Games set in a post-apocalyptic environment have been present since the mid 80s. Fallout 3 is one of the latest examples. It’s a bit weird how much fun you can have roaming around in world devastated by nuclear holocaust and your next door neighbor has turned into mutants. The ever present sound of the Geiger counter when you get near nuclear radiation never stops to raise my heartbeat. I love the Fallout series and have spent many hours looting bottle caps, talking to megalomaniacs and shooting mutated dogs that wanted a piece of my pretty legs.
But up until now I’ve never really truly been afraid in post-apocalyptic game world. The 50s setting in Fallout made the whole world seem bit “silly”, kitsch and “tongue in cheek”. The genuine scares I got from time to time when the super mutants ran after me, wasn’t enough to make the impression that the world truly was a “man made hell”.
Enter S.T.A.L.K.E.R Shadow of Chernobyl, a game set in the wake of the real world accident of the nuclear disaster of Chernobyl. The game is from 2007 and I’ve wanted to play the game since release, but my computer anno 2007 couldn’t run it. The game has been in and out of my mind for the past 3 years, but after it was mentioned in an article in February edition of Edge magazine, I decided to buy it and give it a try on my new laptop.
A now I truly understand what it is to wander around in a “man made hell”, and trust me it’s no walk in the park.
The S.T.A.L.K.E.R game world is a not cheery place with posters of nuclear families and robots inspired from sci-fi movies from the 50s. It’s a gloomy, dark and depressing place where you almost can smell and taste the radiation in the air even the Geiger counter is silent.
I won’t go into great detail about the game mechanics but the developer didn’t want you to fell like a super hero on a killing rampage in world full of mutants. Instead you’re a very fragile human being, and in order to survive a good use of wits is needed alongside your guns. Planning is the key to success a careless move and your most likely to end up dead by a single bullet to the head.
I had a really hard time in the beginning and was almost ready to give up. The game is truly merciless and after lot of console FPS gaming my playing style has adapted to a run and gun style. A couple of bullets normally don’t hurt you that much, but S.T.A.L.K.E.R is more in the likes of Thief series where you lurk around in the shadows waiting for the right time to strike. And the inventory had me yelling at the screen. I’m so used to be able to loot and carry everything I want but S.T.A.L.K.E.R won’t let me do that. You’re no American hero.
And that may be the reason I loved the game so much and the why the atmosphere is so dreadful. You are playing a lonely human being trying to survive in a game world based on a truly horrific real world event. From time to time I stop and look around on the environment and play with the thought that this could be a real place, where real people worked and lived but it was all lost when a human error made the place into a “man made hell”. And the game mechanics won’t let me play a gamers game but forces me to act and think like a real life person would.
In some weird way the game is playing with me and my emotion. Even if I try really hard it won’t let me slip into the comfort zone of “I’m just playing a game” and the result is a truly terrific gaming experience that makes me feel a bit guilty because I take great pleasure in enjoying a game world based on a real “man made hell”.
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