Genre: First-Person Shooter

Platform: PC

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Classification: 18 (PEGI)

YOU wouldn’t know it to look at it, but things are getting better in The Zone.

Call of Pripyat is something of a return to form for a S.T.A.L.K.E.R series that had lost its way; GPS blurred among the fallout of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant catastrophe that is its central premise.

Pripyat manages to offer more structure, with its premise of a Ukrainian special agent investigating a series of mysterious helicopter crashes, without losing the feeling of free exploration that is both the hallmark and the greatest strength of the series.

Terror, or at least squeaky-bum degrees of discomfort is another classic S.T.A.L.K.E.R feature that is thankfully present here in spades. The whole messy menagerie of nameless horrors still lurks, moaning and grunting in the dark spaces among the ruins and wind-blasted moors. The Hound of the Baskervilles would just be lunch out here.

Everything attacks fast, slashing at your face and leaving blood streaked claw marks lingering on the screen as you pepper the walls with panicky twitch-aim fire.

Why is this fun?

What isn’t fun is the ever present and ever irritating health system of bandages and health packs and food and drugs to combat the various perils of chemical poisoning, radiation sickness and bleeding.

It’s fiddly and annoying, just like all those prissy dots in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R name, which turns it into an acronym. I can only guess at what it stands for: Sinister, Trying, Apocalyptic and Lax but Killer Entertainment Release seems about right.

SCORE: 8 / 10