S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

I played the game till the end and I say: it's not worth it. Setting and atmosphere are really amazing, then it's so sad that the game suffers of bad controls and confusing plot. Inventory management is awkward. You cannot assing hotkeys to all important functions and you will die a lot while the mouse slowly cralws toward a item in your inventory. And be prepared, even in easiest difficulty you will die so much to the point of being unfun. If you master this game, you are truly a great FPS player. One huge problem is that gameplay is limited by the engine. There is a lot of features dedicated to stealth, but it simple doesn't work. If you are in line of sight of an enemy, he will shoot you, and everobody else will be aware. If you make a mistake and have to reload, all enemies nearby will be aware. So yes, don't try being smart and sneaky, this is just a shooter. There are many bugs and random crashes happen all the time. I used the ZDP patch, that corrects several things and allows you to tweak gameplay. I think the game should be unplayable without it. It was a designer choice to seldom give information about gameplay, even in the manual ("discover by yoursel!"). Bad choice, that is. You will have to jump all the time to Google to know how basic gameplay systems work. The story itseld is good, but the way it's told is the problem. Several times important information about the plot are not uploaded in your diary. Dialogues sometimes happen during shooting action and good look trying to put all pieces together later. Usually you just do stuff without knowing why. English localization is incomplete and ofter you have somebody talking to you in russian without even subtitles. Endings are VERY confusing and things happen without logic between cutscenes and portal jumps. Yes, this game could be truly amazing. Unfortulately, it's not. If you could surpass the awkward interface and bugfest, you could have fun (I have a lot in some parts, like the X18 and X16 labs).

The first game was inspired by 2 different things, Roadside Picnic, and the Stalker film from 1979. It almost had more delays than Duke Nukem Forever. The developers are fans of Half-life (You can find a dead bootleg Gordon Freeman in a parking lot tunnel near a Desert Eagle) Excellent atmosphere, rich, immersive world. Lovable fellow STALKERS, and even lovable enemy STALKERS (those bandits are very silly and charming, BANDIT RADIO!) Relatively realistic weapon handling (I used to think how often they jam was a little bs, then me and my bro was firing his handgun at targets, and it jammed literally every other shot. I then appreciated STALKER's weapon system even more. The jam RNG can be a little stupid though. Like X-COM RNG stupid. It's a little janky at times, might want to get a mod or two. Also, check out S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly on Moddb. A really substantial mod that combines the 3 games' maps, has a new quest, and then some.

The term "rough diamond" describes the STALKER series well. After numerous postpones and ultimately even content cuts, the first STALKER game was released in fairly broken shape in late 00s. However thanks to the helpful developers and the passion of the numerous fans, the game got soon fixed into stable form, and nowadays it has gotten two sequels and numerous big fan-made mods. On DX9 & higher lighting-modes these games look stunning, and the dynamic A-Life AI keeps Zone "alive" 24/7. Throw the difficulty to max, disable crosshair, and jump into the mysterious and deadly world of STALKER! See more info at : http://pastebin.com/FUPEbLiv Don't give up in the beginning! The starting gear kinda sucks and first area is... a bit boring for some. So what ARE the STALKER games then? -First-Person- survival -shooter games. -Open-ended world with some pre-determined, scripted sections. Changing weather and day/night cycles. -Your character needs to eat, and getting hit may cause varying levels of bleeding. 1 shot may kill at best. -Focus on FPS gameplay, with physics-affected bullet trajectories, multiple ammo types and upgrading options for all guns. -Some RPG-like elements, such as weight-limited inventory and resistance statistics. No leveling-up or collecting EXP, it's all real-time action! -Loosely based on the Russian "Roadside Picnic" -novel, and the "Stalker" movie based on it. The games take place in the area known as the Zone, which is more twisted version of the real-life Zone of Alienation, the closed area around the exploded Chernobyl Nuclear Powerplant in Ukraine. Unexplainable stuff starts happening in the area, it gets closed down by military. Few nutcases start breaking in to the place and smuggle out artifacts with logic defying effects, which eventually causes a "gold rush" into the area. These people illegally infiltrating the Zone become dubbed as STALKERS, short for Scavengers - Trespassers - Adventurers - Loners - Killers - Explorers - Robbers.

Amazing story, amazing atmosphere, hard-but-fair difficulty, open world. This is PC gaming rolled up in a single game.

loved this game , loads of atmosphere and still one of the best open world shooters . 10 stars ( Classic )