S.T.A.L.K.E.R was a game I always loved but was never good at. I’ve bounced off it many times over the past 17 years because I’m not good at games, regardless of how much I love them. I have seen almost the entire game, from my bed behind my good friend S4R1N while he sat at the computer and played through on the highest difficulty. But finally I sat down to complete it and it has left me with more thoughts and feelings and respect than I know how to deal with.

Finally, a game where I’d do about as well as the protagonist in that situation.

The S.T.A.L.K.E.R series represents the other side of the dichotomy that we see in Half Life and Call Of Duty and many others - a bullet sponge protagonist who is somehow both an everyman and the expected saviour of the world whose every shot and melee attack leaves another corpse in their wake. But in STALKER you are a trying to remember who you are in a radioactive wasteland. You can sprint 50, maybe 100 metres before you need a breather. Starting out you’ll probably be as good with guns as you are in real life and each weapon you find is a piece of shit been dropped more times than you’ve had hot meals.

The nihlistic, depressing traditions of Soviet/Russian literature, now a hit video game.

Missions sometimes pass or fail in areas far away from you because you are not important; you are just another Stalker hunting treasure or meaning or repentance in a dangerous wasteland already full of your ilk. The game does so well at evoking the tone and mood of Soviet and Russian literature, which is understandable because it is based on the book Roadside Picnic by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky, a novel I finally read last year that still sticks with me and likely heightened my love of this playthrough even further.

But as I ventured further and met more factions and loners and weirdos I realised that Metro 2033 by Dmitry Glukhovsky also provides a strong influnece, a study in how different groups eke out survival as best practiced in their own ideologies and the pros and cons that go with their respective beliefs.

I will not spoil any of the five (5) “fake” or two (2) “real” endings but suffice to say none of them leave you feeling a hero, a winner, the saviour of humankind. Even the “real” endings leave you with more questions and a reminder that even our best intent and greatest effort may not materially change things and that even if it does it may not be for the better. The game is right in not saying what you did made things better or worse, just that we cannot know the long term ramifications, we cannot know what we left behind.

Also not a spoiler for any of the real endings but the idea that there is a bunch of bureaucratic fuck ups is just a little chef’s kiss on top.

Much like STALKER I too am beloved despite being an unstable mess.

If you want to play, I’ll give you a heads up that the game is still a buggy mess. It crashed to desktop about 8 times in a 20hr playthrough so much like voting I advise you to save early, save often. Outside the game-breaking there is a lot that needs a polish. The UI, especially on the PDA and map are a nightmare, and the inventory spends more time getting in your way than helping you work out what you want to carry.

Loading your last quicksave after death will often see the HVAC technician who finished your ventilation work now asking if you can help him find an artifact, enemies will despawn or respawn at whim in new areas and sometimes there will be many of them having a chat when you pop in which can be a particular problem if they’re Ukrainian army with a “shoot on sight” order for all Stalkers.

This game is so realistic, there’s an unknown thing giving everyone vivid, nightmarish hallucinations. But the scientists built something that stops it but unfortunately turns you into a shambling zombie.

I’d strongly recommend this game. Despite the rough edges it’s a beautiful piece of art and history and one that I hope will change the way you think about games as literature, about shooters as a genre.