I've been playing this for the last few days. I'm near the end I believe, or at least in the last areas the game will take me. I'm liking it quite a bit.
I played Shadows of Chernobyl back when it came out and it was like the greatest thing at the time. Sure it was super janky. Sure it the shooting wasn't the greatest. Sure the load times were super high. Didn't matter. when I played that game I felt a little smarter. That's smug but it's true. When the game started it didn't provide me with much direction or even any items to use for survival. I had to literally scrounge everything up myself from dead bodies. I remember when playing early on I only had a pistol for the longest time, I was afraid to go near anyone with a rifle. I encountered a band of bandits on the road just before I was about to attack them a bunch of rabid mutant dogs appeared and started attacking them. After a few minutes all the bandits were dead and I was able to loot their bodies for a sub machine gun and a bunch of supplies. I don't think at any point does the game give you these items.
CoP is different than this however. When you start the game you already have a pistol and an assault rifle with a bunch of ammo. It makes sense in story context and it actually works because it would be silly to just rehash the same exact beginning moments from their first game. The trade off here is that the game feels much more open than SoC. You're goals take you all around the zone and can be tackled in any order. SoC was a similar open world game with zones but it was more linear in it's progression.
So CoP has an easier learning curve I've found. Ammo is not as sparse and I haven't had much trouble with money. I always have plenty to repair my equipment and such. I think it's a good way to shift focus from the survival aspects of the first game to being more about exploration. The character you play isn't a lonely STALKER so it makes sense for him to be more capable in this world.
One thing I can say that I miss is the underground lab portions. In the first game I LOVED those parts. They were little mini horror segments that had some of the creepiest and scariest moments I've ever encountered in a game. I'm around 15 hours into CoP and there haven't really been any dedicated segments like those.
It's still plenty fun looking for anomalies, doing quests for crazy scientists, bartering for items, encountering an entire empty saw mill filled with zombies. all that stuff. great game so far.
If you have not played these games I highly recommend doing so. Grab Shadows of Chernobyl first. Skip Clear Sky, then play this.
some screeeenz:
found zombies, stealth kills didn't work as I planned.
found an underground lab. using a detector to avoid anomalies.
shityourpants inducing:
sometimes you fight things that can throw fridges at you:
