[h1]The Untold Story of...what exactly?[/h1]
As the title suggests, I am penning this review somewhat confused. I just finished the game in one sitting. This isn't hard to do as the game itself, even if you take your time (read: suck butts at the combat), you'll finish it in three hours at most. About the length of your average movie. In this review, I'll cover the basics: plot, gameplay, soundtrack, everything else. There'll be spoilers from here on out but they'll be marked. I will say this: after 3 hours, I do feel I got my money's worth time-wise, but not plot-wise or gameplay-wise. There's just not a lot [i]there,[/i] you know? The game feels insubstantial, empty, even tedious at times.
[h1]These are Dark and Uncertain Times...[/h1]
The setup is that you are a liquidator, awakening in your apartment to the mention of a nuclear catastrophe at the Chernobyl NPP. You hop onto your motorcycle and ride your way to Pripyat, to go and assist in the effort. But at the same time, once you're there, you can't leave. It's surreal and a little unsettling. The area you find yourself in is empty, it is devoid of all life and as soon as you click the Pripyat sign out on the road, the game will give you exposition on what Pripyat is. nd by "the game" I mean the sound of a Russian man speaking in a rather flat monotone.
His monotone presence underpins the story as a whole. The blurb states, "The game resembles a delusional dream of a man exhausted by radiation [...] whether it is nonsense or [...] nightmarish reality [...] you decide." This is true. But there's no surrealism in the plot per se. You're a man in a green hazmat suit, wandering your way through what looks and seems to be Pripyat. The objectives given at the start are loosely connected at best. You can do them in any order. Only the actual NPP itself is locked, with the caveat that you're to do all the other missions first. Okay, sensible enough, but...
...that's what rang alarm bells with me to begin with. A narrative, surrealist game where the plot is so loose that you can do it in any order? Okay, I figured, world exploration it is. I may not be the smartest woman in the world, but I know a collectable when I see one. The gameplay boils down to this: You go to a place on the map, a panicked citizen begs you, the "spaceman", to help. You go in, shoot vaguely thematic bad guys (cops and criminals in a police station, for example), and when you come out, well...that's it. No, really, that's it. You can collect busts of Soviet leaders or posters from the studio's other game, Mercury Man.
Initially I thought that by finishing the missions, you unlocked the little blurb on Soviet life, read by Mr. Monotone Man. Some of them are quaintly comical, and others are harrowing. All invariably true. I have read a lot about the Soviet Union, on account of finding that absolute catastrophe of a regime morbidly fascinating, and the blurbs seem factual. Slice-of-life-ish, even. But they're not part of an overarching plot. Then, the person you're speaking to turns to some ghastly, horrid outline of themselves on the wall, as if distorted by a nuclear blast, and...that's it. That's all there's to it. [b]AND THEN I FOUND OUT YOU COULD CLICK ON THE BUILDING OR THING TO GET THE FULL BLURB WITHOUT DOING THE MISSION.[/b] The moment I found this out, any promise of a carrot on a sitck vanished.
[h1]...and Very, Very Pointless Times[/h1]
[Spoiler]And then the ending - the ending really made me feel like I wasted two and a bit hours of my life. You go into the NPP, shoot some liquidators who have gone mad, climb to the roof, and destroy a helicopter. Aside from being really hard, that last mission was as clear as mud. Before getting onto the roof, an officer tells you that you're about to 'do the most important thing in your life' and 'undo your mistakes'. Which mistakes? What have I done? It isn't even a commentary on the absurdity of the Soviet legal system, there's just nothing underpinning that statement. Am I not a liquidator? Everyone else treats me like a saviour. To say it's a thematic 180 is doing skateboarding a disservice. And then...the game ends. The conclusion is that the Soviet Union was horrid, and hid things from people, which resulted in deaths. Cut to menu.[/spoiler]
[Spoiler]The only people who would find that statement controversial are Soviet state capitalism worshipping tankies, whose twisting of the ideas underpinning communism is rivalled only by their historical revisionism.[/spoiler]
Final verdict? 4/10. The shooting's fun. The story is a nothing-burger. Buy HROT instead. It uses the stylistic trimmings of the Soviet Union much more effectively, and to much greater - and more nuanced - parodic levels, [i]and[/i] it manages to make a statement on the senselesness of authoritarianism through gameplay and atmosphere alone, unlike this game.
