Swamps and shallow stretches of stagnant water have appeared too, making a deadly obstacle for anyone foolish enough to try to take a shortcut through the reeds. Lakes have dried up, and the Stalkers who eke out a living by trading the strange artefacts and creatures that fill The Zone have taken refuge in the pitted, hulking shipwrecks. There are entire new areas of The Zone which have opened up, with regular quakes creating fissures in the earth that lead to vast underground caverns and new hilltops scarred with cracks and steamy geysers. The fallout of Shadow of Chernobyl has dramatically altered the landscape, creating new terrain and anomalies for players to contend with, some of which prove remarkably beautiful. The levels are therefore much, much larger and less constrained than anything you’ve seen in the original game, and The Zone as a whole feels like a much larger and more palpably alive location for the adventure.Ĭritically though, the levels have all been dramatically changed, and just because Call of Pripyat is set in the same place as the previous games doesn’t mean that the levels are actually all that similar. Lethal Emission Call of Pripyat may be a sequel to the first game in the STALKER series, but it’s actually the third game in the franchise, and so manages to incorporate nearly all the improvements of the latest title, Clear Sky.