Stalker Legends Of The Zone Trilogy Enhanced Edition review – Chornobyl horrors

Call Of Prypiat is the best looking of the games – in a grim and foreboding way (GSC Game World)

The original three Stalker games are remastered for consoles and PC, so the classic mix of first person shooter and survival horror can thrill another generation.

Hollywood has an increasing addiction to remakes and sequels. Disney’s creatively bereft live action remakes, the endless retellings of Spider-Man’s origin story, and the unstoppable juggernaut of Mission: Impossible films have clearly inspired the games industry, which although not yet on the same scale, has recently seen a noticeable uptick in the recycling of familiar intellectual property.

In the interests of preserving video games as interactive art, remasters of older titles is perfectly welcome. With a graphical refresh and improved controls, a well-constructed remaster can bring creaky old games back to life in a way that more closely resembles our memories of them – more so than actually playing the original would.

That was certainly the case for Oblivion Remastered. Its raft of subtle upgrades made it a more engaging experience without losing any of its character and idiosyncrasy. Fortunately, the same is true for S.T.A.L.K.E.R., a franchise made by Ukrainian developer, GSC Game World, that emerged in the early 2000s and which recently saw the release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2.

The first in the series, Shadow Of Chornobyl, came out in 2007. It’s a wonderfully bleak first person shooter-meets-survival horror, set in a fictional version of the irradiated exclusion zone surrounding the non-fictional nuclear reactor that exploded in the 1980s. Infused with mutants, lethal supernatural anomalies, and bands of marauding humans, your time in the zone is at least as much about staying alive as it is about exploration and trading.

It remains a real period piece, its menu system built around a PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) a device that was instantly made obsolete by the launch of the iPhone, also in 2007. You use your simulated PDA to check the map, quest objectives, and rank as a stalker – which to start with has you right at the very bottom.

Beginning the game with no memory of who you are or how you got into the zone, all you know is that you have S.T.A.L.K.E.R. tattooed on your arm and a mission to ‘kill Strelok’. What you do next is entirely up to you. There’s a scattering of people around, who you discover belong to different factions, and completing missions for them or killing their members goes on to affect your reputation with each group.

More worrying are the aggressive mutated beasts you meet, whose howls and grunts are especially unnerving when experienced nearby in the dead of simulated Ukrainian night. They remain at least as disturbing in the Enhanced Edition, which brings upscaled textures and character models, re-rendered cut scenes, and more generous auto-aim. However, like Oblivion, you still couldn’t mistake it for a modern video game.

Muddy colours, stilted conversations, cruelly rarified ammo supplies, and the lack of pointers about what you should be doing or how to complete even rudimentary tasks, hark back to a less sophisticated era. They’re also instrumental in creating the game’s atmosphere of authentically unsmiling post-Soviet grimness, something that was also deployed to excellent effect in the Metro franchise, a series created with the help of several developers who cut their teeth on S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

The game’s inherent clunkiness is part of that ambience and even though there’s now a weapon wheel, that makes swapping guns and equipment more convenient, and competent use of the DualSense’s adaptive triggers and speaker, it remains true to its origins, which is to say it’s still awkward and often dismally dark.

Clear Sky is essentially a straight shooter (GSC Game World)

It’s astounding how much its prequel, Clear Skies differs, despite coming out only a year later. There’s an evident graphical leap forward, but its biggest change is that it drops the survival horror in favour of a focus on warfare amongst groups of human survivors, complete with a page in your PDA that portrays each faction’s comparative manpower and equipment level as a set of power bars.

You work for Clear Sky, who are researching the zone, hoping to harness some of its weird properties on behalf of wider humanity. It’s a more optimistic and less oppressive milieu than Shadow Of Chornobyl, despite notionally occupying the same setting. Ammo’s plentiful, you can modify weapons to make them less appallingly imprecise, and there’s even a fast travel system, something notable for its absence in the first game.

Despite all these helpful changes, and the improved graphics, it’s a less satisfying game to play, lacking much of the character that made the original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. such a singular and unsettling experience. So it’s a relief that Call Of Pripyat sees a return to its forbidding, more merciless roots. It abandons the factional power bars, letting your influence or infamy with each group unfold in a more organic and fulfilling manner.

It also delivers another graphical improvement over Clear Skies, despite again being released just a year later, retaining and building on its weapons mods. That’s useful because even by the third game gunplay is punishingly inaccurate, with weapons’ wooden handling and tinny sound effects contributing to a general sense of flimsiness. Upgrades help mitigate that, if only in the effectiveness department, but they still sound and seem laughably puny.

On the other hand, each gun has its own distinct strengths, with every mod you add palpably affecting the gameplay. With the welcome return to a more survival horror flavour, the eerie atmosphere, augmented by more refined systems, makes this instalment feel as though it finally delivers on the promise of the original.

Taken together, the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy is a showcase for the talents of GSC World, and a fascinatingly unique take on first person shooters. Despite the fact that it’s riddled with what, in most games, would be considered flaws, once you slip into its rhythms and unusual sensibilities, there’s still nothing quite like it. Apart from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 that is, which the company managed to release at the end of last year despite working under Russian occupation.

Stalker Legends Of The Zone Trilogy Enhanced Edition review summary

In Short: A spruced up, lightly streamlined refresh of the classic Ukrainian shooter-meets-survival horror series that retains every bit of its uncompromisingly bleak character and individuality.

Pros: The weapons wheel reduces fiddly menu work and the graphical makeover adds to the deliberately grim atmosphere, which remains the game’s strongest suit.

Cons: Still fairly clumsy feeling, with gunplay lacking finesse. Very little that you need to do is explained properly.

Score: 7/10

Formats: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), Xbox Series X/S, and PC
Price: £32.99 for the trilogy or £15.99 each – free for existing owners of the games
Publisher: GSC Game World
Developer: GSC Game World
Release Date: 20th May 2025
Age Rating: 16

The first game is very scary at times (GSC Game World)

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