Finished Call of Pripyat. Enjoyable, but not as good as Shadow of Chernobyl. Never played Clear Sky so no comparison to that.
In SOC, equipment progress is slow, areas are big, and powerful mutants appear less but are more lethal, so it's a very satisfying experience from the beginning till the end. I remember at the beginning of SOC, I would be happy to get my hands on progressively better weapons, from the "finally I can get rid of my pistol" mp5, AKS74U, to the "finally I can properly shoot stuff at 100 meter" AK74 and LR 300. By end game when I got SVD, G36 and F2000, despite them being perfectly real weapons, my joy was no less than finding a BFG.
In COP, it seems that good weapons are EVERYWHERE. My starting AKS74U hardly fired a shot until I've picked up the AK74. Then I got an automatic shotgun as a reward. After a couple more missions I commissioned Nimble to get me an assault weapon for 20,000 RU and he gave me a freaking F2000. By that time I was also rich enough to commission an exoskeleton but I didn't bother it. By the time I've reached Yanov I've got a copy of almost every weapon except for an SVD and gauss rifle, and hundreds of all kinds of ammo. The only thing later that fundamentally shows equipment progress was the gauss rifle, but even then I didn't use it much except for killing fucking psychic dwarves and in the final mission. The other times I carried the most powerful shotgun - which was a quest reward mid-game - to shoot mutants, and one other rifle which I choose and experimented around a lot just for fun. But for the latter, I don't think it really matter a lot which rifle you choose. Because you've got the majority of weapons by 1/3 or 1/2 of the game, and combat is not as frequent nor intense (see below) than SOC, most weapons won't see a single shot of fire unless you're a fan of it already or you're just experimenting around.
Now for the area and combat. In SOC, combat is very frequent, and "hot" areas are a lot. Most major building have corridor shootouts, and places like factories have good sniping and CQB mixed in. It's also due to this, whenever you find a new weapon, it opens up a lot of possibilities and its value will be deeply appreciated. Picking up the VSS Vintorez/SVD/OTs-14 in SOC was a MAJOR accomplishment and a boost in my arsenal, as finding them means I can finally properly kill stuff over long range, or have something powerful enough to reliably kill exoskeletons within 5 shots. Combat is intensive and can be long lasting, especially in the last areas, your armor and weapons can get damaged seriously and ammo may run out fast too, forcing you to scavenge everything you can and even pick up weapons lying around to preserve your main weapon and its ammo.
But in COP, most of the areas are too small, or are big but have lots of wasted space. For example, the cement factory, the tunnel you first face a burer, the various outlying villages, and of course a lot of the buildings in Pripyat, may look interesting at first glance, some are even big and have complex internal design, but in reality have only a couple of mutants to kill and a couple of loot to grab. In the few buildings that have combat, except for a very few ones, most combat are over just way too fast. Because big, important combat are far too few in between, and good weapons are easily acquired, it doesn't make me feel any tension for being in a dangerous place.
Finally, the game's general area and quest design is quite a let down. I thought in COP I could finally have a proper Pripyat area to explore, but what I found was a Pripyat even LESS interesting than SOC's. Pripyat in SOC was at least a dangerous place to explore, with gauss rifle snipers everywhere above lightning striking above. But in COP, the city is almost devoid of interesting encounter, and even the quests are disappointing. They put in cutscenes to make the missions look serious and mysterious, but all I needed to do was to run to a building 40 seconds away, kill about 10 enemies within a couple of minutes, then back to base. At the end I haven't even explored about half of the place of interests and the game was over. Even Zaton and Yanov, the areas which are supposedly better designed than Pripyat thanks to more interesting quests and more NPC hanging around, was full of lifeless areas too. For example, Jupiter plant was huge, but the only interesting things you'll see will be a weak ambush and some dogs. And a few documents lying around which explain almost nothing interesting.
The only thing of COP I thought which did better than SOC was the environment design. The pitch black midnight was brilliant, but sadly nightvision was extremely easily acquired, and darkness have no effect at all on enemies, they're still crackshots even without NV and when I'm hiding in a bush or something. But even then, combat is, as mentioned before, laughably easy and quick to deal with, with weapons like F2000/G36 becoming available practically within a couple of hours.
Sure, the game have a freeplay mode, but for me I don't see a point running around exploring empty buildings with no lewt and no interesting fights at all.
Next stop: Space Rangers HD, which will be out tomorrow.
really care...
