Rock, Paper, Shotgun

I’ve been doing some guest blogging for splendid architecture site BLDGBLOG. You can see my previous offerings here and here, as well as an interview here. The latest piece – here! – delves deeper into my obsession with GSC Gameworld’s Stalker games, and the wider fiction – and reality – surrounding them. Go have a read of the rest of BLDGBLOG, too. It will surprise you.

We normally reserve talk of discounted games for Saturday’s Bargain Bucket post, but this one’s too good to leave for then. STALKER: Shadow Of Chernobyl is a title that instantly flickers into the forebrain of both myself and Jim whenever the question of the last few years’ best/most important PC games is raised. It is not a perfect game, but it realises a world, a place, an atmosphere, a dream of what games can and should be that pretty much nothing else even tries to come close to. And it’s £3.50 on Steam (not sure of US price – presumably around $5?) until Monday. I find that almost insulting. On the other hand, it means there’s essentially no excuse to not buy the thing if you haven’t already. What else could you spend that £3.50 on? If you do invest in it, I strongly advise you apply the STALKER Complete 2009 mod compilation for maximum post-apocalyptic prettiness.

Sergey Galyonkin sends word that he’s posted pictures from the heavily-attended Stalkerfest 2009 over on Flickr. You can check out the mass of cosplayers (reportedly around 500) and also see GSC’s developer band getting up on stage top strut their stuff. For those of you down with the local language, there’s also a blog account of the event here.

The original, ever-seminal STALKER’s longevity is impressive – the fan/mod community just keep on jiggery-pokering it to astonishing effect. Perhaps it’s a result of the game’s singular gestation – so much content and concepts from its long development jettisoned for the final release, and a superficially wobbly engine positively bubbling with power and potential once the surface muck was wiped away. It is and always will be an important moment in PC gaming, and I’m starting to wonder if it might be becoming almost a weird sci-fi cousin to the original Operation Flashpoint: a game that’s, over time, redesigned so thoroughly by its community that the original form is almost forgotten.

First STALKER’s community needs to join hands and sing It’s A Small World, though – for instance, there are two competing projects for the status of ULTIMATE STALKER MOD…
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The notion of open game worlds has always appealed to me, ever since Elite. When there’s even the faintest whiff on a free roaming environment, or virtuality that I can go off an explore, I’m interested. It’s an impulse that leads me to spend endless hours in Stalker, or to expend an entire day driving around Fuel. But whatever game I play, I end up feeling somewhat dissatisfied. It’s kind of dissatisfaction that does not seem to be so common with linear or arena games. I think it’s to do with a specific tension that open world games create: between what the game is about, and what the environment – and its openness – implies.

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Jim’s already done an extensive round-up of the more interesting mods for Stalker: Clear Sky, but me, I’m happy sticking to the original Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl. While the Oblivion Lost mod and its million features is the most renowned fan-tweak, there’s much to be said for retaining the game’s original structure rather than necessarily embracing such sweeping changes. With that in mind, I’m very much enjoying replaying SHOC with the Stalker Complete 2009 modpack. Primarily, it simply makes the game much, much prettier. How pretty? This pretty:

More shots below.
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Via the strange magics of download service Gametap, the original STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl (not its deflating sequel Clear Sky) can now be played for precisely zero pennies. No region restriction (apparently), and it joins a freebie roster that also contains the stalwart likes of Deus Ex, Hitman: Blood Money, Psychonauts and – yes! – Hotdog King.
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The past week of my gaming time has been dominated by Stalker mods: downloading, testing, crashing, deleting, reinstalling, and even a few hours of playing. For Shadow Of Chernobyl there’s pretty much a one-stop shop for changes, which is the extraordinary Oblivion Lost mod. It’s a comprehensive, colossal piece of compilation modding, much of it done by the author, and the rest factored in from across the community. It isn’t to everyone’s taste, especially since the list of changes is immense, but it includes drivable vehicles, sleep, alcoholism, and reworked NPC behaviour. (And that means grenades, annoyingly.) Oblivion Lost is, given the difficulty of combining and over-writing various Stalker mods, a worthwhile download – but it also completes Shadow Of Chernobyl on a profound level. This is modding at its finest. The problem for me, however, was that the Stalker I wanted to return to wasn’t an augmented Shadow of Chernobyl, but a fixed Clear Sky, which I hadn’t played since the pre-release review version. Could it be time to go back?
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Via VG247: a GSC fansite is reporting that there’s a “new” expansion (the first presumably being standalone Clear Sky) as well as a full new game from the company in the works.

In an online conference earlier this week, [GSC president, Sergey] Grigorovitch was asked whether the April 2009 calendar featuring the words ‘Call of Pripyat’ in Russian was an April Fools’ joke.

He replied that this was not a joke and would be the name of the second expansion. He added that this new expansion will be released later this year. Furthermore, a full S.T.A.L.K.E.R. title is also in development, although there’s currently no information on when we will hear more about this.

Whatever will be will be. Whatever might have been can also be, it seems. Any glimpse into the creative process behind a game, especially one of some legend, is fascinating – for instance the design documents for Planescape Torment and Grim Fandango. This, however, is some kind of alterna-history motherlode.

GSC Gameworld have released an early build (from 2004, to be precise) of their acclaimed STALKER – from back before too long struggling through development limbo saw the game enjoy a major rethink and some not insubstantial tinkering from publisher THQ. With GSC’s blessing, we now to get to find out whether this kick up the bum was entirely necessary.
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You know what I hate? Accidentally hitting quicksave when you meant to hit quickload, leaving yourself trapped in some ostensibly unwinnable situation and sobbing like a child about a terrible turn of events that you can blame no-one but yourself for.

You know what I love? Managing to win that unwinnable situation anyway: ultimate triumph in the face of self-made adversity.
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