S. T. A. L. K. E. R.: Shadow Of Chernobyl. Games full of bugs that players loved anyway
Table of Contents
The case of S. T. A. L. K. E. R.: Shadow of Chernobyl somewhat resembles Gothic. An unknown studio from a country not associated with good games creates one with a large scale, unique atmosphere, high difficulty level, interesting plot, and - above all - huge ambitions. Like Piranha Bytes, the FPS created by the Ukrainian GSC Game World became iconic despite only good (and not excellent) reviews. To this day, the fans are eager to shake their nerves, exploring the underworld brimming with mutants and anomalies or facing packs of merciless bandits. And also, of course, a storm of bugs – because like Gothic the first S. T. A. L. K. E. R. had plenty of those, too.
Patches released by the developers of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. have not always helped the game. This was the case, for example, with patch 1.0006, which in theory was supposed to support the multiplayer mode, but in practice only generated new bugs. No wonder GSC Game World quickly dropped it - although it can still be easily found online.
It didn't help that the release date was delayed multiple times – initially, Shadow Of Chernobyl was to be released in 2003 – and at the time of its debut, GSC Game World still needed to work on their game a lot. Most of the bugs were funny rather than frustrating, but some could completely ruin the fun – including vanishing NPCs' corpses that were supposed to have items necessary to complete the mission on them. The game also occasionally tended to freeze or even crash completely, robbing the player of tens of minutes of progress. The developers tried to remove most of the bugs, but with different results (see: side frame), so fans decided to take matters into their own hands and fixed S.T.A.L.K.E.R. themselves by the Cone Reclamation Project mod.
After years of waiting GSC Game World studio has recently announced S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. At the moment, it's hard to judge whether the upcoming game has any chance of fulfilling fans' hopes. The company's last production, Cossacks 3, proved to be average at best.
