If you’ve kept track of online discussions, you know the situation regarding the new S.T.A.L.K.E.R. releases is heated, to say the least. In this review, I’m going to be covering the first one and see for whom it is meant for.
It’s an old game, but spoilers will still be avoided.
THE PRESENTATION? YES, THE PRESENTATION!
Let’s start with the good.
The original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games were made with a heavily modified engine called the X-Ray Engine. When Shadow of Chornobyl debuted, the atmosphere received a lot of praise, and that’s the case here. For the most part.
The enhanced edition uses an upgraded version of the X-Ray Engine. Not a complete engine rework, like how Respawn Entertainment reworked Source for Titanfall/Apex Legends, or how NetherRealm Studios reworked Unreal Engine 3 for Injustice 2/Mortal Kombat 11. Or a complete engine swap, say, like swapping it with Unreal Engine 5. The other engine the devs have access to. That they used for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl.
The world is dark and dilapidated. Broken glass was scattered across the room. Interiors of rusted metal and wood softened by decay. Off in the distance, you can hear the rustling of wind, the discharge of anomalies, and creatures that are the product of your nightmares howling madly. Put together, it helps create a sense of hostility that very few games have managed to achieve. If you’re playing Shadow of Chornobyl for the first time, with a higher difficulty, you’ll know what I mean. One moment it feels like a typical shooter, and the next it feels like a Cold War experiment gone wrong. The world is out to get you, and you know it.
Textures have been upscaled, lighting and other effects have been improved, but make no mistake, this is still the same X-Ray Engine made over 20 years ago. Models are still the same, animations are still the same (when they work properly), and a few assets have been swapped. The world is now just a bit sharper, and your vision has gotten a bit more bloom. The extra bloom doesn’t help in making the game more cinematic; it just makes it harder to appreciate the upscaled textures.
Updated visuals are nice, but not really a big deal. Updating the game with new visuals is something that people have been doing over the past decade via the modding scene. From small improvements to total conversions, to the point where you’ve got people saying vanilla shouldn’t be your first experience. The updated visuals aren’t adding to the value, nor at they detracting from it. There are few, making the enhanced version feel more like a patch rather than a proper re-release. There is direct mod support now, so you can make the experience as wild as you want, which is a big plus.
GUNS, GUNS, AND SOME MORE GUNS!
Similarly to the original, the enhanced version sports a simple combat system laden with a bit of RPG and Slavjank. Similarity is going to be the theme of this article.
Like the original, you can have one main weapon and one secondary. You have your knife, your trusty binoculars, and your even more trusty bolts to deal with anomalies. Your combat options depend on your resources and your weight. The more you carry, the more options you have, but you tire yourself faster. Peek. Shoot. Peek. Shoot. Run to a different cover and do it again. Human enemies are usually competent when it comes to shooting you, and often reposition and use cover. It’s a simple rhythm that can sometimes get stale, so it’s best to play on the higher difficulties in order to maintain tension. Mutant enemies prefer to rush, but they have their quirks and designs to keep them interesting.
Combine that with the game’s A-Life system and quests, and those hooked will have hours and hours. I am glad the game has maintained its RPG facets, like with the artifacts and the lore bits in the PDA. The game still alternates between typical FPS and horror to keep things fresh, and the addition of stashes and limited resources pushes you to get out of your comfort zone. It is a decent system, but like a later part in this article, the enhanced edition’s gameplay has retained some of the flaws of the original.
For veterans of the series, there’s a pretty well-known way to cheese combat scenarios and break the economy. Those are still present here. There’s also the fact that some builds are objectively better than others. The stealth system is still quarter-baked. Not every quest is a winner, and facets of later games weren’t retroactively added into this. The atmosphere of the game is strong enough to make the cheese and jank manageable…but that cheese and jank is the same from years ago. There’s a good chance newcomers are going to find the experience interesting, but for veterans of the series…you can probably guess what I was going to type.
GUNS, MONSTERS, BUT NO BUG REPELLENT
The devs claim the enhanced edition comes with improved performance and squashed bugs, but that’s not the case. It’s a well-known fact that the first S.T.A.L.K.E.R game became the poster child for Slavjank. While the enhanced edition isn’t as janky as the original on launch, there are still moments that’ll make you scratch your head. Why is there a mutated pig walking across the sky? Why is the enemy’s gun clipping through the gate and shooting me? Why doesn’t the barkeep trader come over here so I can talk to him and progress my quest? Why did the mutants I was shooting suddenly forget my existence? And most importantly, why is it that every time I spawn in the Garbage, there’s a new batch of NPC corpses cooking in this barrel? Every. Single. Time.
Besides the blatantly broken, there’s a noticeable lack of consistency and quality of life improvements. You know, things that you would expect from an enhanced edition. No filters during trading like equipped and unequipped, UI text not being aligned properly, character icons being blurry, having two separate loading icons for some reason, and shadows missing. The original wasn’t exactly the pinnacle of gaming standards, but that was forgivable, given how it was the team’s first foray into a game of such scope and their limited budget. Eighteen years of experience later, and the financial success that is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, such things are a bit harder to ignore.
THE SAD CONCLUSION
I had fun playing S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chornobyl – Enhanced Edition. But it should’ve been called Patched Edition because I still felt some of those old frustrations. If you’ve never played the original, this one is not a bad introduction. If you’re a hardcore fan, you’re going to give this one a shot. But if you’re one of those fans who’s hoping for something new and substantial, then you’re going to be disappointed.