernobyl” is a rare and bold attempt for a Eastern Europe studio, GSC – Game Publishing, to take on the industry. The game is an adaptation of a classic russian Sci-Fi piece, named “Roadside Picnic”, and, to some extent, of its loose cinema adaptation, “Stalker” (by Andrei Tarkovsky). For a first timer to choose such a complex game structure as an open world seems odd, to say the least, and that choice eventually proves to be its greatest downfall. You’re thrust into this game world with only a dingy FMV cutscene and an even shabbier NPC monologue, something about you being alive when you shouldn’t be, and, who’d have guessed, losing your memory in the process. Talk about first great impressions. The first striking feature of the game is how characters are downright expressionless, move in a mechanical, robotic way, and dialogues appear on screen in large doses of text that cover up NPC faces. This presentation fault, that mars irreversibly the player’s immersion and plot engagement, could be easily dismissed as this being a case of a mostly independent game, but it is in direct contradiction with the visually impressive quality of the game engine. But we’ll get to that.
Introduction finished, and the player is set on an errand quest, the kind of thing you’ve come to expect from the sort of open ended rpg. Though the menus and inventory system (that takes into account space as well as weight) seem consistent with a traditional western rpg, the first person view seems to take the game in a different direction. This is clearly “Oblivion” territory, though with gun in hand. Even when talking to other characters or fulfilling meaningless side-quests, the nature of this expansive setting isn’t made all that clear, and the insane amount of text filler each character will throw at you would make any player wish that such an intriguing world would be fleshed out properly. There’s a hefty amount of back-story, which isn’t striking at all considering the origins of the plot, but it’s just that it is translated in an uninteresting way – poorly written (or translated) text spoken by equally uninteresting and inexpressive characters. Also like in “Oblivion”, there are a number of factions which you can join with during the course of the narrative, though unlike the latest “Elder Scrolls”, this appears to have some sort of effect in the ending. Yet the sense of narrative abcense is overwhelming. That being said, “STALKER’s” greatest quality only makes itself clear, when you start treading your way throughout the world.
Set in the Zone, somewhere in the area that surrounded Chernobyl, “STALKER’s” post-apocalyptic environment is presented as both beautiful and desolate. Wide open areas, stemming with tall, withered trees and bushes, bathed by the cold light of the sun, covered in clouds and fog, providing an eerie background for the action. The ruins of the almighty Soviet Empire span across the terrain, their hymn to post industrial revolution civilization lying in shambles: abandoned factories and warehouses, rust and dust covered, with broken glasses where once stood windows, massive holes where once stood walls, dismantled machinery where once strived the hustle and bustle of mass production. Roads crossing as far as the eye can see, holes and bumps emerging every couple of meters, stripped down cars completing the picture of emptiness and devastation. The weather further enhances these feelings, with gloomy clouds followed by storms of lighting and wind establishing an almost supernatural landscape. And then, there are the anomalies, spaces where the laws of physics are altered, electricity and gravity mixed up in strange ways to an unsettling effect. Last but not least, the deformed animals and hedious mutants that populate the area, who seem straight out of a B-horror movie, and with an appetite for food (that’s you). All of these elements build up to render one of the most oppressive settings ever to grace a videogame, a game world that screams realism and imposes fear, all thanks to its great visual engine and a superb soundtrack, of realistic sound effects and creepy electronic melodies. And the open world dynamics feed on this background, providing an immersive experience like no other. Sadly, the astonishing artistic direction, that at times seems to live of Andrei Tarkovsy’s dark minimalism, only makes the game’s narrative devices seem more archaic and anti-climatic in exploring this intriguing world.
The actual gameplay doesn’t help either, as FPS just doesn’t translate well into rpg trappings. The hectic and tactical nature of action sets and the unrelenting, realistic weapon physics seem derived out of “Counter Strike”, but “STALKER” isn’t exactly LAN-party territory, with its small rounds of frantic fire and action pwnage – everything just seems out of place in a game that revolves around long periods of exploration. That the game is unrelenting and tough as nails just doesn’t help, even if at times, the survivalistic nature of the gameplay helps the environment feel appropriately dangerous.
The beautiful, expansive environments and the thought provoking sci-fi story background, could’ve easily help create one of the greatest open-world games to date. Unfortunately, some of the company’s poor design choices, like opting for a tactical combat system and relinquishing narrative to a second plane, end up hurting the experience in a really bad way. And these seem like key elements in providing a living breeding world, as narrative provides the background needed for the player to sink in and properly understand the game world, and gameplay provides the space of interaction in which he can create a connection with, and in the process fully immerse in the virtual landscape. As is, “STALKER” is a failed attempt of a potentially powerful concept, an “open world” that at first glance seems wide and full of possibilities, but is in fact, limited and hollow, a “closed world” like so many others out there.
[Once in a while I will do "Impression" articles, a sort of inconclusive review regarding games I didn't bother finishing. Because of that, no grade will be attributed to these games.]
