Game Reviews

Crawling through a filthy, mutant-infested basement 20 metres below the surface of an irradiated Ukrainian wasteland, clutching a seen-better-days Kalashnikov while my Geiger counter rattles ominously, I stop to wonder why I actually enjoy STALKER so much.

Because, for one thing, it's hideously bleak. Playing more than an hour or so of any of the games in the series is like spending a month in Somerfield. Before long, murdering a total stranger with a hand grenade seems pragmatic rather than craven. He might have a bottle of vodka. Even the most picturesque of sunsets comes tainted with the knowledge that, shiveringly, they mostly come out at night. Mostly.

And that's where something else I don't usually really enjoy comes in: the unremitting terror. It's the noises. The skittering. The lowing. The moans. The snuffling growls which sound like an angry, adenoidal walrus mating at the bottom of a well (another familiar Somerfield experience). They're terrifying.

It's never silent in the world of STALKER. Even during the lulls in action, which are actually much more common than the desperately-fighting-for-your-life bits, there's always the ragged wind and the caws of the wheeling crows providing a unsettling auditory rug, ready to be whisked from underneath your sense of safety by the slightest hint of a grizzle, groan or gunshot.

The sudden snarling of a pseudo-dog, barrelling from cover as I sneak across a pitch-black, anomaly-strewn bluff, is a typically pulse-thrashing moment. 20 seconds later, when the roar of my drum-fed shotgun has abated and the beast lies dead in the clinical glare of my night-vision, I've collected myself enough to rationalise the fact that it's just a dog.