The original S.T.A.L.K.E.R won quite a following among gamers, with its unique fusion of first person shooter action, role playing and survival horror. Taking place in the Ukraine’s irradiated Zone of Alienation, the area around the town of Pripyat that was devastated by the Chernobyl accident, S.T.A.L.K.E.R was a success.
Welcome to Pripyat, comrade
It was followed by S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Skies, and now the latest in the adventure is among us, S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat. This graphically intense game refines and builds on the elements that made the previous entries so much fun for ardent PC gamers. It’s got even more weapons, a bigger open world to explore, smart AI, a complete trading system, and lots of backstory. Apparently authorities want to retake Chernobyl, and you’re one of the lucky dudes to go in first.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R games have never been typical shooters, they both convey a more profound sense of dread and desolation, and demand more in-depth exploration and roaming. Developers GSC Game World have spent a long time crafting an entire environment, which they promise to bring to life with hordes of mutants, vicious mercenaries and who knows what other manner of post-nuclear abominations.
Greetings from scenic Chernobyl
We’re pretty excited with this game, and there’s now an even better reason to get it. ASUS has told us of a limited edition of the EAH5870 graphics card, bundled with S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat for US and European markets. There are supposedly only 2000 pieces of this version being made, so it’s bound to be a rarity when it comes out in May.
The EAH5870 is the kind of card you want your PC packing if it’s the wasteland you must enter. It’s pretty capable, with the Radeon HD 5870 GPU (some 1600 stream processors can’t hurt) and 1GB of GDDR5 RAM.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat is a fully DX11 game, which we guess this bundle is meant to highlight, since the EAH5870 is a DX11 card. It also has support for AMD’s multi-screen Eyefinity technology, and ASUS’ Voltage Tweak and Smart Doctor, which make it possible to overvolt and overclock with ease should the atomic hordes prove too hot to handle. The EAH5870 also features ASUS Splendid for optimized movie viewing quality, and a nice range of I/O, including HDMI and DisplayPort.
AK? No thanks, we're good
Check with your local retailers for more info on this exciting package, and we’ll do our best to have our test rig running S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Call of Pripyat when we get our hands on it here!