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• 2.1 Task List
• 2.3 Fast Travel
• 2.4 Relations Menu
• 4 Energy Management
• 5.1 Item Details
• 5.2 Disassembly
• 7 Detectors
• 8.1 Merchants
• 8.2 Tourist Guides
• 9.1 Continue to Survival

HUD Explained Made By Dismir

When you spawn in, you'll need to equip your PDA from your inventory.

The Task List shows all active missions in the top left corner of the PDA.

The Map shows POIs, Campfires, Explored Locations, Stashes, Anomalies & Navigation Paths.

Fast Travel

You can Fast-Travel by right clicking previously discovered areas (Right-Click On The Green House Icon)

Relations Menu

The Relations menu shows your and other factions relationship's to one another.

In G.A.M.M.A money is of the essence, especially in the beginning. There are ways to make cash quickly, namely doing tasks without picking up fights, selling mutant parts or selling artefacts to the ecologists.

You'll find yourself often spending money on healing items and that's intended. The more you play, the better the toolkits you'll have and the easier it will be to repair good gear and craft items, which will save money and make fights easier, thus helping you saving even more money. In mid game, you'll inevitably get loads of money. This can be used to upgrade your equipment, or invest in expensive AP ammo.

You can also buy detectors and NVGs at traders... Or craft them and save some money. (Late Game) Maintaining an exoskeleton armor will also be a money sink since you need to often buy expensive exo batteries in numbers. Better healing items are also a must to have easier fights, using stimpacks will greatly help you in tense fights.

Energy Management

Your character will be tired at the end of the day. You have to sleep replenish your energy. You can only sleep if you are tired enough. Using sleeping pills will allow you to forcefully sleep, though this will not replenish your energy.

Depending on how the day was, you'll get tired faster or not. Eating copious meals and using sleep inducing medicines will allow you to feel tired and get rest at the end of the day. However if you are eating small meals, and use energy drinks or caffeine tablets often, you'll have a hard time to be tired enough to sleep at the end of the day.

During sleep, there is a chance to you'll wake up early. Be sure to try to sleep more than what you intend to sleep the correct amount of time. Sometimes you'll oversleep. Having a sleeping bag + sleeping mat will reduce the chance of waking up early

Vodka or Beers can help you sleep as well.

Item Details

Right Click on any item and click 'Details' to view its description and any related items.

Disassembly

Right Click on any weapon and click 'Disassemble' to break it down into its parts.

Every item has a weight value, as well as your character has a carry limit. Located bottom right of the inventory.

Every item has a base value and a separate value that traders will pay. The latter is influenced by progression difficulty.

Stamina is an important gameplay mechanic that affects your character's ability to perform physical actions such as running, jumping. Your character's stamina bar is displayed on the HUD (Bottom Left), and it decreases as you perform physical actions. When your character's stamina is low, their movements become slower and less responsive, making it harder to perform physical actions effectively. To replenish your stamina, you can rest for a short period, eat food or drink energy drinks, or take certain types of stimulants.

Overall, managing your stamina is an important aspect of gameplay in G.A.M.M.A and it requires careful planning and resource management to ensure that you can perform physical actions effectively while exploring the Zone.

Detectors are electronic devices that are used to locate and identify anomalies, artifacts, and other hidden objects in the game world. There are several types of detectors available in the game, each with its own set of features and abilities.

The most basic detector is the Echo Detector, which emits a series of beeps and clicks when you approach an anomaly or artifact. More advanced detectors such as the Veles Detector or Bear Detector, can detect and identify different types of anomalies, artifacts, and hidden stashes from a greater distance and with greater accuracy.

Trading & Services

Merchants will mostly sell supplies and some accessories. You can increase their supply level by doing tasks for the trader's faction. The goodwill thresholds are: 500, 1000, 1500 and 2000 goodwill. There is an upper limit of 3000 goodwill that does not unlock any additional benefits. This is the main way to secure a constant income of good ammunitions. You won't be able to buy or sell armors and guns at traders. Traders are either of the Warsaw Pact or NATO type. This will influence the kind of supplies that they sell (ammo and attachments mostly).

Warsaw Pact Factions: Military, Loner, Duty, Bandits, Renegades, Monolith.

NATO Factions: Mercenaries, Clear Sky, Freedom, UNISG.

This also influences NPCs loadouts, but for instance Monolith NPCs have about 50% change to have a NATO or Warsaw Pact gun. Some traders sell very specific items, like Prof. Sakharov and Hermann sell the Artefacts Melter, a GAMMA specific toolkit that let's you empower and craft artefacts (and you can break artefacts with it to replenish the melter's power). They also sell exoskeletons' PSU recipes at Supplies Level 5.

Tourist Guides

Tourist Guides are characters who offer their services to help the player navigate the dangerous and unpredictable landscape of the Zone. These guides can be hired for a fee, some act as a fast travel to certain locations others will ccompany the player on their journey, providing guidance, advice, and protection. However, hiring a tourist guide is not without risks. Guides are often untrustworthy, and some may have hidden agendas or ulterior motives. They may also be more interested in making a profit than ensuring the player's safety.

Medics are characters who provide medical assistance and services to the player. These characters can be found throughout the game world, typically in designated medical facilities or camps. However, medics may also have their own agenda and may not always act in the player's best interest. Some medics may charge exorbitant fees for their services or may be more interested in making a profit than helping the player.

Stashes must be marked to contain anything. Unmarked stashes will always be empty. Stashes content is tied to the map they spawn in: the northern a stash is in the Zone, the better the loot. Storing stuff in stashes is safe: it won't be looted by NPCs and even if the stash is marked (On your map) at some point, content will spawn in the stash on top of what you previously stored. Information about the location of stashes can be bought from merchants, also through missions.

White Stashes can contain a range of items but do not guarantee a tool kit, While Green Stashes guarantee you some kind of Tool Kit.

Notably, the Expert Tool Kit can only be found north of the Red Forest, requiring Stalkers to explore further into the zone before acquiring end-game armor, tools and some devices.

Continue to Survival

• 1 Weapons & Ammo

Stalker Gamma Tips and Tricks part 1

Last time, I spoke about Stalker Gamma and how I was so surprised to see a game of such quality be absolutely free. Today I am going to give you some starter tips and tricks so you can find success immediately. I say starter tips because the game has such a steep learning curve and is similar to that of Tarkov s learning curve and I would go as far as to say this game goes beyond that. Especially if you try out Hardcore modes.

Calibrate your settings ( Most important tip)

Click New Game , from there the calibration menu will open up. Here you can choose your static Progression and Gameplay difficulty settings, notice my choice of words “static”, the static refers to the fact that these settings cannot be altered in the game, your main difficulty will be Easy if you choose Easy. There are also a plethora of modes to play, like Azazel and Warfare. You can hover these modes to see what they are all about.

Don’t worry we can further adjust the difficulty sliders if things are too hard or too easy for you. I play on Story mode to see what this game is all about and what’s the meaning of it, later I will try out Warfare mode or Azazel mode or IRONMAN mode. With Ironman mode you have just 1 life, if your character dies, it is deleted permanently, Youtubers use this mode as a form of great content as it pairs really well with livestreams on the purple snakes platform and Kick.

Right of the bat, what you choose to take, where do you choose to start and which faction you pick has a direct impact on your playthrough. The rookie village is a village meant for new players to experience the game with ease and not have to worry about horrors that you see later in the game. In the rookie village you will find your main quest but also you will find other smaller quests to get you started with cash and reputation. Your main quests start by talking to Important Characters. Your may important characters by opening your PDA and by looking for walking man icon, if you hover it, it should say Important Character.

You have many options as weapons but I prefer the TOZ-34 it’s a short- double barreled shotgun and is the most cost effective weapon here. I use the TOZ as the enemies you fight in the beginning have low armor so buckshot will kill most enemies in 1-3 shots. Of course this does not account for armored units and higher level opponents. You can find buckshot ammo on any trader and usually they hold about 100 buckshots. A stack of 10 costs 334 roubles, compare to other ammo that’s crazy cheap.

From there, take also armor, gas mask and headlight. Armor helps with many defensive stats as you will later on find out in the game. There is ballistic defense, radiation, psychic, fire, puncture and chemical so wearing good armor will get a long way in this game. The starter gas mask will give you nice radiation protection so you don’t spend a lot of money on radiation consumables early on. The headlight will be your best friend at night, it allows you to have light on while shooting freely. Finally, get a cooking pot and 2 first aid heals + 2 post aid heals. Don’t worry about the terminology right now, healing is explained later in this guide.

In the image below, you will see Gameplay and Progression settings, you can adjust the sliders based on how easy or hard you want the difficulty to be. To get to this menu, Hit ESC while in-game -> Gameplay -> Gameplay Difficulty and Progression Difficulty.

Gameplay and Progression difficulty settings can be edited only while in-game as they only apply to your current playthrough.

The more reputation you have the better quests and in turn the rewards in addition to your supply level increasing with the traders in that specific location. When leveling up your traders, you will find better and more advanced gear being sold, also there is a wider variety of armor-piercing (AP) ammo. You need AP ammo to take down tough stalkers, some are incredibly armored and without AP ammo you are dead before you know it.

PDA navigation

The PDA is a compact device that allows you to view the entire map of Stalker, find your way through stashes, zones and quests. The default button is CAPS LOCK, I changed it from caps lock to M, map for short. Later in the game you will learn how to upgrade your PDA to include things that previous versions couldn’t show you. Like where are Free Stalkers, basically wanderers who may have side-quests for you but also have the option to be your companion.

It’s nice to have some AI to eat bullets for you or help you clear bases. Don’t forget, you may hover an icon in the PDA to get an idea of what it is. For instance, technicians are marked with light-blue COG icon, you can just hover that icon and it will say Technician.

In Stalker almost all characters you meet have the option to give you quests, side-quests will be your way to grinding gear, money and reputation. Almost all quests award you money but also a stash location. That’s why its important to do many side-quests so you find stashes all around the Zone to get toolkits and other crafting components. Don’t worry if you don’t memorize the stash location when completing a quest, the location is saved on your PDA.

There will be times where you won’t be able to complete your main missions, the game locks that content away from you for good reason. You need to gear up in order to see the more radiated parts of Stalker.

If you fail a quest you will lose rep, so don’t accept random quests you will never complete. Keep your active quests to about 10-15.

Hunt stashes when available

Stashes are the bread and butter of this game, all the costly materials and tools you need to craft, repair and upgrade are found in stashes. Most importantly, it’s the only reliable way to repair good gear with decent protection so you can advance further into more radiated and more horrific locations of the Zone. In Stalker Gamma, you cannot buy armor and guns, instead, you kill progressively stronger enemies and loot their stuff and then finally you repair that loot with toolkits.

There are 2 types of stashes, the grey ones which are tiny ones with decent loot in them. And there are green ones, these are big stashes, here you have a higher chance for rare items. In both types of stashes you will get rare items but green ones have a higher chance to grant more rare items.

You will get stash info from completing quests, paying traders for information on stashes and by finding PDAs that contain stash info and decrypting them but in the beginning that kinda tough to do just keep in mind the 2 first options and you will be good to go.

Dissassemble and field-strip loot

One of the easiest ways to crafting materials is to dissassemble not only junk but also armors, weapons and other equipment. Don’t worry if you dissassemble something by mistake you can just reload your last save. We will cover save settings in the following section as saves are quite critical in this game.

Whenever you see an inferior armor on an enemy right click on it and click dissassemble, you can only break up items by having a dissassembling tool like the Swiss Army knife or a Grooming kit. Quick tip: Don’t fully use grooming kits and Swiss army knives always save the last charge to craft repair kits and other items. When deconstructing armors, you get kevlar plates, cloth sheets and other materials essential to repairing your armors.

A way to get gun parts so you can repair you gucci gear, is by right-clicking on a gun then field-stripping if you cannot dissassemble. As a rule of thumb, get parts above 60% so you can repair them with a Ramrod or a File. They are both part repairing components and later in the game you will be able to craft a part repair kit which can restore a part from 0 to 100%.

Saving settings

You can save the game by approaching a campfire, simillar to Soul-like games. Some campfires are inactive, that means you have to light them up in order to save. Simply approach a campfire, press F (default for interact key) and then hit F5 to save (default for quick-saves). To light the campfire you need matches, so use the saves sparingly and don’t waste matches on fires that are 30 seconds away from the fire you just saved at. Some traders have matchboxes, so always double-check whether you have enough in your inventory, you don’t want to be in the zone without saves.

Saving in this game can be quite hardcore or very casual depending on the settings you choose. First hit ESC -> Settings -> Others , enable autosave every level change, choose whether you want an Autosave every X amount of mins. I have set mine to every 5 minutes and about 5 reserve saves, don’t judge without this I wouldn’t have progressed far enough to create this guide. 🙂

Fast Travel and Backpack travel

There is fast travel in this game but you must pay a decent sum and is limited to 1 fast travel every 6 in-game hours. Hit ESC -> Gameplay -> Fast Travel and after you are done with Fast Travel also check the menu just below Backpack Travel. We will cover backpack travels in the following section.

By right-clicking your backpack and selecting the option Create Stash , you can create a stash, so you can store items. Don’t worry people won’t open your backpack and steal stuff. More importantly, by creating a backpack stash, the game gives the option to travel to that stash for the same fast travel fee you would pay to get somewhere.

For casuals this will be your best friend, I use fast travel only when I have so much loot that I am encumbered and cannot move. And because you guessed it I am lazy, when I travel really far north and I have to get back to base to stash my loot and start crafting. In those situations I use fast travel, I otherwise i try to explore fully from the moment I leave my base to the last drop of loot. To navigate to the main Fast Travel settings, hit ESC -> Gameplay -> Fast Travel.

You may also limit the tax and how often you can fast travel that’s totally fine believe me when I say this, the game even on the easiest settings it is absolute nightmare material, you have so many things to do and manage that you will truly feel like a Stalker in the zone. To navigate to this menu, Hit ESC and go to Mod configuration menu -> Limit Fast Travel.

Deal with Radiation

As you have deduced the Stalker games are all about corruption, radiation and other abnormal aspects. There will be a lot of times where you will have to deal with radiation in this game as it can be found literally everywhere even in the food you eat. Certain areas are irradiated because of anomalies or toxic waste and northern areas of the game are always irradiated, the further up north you go the harder the game will become as you will find mutants you never thought even existed and the radiation is painfully high. So you need a decent armor and you also need radiation pills + radiation blockers to stay alive.

A cheap way to minimize radiation damage in the beginning is to carry radiation pills just in case but also carry packs of cigarettes’ and vodkas. Smoking a cigarette or drinking some good ol Russian vodka will increase radiation resistance for about 80 seconds. For more radiation resistance you need a good helmet that has decent radiation protection.

How healing works in Stalker

I am going to break down the health system in this part 1 of my guide because it’s critical to your success, if you don’t understand the health system you will struggle a lot and you will go broke very quickly. Let’s start with the health bars.

• You have a psy health bar which indicates the amount of psychic health you have, if this goes to 0 you are dead immediately. There are enemies that use psychic abillties like throwing objects, mind control, hallucinations, displacement and many others. Good helmets provide decent psy protection that will shield you from these abillties but also allow you to enter locations that inflict psy-radiation, this will slowly burn out your psy health depending on your psy resistance, the lower the resistance the harder it hits.
• The second health bar, is the health of your entire body, as you take dmg this health bar will start to drain starting from the top of it’s head and going down until the legs. If this runs out you are dead no matter what. You can heal this by applying first aid heals, these are that specifically heal your main health and temporarily heal your individual limbs. Healing items that perform first aid heals have a a red heart icon on them, so you can quickly identify them, even if you see the drop of blood, hovering over an healing consumable will tell give you a brief summary, the sideeffects and it’s properties (if it provides first aid or post aid heal). Post aid items on the other hand have a white heart icon on them, we will break down post aid in the following parapraph.
• The 3rd and final health bar in Stalker Gamma is the individual health bar of your limbs, there is 1 for the head, torso, 2 for your arms and 2 for your legs. Your head and torso are the most important to keep track of, if those deplete you are dead even if your main body health is half full or at 10%. Your head and torso are classified as critical organs hence why you need to always top them off if you can. If you legs or arms deplete, your movement will be hindered and your aiming will be significantly worse. So try to monitor and try to have them at least 50% so you don’t perform bad.

With all that out of the way, let’s take a look at how you heal in Stalker. if your main body is damaged use a first aid heal and your main health will slowly regenerate to full. When a individual limb is damaged, use a first aid heal first that applies to that particular limb. For example bandages heal only your arms and legs and torso and stop bleeds so if your head is damaged your bandage wont help. Here is a very basic healing clip.

After you used the correct first aid item, use the correct post aid heal item, for instance if your Torso is damaged and you use fentanyl your Torso health wont regenerate. Check the item details by hovering over to see which healing item does what and hot key those items for quick access.

My setup is this: F1 for first aid, F2 for head+torso post aid, F3 bandages or tourniquet to stop bleeds and heal arms and legs and F4 is a damage reduction item, like Fentanyl this item allow you to heal some main body health, regenerate some limb health and give you a 10% damage reduction which is amazing if you know you are about to get into a tough fight.

Even though the guide is long enough, I must explain crafting briefly here because it is one of the main progression systems in the game. Basically if you don’t progress in crafting then the a majority of the game is locked to you.

Below is a very basic demonstration on how to repair items.

How to upgrade items:

To upgrade an item, you need upgrade kits below is an image of how they look like. From there you need a repair kit for that specific piece of gear, be it armor or weapons. For instance to upgrade a light armor, you need a light armor kit and a corresponding upgrade kit. You may also go to technicians in major bases to upgrade your items for a progressively increasing fee.

You can craft by gaining, Basic Tools and various other crafting kits that allow you to repair an item from 0 – 100%. Armors and weapons have parts, which need to replaced. That’s why its important to dissassemble other equipment, so you can use the dissassembled materials to repair other gucci gear.

Remember shops don’t sell guns or armor. Here is a brief list on how crafting works:

• Hunt stashes and find Basic tools and other kits like the drug-making kit that allow you to create your own heals. Or the gunsmithing kit that allows you to craft your own ammo, extremely important, as AP ammo is a must later in the game where you fight Mercenaries, Special Forces soldiers and Monolith zealots.
• Open the basic tools interface, to repair, click on the cog icon on the left, to upgrade on the middle icon and to craft new items the far-right icon.
• Find what materials you need to craft these tools and start hunting for those items.
• You may dissassemble items that have a white cog on the bottom-right corner of the item itself, these items usually serve only that purpose and are a good source of scrap and other parts you only get from dissassmebling certain items.
• To craft more rare items you will have to craft Advanced and Expert tools that allow you to repair rare items like, Exoskeleton suits, Special forces rifles and so on.
• Visit technicians in major areas to acquire crafting materials necessary for crafting progression. Always carry with you a set Basic Tools and Advanced tools so you can see what you need to craft certain kits and buy those from the technician if you cannot find them elsewhere. Technicians can repair your items by paying a small fee to use their vise. A technician is displayed with light-blue COG icon in your PDA, search around the PDA for the closest technician and have that as your long-term to make it there so you can buy crafting materials.

We will get into Traders. the economy system, the various factions and how to repair and upgrade from 0 to 100 armors and weapons as well as advanced healing in Part 2. I understand this is information overload however, this game is trying to immerse you into being a Stalker in a horrific zone where everything is trying to rip you apart. I am confident that you will like the game, I have friends who play casually but they love Stalker as it is creepy and extremely hard and even your smallest victories will be appreciated in this game.

Thank you for tuning to Part 1 of my Tips and Tricks guide for Stalker GAMMA, I hope you found this guide useful. Consider following me on Twitter so you don’t miss out on Part 2.

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Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl's brutal wasteland has grown more thrilling with age

Opinion | A classic that gets better, and more terrifying, with time

Come to Stalker: Shadow Of Chernobyl fresh from a younger open-world series and it may appear deliberately unfinished – an early access build that never made it to version 1.0. Set in a radioactive psychic hinterland based on the 1989 Chornobyl nuclear disaster, it's a work of unvarnished post-Soviet miserabilism, a resolutely fun-averse shooter consisting of dreary geography full of loveless mercenaries, ethereal deathtraps and malfunctioning guns. While badged as a horror game, it's more depressing than horrifying. And how much more miserable it seems in the context of games such as Horizon: Forbidden West, with their bright, exotic landscapes of smooth-swallow quests and conveniences, their magnetic mission loops, crunchy ability combos and syrupy insistence that the post-apocalypse is a place of possibility. 

Stalker shares fixtures with these later games: it's both their ancestor and their baleful adversary. It has trading outposts, enemy camps, and replenishing loot caches, the rudiments of a Ubisoft worldbuilding playbook. It has maps and mini-maps, even a magic compass that points to your next objective. Its story carries you through curated mission spaces as you hunt down the mysterious Strelok, who apparently lurks somewhere at the heart of the Chornobyl exclusion zone. You'll prowl the corridors of sunken silos, eyes peeled for the glimmer of a flashlight on a wall, and on the streets of Pripyat, the wretched city of Oz at the end of this radioactive-yellow brick road. But Stalker doesn't link these elements together as fluidly and gratifyingly as the Far Cry series would. And while its landscape teems with NPCs and mutant animals, all swirling about and raiding each other at the behest of the much-trumpeted A-Life system, it doesn't offer a "living, breathing world" as much as one that refuses to die.

Back in time

This feature originally appeared in Edge Magazine. For more fantastic in-depth interviews, features, reviews, and more delivered straight to your door or device, subscribe to Edge . 

BGSC Game World's command of architectural detail is magnificent, given a morbid tolerance for shades of brown. Pripyat is an astonishing creation, a place of squares and rectangles that repeat from the soiled tiles and bricks of individual doorways to the corrugated skyline. The power station beyond is a masterful exercise in finding the balance between authentic recreation and tailored playspace, with girders and wire fences along its flank that provide thrillingly sparse cover against snipers and campers. But the majority of Stalker's landmarks are low and unpromising: artless chunks of concrete and rust, many already picked clean by rival Stalkers. You learn to avoid the buildings, which are often swamped in radiation that can only be fumbled around or powered through with a generous helping of anti-rads. 

The world of Stalker never lures you towards its perimeter like the misty horizons of Fallout 3 – that vastly more optimistic and playful, even triumphal vision of nuclear disaster, which launched the year after. It mires you instead, bogging you down in the rubble and threatening you with the possibility of surprise attack from any angle. The surviving roads leave you visible for miles, and funnel you towards ambushers. The offroad stretches are awash with flickering spacetime disturbances that crush or electrify or incinerate anybody daring to travel as the crow flies. 

The countryside, meanwhile, has no glamour to it, nothing like the neo-barbarian or Gothic sublimity we're trained to expect of post-apocalyptic settings. At its least inspiring, Stalker drops you into openly video gamey jumbles of hills, crates and unconvincing trees under skies of raw sewage, fringed by impassable fences. On your first runthrough, you'll often navigate by fumbling along these boundaries, secure in the knowledge that you won't be attacked from at least one direction. The settlements, if you can call them that, offer scant intimacy. They're checkpoints and resupply areas for lone wolves, each with his (there are no women in the Zone) heart set on the rewards that await in the power plant. 

There's a certain bonhomie to your conversations with other Stalkers at campfires, for whom you can do favours such as chasing off packs of mutant boars. You can also hire some of them as allies, but these are working partnerships at best, with few named faces to give the game a sense of society. The idea of building communities in a radioactive wasteland is, after all, a farce. 

The active threats are at once murky and diffuse and grubbily mundane. There are mutant humans and animals, who are rarely scary but always a handful, especially the invisible ghouls who corner you underground, anticipating the water walkers of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. But the game's nastiest antagonists are just rival dudes in masks and fatigues – malevolent smudges on the geography, shooting you through gaps in gutted train cars and ripped piping. They flank, advance and retreat in a leaden, undramatic way. Unlike, say, the cackling Locusts of Stalker's contemporary Gears Of War, they don't feel like they exist to entertain you, and they reserve no special regard for you next to rival factions and the wildlife. The weapons, meanwhile, aren't vintage long irons or kooky atompunk improvisations. They are by and large ordinary guns of recent manufacture, rapidly aged by overuse and the Zone's supernatural weather, passed around within a small population of warring pillagers.

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Novel ideas 

If you're reading this and asking why you'd play Stalker today, the answer begins with how it teaches you to think about exploration. Today's open worlds are often far larger than Stalker's cluster of open-ended levels, but they feel smaller for how they draw and direct your attention, their objectives, cues, routes and landmarks arranged so that even the longest journey becomes a series of distractions. They are designed to reel you between waypoints. Stalker makes you stop and consider the earth underfoot, and is all the vaster for it. The absence of fast travel means you'll trek back and forth through areas, experiencing their layouts from several angles, at different times of day, and with different enemy configurations, thanks to the A-Life system. The abundance of half-visible or invisible terrain hazards obliges a meandering approach, navigating by feel rather than sight: you learn to strafe around anything halfway intriguing, listening for the crackle and whine of your various detectors. 

This circuitousness breeds a forlorn quietude that couldn't be further from the hungry manner in which we move through many better-known video game environments. It's the part of Stalker that feels most like Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film Stalker (both film and game are based on Arkady & Boris Strugatsky's novel Roadside Picnic). The film transports you to a dreamy purgatory of localised occult hazards which feel more like subversions of dramatic structure and cinematography than minefields. Characters travel cautiously across and around the perspective, rather than proceeding toward the vanishing point, dragging out each scene and so layering up the fear and wonder of the wilderness backdrop. In Stalker this idea is handled more reductively. Its anomalies are more akin to explosive oil drums, and a source of supernatural relics that are used to enhance your stats. But weaving in among them takes the same patience, cultivating a similar appreciation. 

"In Stalker this idea is handled more reductively. Its anomalies are more akin to explosive oil drums, and a source of supernatural relics that are used to enhance your stats. But weaving in among them takes the same patience, cultivating a similar appreciation."

Though undersung in comparison to Assassin's Creed or Skyrim, Stalker's influence on other games is considerable. You see it most obviously in the parade of Stalker-likes, some developed by other eastern European teams, from The Farm 51's Chernobylite to Big Robot's The Signal From Tölva. The standout imitators are 4A's Metro games, though these are just as much a departure for how they rig Half Life-style levels to Moscow's railways. You can glimpse Stalker, too, in blighted multiplayer survival games such as Hunt: Showdown and in the battle royale genre, which tasks players with gunning to the heart of a hostile environment. Other teams have discarded Stalker's gunplay, the better to savour its geography and architecture – there are flashes of that wasteland ambience in many so-called walking sims, especially those set in abandoned spaces, such as The Town Of Light. 

But perhaps Stalker's greatest legacy is the rediscovery of the real-life Chornobyl exclusion zone as a 'dark tourism' hotspot. GSC Game World's creation isn't the first or only contributor to popular interest in the site of the 1989 reactor explosion, but Stalker veterans are prominent alongside the Fallout players and fans of the 2019 HBO TV series who have visited Chornobyl – sometimes as part of guided package tours, sometimes by sneaking under the fence and hiking through the wilds, dosimeter in hand. Prior to Russia's 2022 invasion, the Ukrainian government had planned to redevelop the zone into an official attraction. While long contained, this calamity has the potential to spread, not least thanks to unwary visitors. Russian troops kicked up radioactive dust during their assault on the facility, and according to the Ukrainian state some have taken irradiated souvenirs to flog online. 

All of which justifies Stalker's grim view of humanity. We wouldn't be surprised to meet in-game fans of the game touring the Chornobyl of GSC's forthcoming Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl. This isn't really a 'post-apocalyptic' story at all. The disaster it's based on is unfinished and unfolding, in part because people refuse to let it lie. Its wasteland is a portrayal not of aftermath but of a catastrophe that threatens to expand outward into the pre-apocalyptic world, a deathly pocket universe kept active by that most fatal of compulsions: curiosity.

This feature originally appeared in Edge magazine issue 387. For more fantastic features, you can subscribe to Edge right here or pick up a single issue today . 

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The Rad-Lands

Such is life in the wasteland, radiation as a gameplay mechanic.

You can’t have a post-nuclear setting without radiation. Many films overlook this crucial aspect or at most offer a token Geiger counter scene ( She Wolves of the Wasteland ). This is largely because radiation cannot be seen, felt, or heard. Generally, special equipment is required to detect the presence of radiation. While this element of world building is often overlooked in film, radiation serves as an important gameplay mechanic in the majority of post-nuclear video games. However, with gamification comes new challenges. Radiation typically does not kill outright. Even several lethal doses will not result in immediate death. Therefore, because radiation attacks the body slowly, game developers have approached this mechanic in a variety of ways.

To further explore this mechanic, we’ll be analyzing three game series that make extensive use of radiation.

• S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

The Geiger counter in Metro 2033 is primarily used for immersive world building. Small set pieces such as bioluminescent mushrooms or pools of bubbling green slime will cause the Geiger counter to tick. These pockets of radiation are mostly harmless, though Artyom can die if he stands in a hotspot for a few minutes. Although subtle, this gameplay mechanic immerses the player into the setting. Without radiation, the world of Metro 2033 could be mistaken for a sci-fi setting similar to Gears of War , especially since Moscow’s surface is considered poisonous rather than radioactive. This is why so many post-apocalyptic movies have an obligatory Geiger counter scene: it puts the audience in a survivalist mindset. The Metro games take this a step further, subtly reminding the player that the world above the tunnels is not like the world in the postcards.

Though technically not post-nuclear, fans of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. franchise are constantly aware of their radiation exposure. Contrary to a handful of contaminated puddles and mushrooms in post-nuclear Moscow, the Zone is positively covered with fields of radiation. Players who wander into these hot spots will find their vision distorted by grey TV static.

Radiation damage is pretty simple: the more radiation you’ve absorbed, the faster your health decreases. Radiation can be removed either with a radiation absorbing artifact or a dose of anti-rad. Because artifacts drain radiation slowly and anti-rad is somewhat rare, players are forced to respond quickly after absorbing deadly amounts of radiation.

Although the Zone’s radioactive hotspots (and anomalies) seem like a nuisance, they actually encourage exploration. Artifact hunting aside, anomalies and pockets of radiation act as landmines, encouraging the player to take the long way (usually ending up at a lootable location), rather than risk wasting resources or instant death.

Moreover, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. encourages a high risk/ high reward style of gameplay when dealing with artifacts. Although artifacts grant stalkers special abilities, they also emit deadly amounts of radiation. Before obtaining high tier anti-radiation artifacts, players will occasionally be forced to balance their health, elemental resistance, carry weight, and radiation levels. Having artifacts emit radiation was a brilliant idea and one that makes the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series all the more satisfying and rewarding.

Finally, there’s the Fallout franchise. Radiation sickness has been a gameplay mechanic since the first Fallout , but it originally didn’t effect much. In the first game, there were only two ways to get irradiated: Get smacked by a glowing one or wander into The Glow.

The original Fallout has the most complex take on radiation sickness, requiring a chart to fully understand what it does. Every part of the character is effected: HP, healing, and SPECIAL (with skills as a result). If either HP or any S.P.E.C.I.A.L. attribute drops to zero because of radiation sickness, the character will die. However, as I said previously , I don’t think radiation was used to its full potential in  the original Fallout . Two doses of Rad-X makes the player completely immune to radiation, giving them 24 hours to explore The Glow without worrying about any side effects. Even if the player took a few points of radiation damage on arrival, they can use a single Rad-Away to instantly cure themselves. Allowing the player to reach 100% radiation resistance detracted from the danger of The Glow as the lore (and environment) shows that even Brotherhood Paladins have died due to the intense radiation exposure.

Fallout 3 streamlined the mechanic of radiation sickness. Instead of effecting several variables, radiation sickness only lowers endurance (at minor sickness), agility (at advanced sickness), strength (at critical sickness) and finally caused death at 1000 rads. Additionally, radiation was far more present in Fallout 3 than previous games in the franchise. The Lone Wanderer could not eat or drink  without absorbing at least a few rads. Additionally, radiation resistance was capped at 85%, making it challenging to approach areas like Vault 87.

As a side note, rads are a real (if outdated) unit of measuring radiation . 1000 rads delivered in a short period of time will usually cause death.

With Fallout 3 and New Vegas came special perks associated with radiation sickness.  These perks are often overlooked as the majority of players want to keep their rads as low as possible. However, the brave few who uses these bonuses will find their gameplay dramatically shifts toward min-maxing.

• Rad Regeneration : Offers the player free healing of crippled limbs in exchange for advanced radiation sickness (-2 EN, -1 AG). This perk comes free with the “Wasteland Survival Guide” quest, but is lackluster compared to admantium skeleton, which decreases limb damage by 50%. Perhaps this perk was ahead of its time. It would have been great for survival mode in New Vegas (as rare doctors bags are required to heal limbs), but in a game where a single stimpack instantly heals crippled limbs, this is a useless perk.
• Rad Child : This perk is where high risk/high reward shines through. Each level of radiation sickness increases health regeneration. In exchange for minor radiation sickness (-1 EN), player are treated to +2 health per second. At advanced sickness, players receive +4 health per second. Again, this is often overlooked simply because it relies on radiation, which brings S.P.E.C.I.A.L. penalties. However, by utilizing Wasteland outfits (which provide +1 EN, +1 AG) the effects of advanced sickness are practically nullified, while the Courier still benefits from extreme HP regeneration. While this perk should bring a lot of risk, it actually provides far more protection than power armor or a higher damage threshold while still allowing players to travel at maximum speed.
• ATOMIC: This perk grants players a faster run speed, +2 strength, and +2 damage threshold while being irradiated. Additionally, action points regenerate much faster based on level of radiation sickness. This synergizes amazingly well with Rad Child. The challenge is that the best parts of the perk are only available while being irradiated. Luckily, New Vegas has coyote steaks, which irradiate the player over time and whose effects stack. If the Courier should buy coyote steaks at every opportunity, they will become more powerful than any wastelander could possibly imagine.

Although overlooked, New Vegas’ radiation perks are definitely worth the penalties they bring, especially when combined with wasteland outfits and the Travel Light perk.

Most recently, there is Fallout 4 and Fallout: Shelter where the mechanic of radiation sickness was streamlined once again. Radiation sickness now merely reduces maximum health by 1% per 10 rads (making 1000 rads still lethal). This eliminates the complexities of the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. system as a whole and reduces roleplaying opportunities.

At a first glance Fallout 4 seems like it moved away from the aspect of radioactivity. Although the game moved away from player interaction with radiation, it expanded on NPC interaction in the form of weapons that utilize radiation damage. These weapons reduce the max health of an enemy, making it more difficult (if not impossible) for them to heal. What’s interesting in this new gameplay element is that some enemies are immune to radiation while others are highly resistant. This is a big shift from Fallout 3 , where all NPCs were immune to radiation and could approach the door of Vault 87 without any trouble.

Overall, each game (even within the same franchise) deals with radiation differently. It’s a difficult feature to include in a game and it’s even harder to get right. There’s no right or wrong answer to the inclusion of radiation sickness in a video game or movie. Metro 2033 uses radiation merely to set the tone, while S.T.A.L.K.E.R. uses radiation to make players think about resource management and navigation, and the gameplay mechanics of the Fallout franchise continue to mutate in entirely new directions. Radiation is a necessary part of the post-nuclear atmosphere and I hope game developers continue to experiment with this genre specific gameplay mechanic.

How would you like to see radioactivity and radiation sickness used in video games?  Tell us in the comments!

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One comment on “ Radiation as a Gameplay Mechanic ”

Great post! I really enjoy the injection of possibility provided by “radiation” in a lot of the games you reference: the post apocalyptic genre is inherently bleak and empty, so some degree of mysticism and magic can be a welcome relief! And hey, who doesn’t love ogling radioactive monsters in games like Fallout?

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