Radioactive Cossacks

It's not unusual these days for developers to take field trips to get inspiration and photographic textures for their games. Gray Matter sent a party out to Europe to look around our castles, while Remedy returned the favour by visiting the mean streets of New York in search of that extra little bit of authenticity for Max Payne's locations. If you think skulking around the alleyways of downtown NYC was hazardous though, spare a thought for Ukrainian developers GSC Game World, who recently sent a research party into the evacuated zone surrounding Chernobyl, site of the world's worst ever nuclear accident. GSC are currently working on a game called STALKER : Oblivion Lost, which bears more than a passing resemblance to the classic Russian sci-fi movie Stalker. In the game a second disaster has turned the Zone surrounding Chernobyl into an even more dangerous place, with mutated animals, toxic lakes and lethal traps awaiting the unwary. That doesn't discourage everyone though, as Stalkers guide the curious through the closed Zone and search for strange artifacts to bring back to the outside world. Whereas in the movie the dangers were more psychological than physical though, in Oblivion Lost you will be taking on wily mutants with a variety of weapons and machinery at your disposal. With an interesting storyline and a mixture of nicely detailed interiors and vast outdoors areas full of plants and wildlife, it's certainly looking a lot more promising than GSC's last attempt at a first person shooter, the decidely shoddy Codename Outbreak. Hopefully this time they can afford some real voice actors as well... For a diary of the developers' little day trip to Chernobyl and chilling photographs from inside the Zone, head over to the GSC website. Related Features - Stalker screenshots