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

Before I say anything else, know that Stalker stories are some of my very favourites across all mediums so I'm going to be heavily biased. Besides the already mentioned strong points, gameplay itself I found terrifically fun and the 'survival mechanics' were done very sensibly to instill urgency and constant unease in the player without being overbering. The side quests are not a terribly important part of the game, nor are the dialogs and the NPC's in my estimation but all of that is easily forgiven when it's completely dwarfed by the incredible way the game looks and plays. It seems incredibly alive despite the apparent lack of polish in certain aspects. When you hunker down with a vodka and a sausage in your backpack and your firearm in your hands trained into the dark, the outer world just fades away. Survive or perish, the Zone takes its toll.

Spent about 40 plus hours reading Gamespot's walkthrough, watching The Salt Factory, a GVMERS documentary while learning to play the game but the rest of the 100 plus hours was just a blast of a journey through this pc exclusive classic. Ingereld wasn't lying when he said it's one of the top 5 best pc games of 2007. Yeah this game confirms that making PC my gaming platform of choice was a wise decision.

Played this for the first time in 2024 with the Zone Reclamation Project. First off, this game gave me crazy motion sickness. If you do too, turn off head bobbing and change FOV. Unfortunately, the game still loves to distort your screen/wiggle the camera, so I had to take frequent breaks. I can definitely see why this is a cult classic: the atmosphere is great, gameplay is fun and the world is far more reactive than most games of this era. I enjoyed the first 70% of the game, but the end of the game really takes a nosedive. Tense exploration turns to endless waves of dudes, you spend more time looting than actually playing the game, NPCs and quests started breaking left and right... ZRP has tools to help with some of these, but it's so complicated and poorly documented. It feels like there is a fantastic game in here somewhere, but it just doesn't come quite together in the end. Still worth playing, but don't hesitate to switch to a youtube video about the story once the game becomes frustrating. I'm curious to see if Stalker 2 can deliver on the promises of this game (although I doubt my PC will be able to run it)

Short review: -Solid shooting and gameplay that actually benefits from playing on higher difficulty (enemies become damage sponges on lower difficulties, and accuracy is messed with for both parties) -Amazing lighting and AI. Often invites just sitting back and watching things play out. -Active and varied mod community. AMK, ZoA, OGSE, Doom's Mod Merge and many, many others all show new sides to the Zone. Complete mod, while looking good, cheapens the whole Zone experience in the long run.

Even though this game is not made for linux, I was still able to get it to work if I use WINE. The game runs fine, the only issue is it crashes after I save, which is a pretty small problem. The game itself is amazing. Exploring and taking missions is fun, the atmosphere ranges from anticipation of bandits attacking to the eerie feeling that a mutant is about to sneak up on you. To top it off the guns feel fairly realistic. The voice acting isn't the best, but in my opinion, it adds to a David Lynch kind of atmosphere. I can't recommend this game more to fans of: First Person Shooters, survival horror, or open world games (even if you play on linux ;D).