So it’s out. This isn’t really meant as a proper review, but I’ve spent a couple of hours today replaying the first few missions of Call of Pripyat (story and side) with CrommCruac’s Atmosfear 2 installed, and while I never got much further than the opening stages originally, the changes are still obvious. Atmosfear’s gorgeous skies look just as good in game as they do in still screens or blurry streaming video, and the ambient noises are suitably eerie. Our esteemed editor might not be the biggest fan of these graphical overhauls, but I’m liking most of what I’ve seen so far.
Problems? The HDR seems way too overblown on my system (a reasonably decent quad core running XP 64) and I’m sure I saw a daytime sky cycled in at half past midnight, which didn’t look too impressive. The biggest sticking point, though, is probably the lighting work and increased draw distance are arguably a little too good. You can see the edge of the world way, way too easily, and the naturalistic quality of the sun and shadows is such that the X-Ray engine starts to look as if it’s a world built out of plastic – well, even more so than usual. Metro 2033 this ain’t, basically, and all the photorealistic sky textures in the world won’t change that.
But it does still get my vote. The army of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. modders continue to produce some amazing releases, and each of the best pushes a fairly old piece of tech further than it was ever intended to go. Atmosfear is definitely a worthy addition to the lineup. I don’t think I’ve played enough of them to have a favourite, though it does bear noting Atmosfear is much less feature-rich than total overhauls like the Complete packs or L.U.R.K. It’s still more than worth a shot.
The sound of crickets rising too loud in the background under that beautiful expanse of scattered white cloud, while gunfire and barking echo in the distance, makes me feel every bit as lonely and vulnerable as the vanilla game. And that’s always been worth just as much to me as struggling to scrape together enough cash to buy five more bullets.
You can take a look at Atmosfear’s page on ModDB here. (I had some problems with the site finding a download mirror, but it got there in the end.)
Or you can visit CrommCruac’s own website for the mod here.