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

Got the game because I really liked the classic, super-slow movie, and even read the novel it was based on, Roadside Picnic. Reviews rave about it, but notice that the "most helpful" are from 2014. Atmosphere is great at first, but at one point gets a bit repetitive - every place look like another. You don't quite get the dread of the movie/novel, as killer anomalies can be seen or detected; they are just spots to walk around. You can roam a lot free-style, but the "random quests" you get are all variations of the same - go there kill someone, pick up item, return -- and many are glitchy so you won't get all of them done. Inventory system is "realistic" (you need to place your items in a grid) but halfway through it becomes cumbersome, forcing you to drop a nice gun to be able to fit some ammo (and all the ammo graphics look more or less the same). Don't save to sell stuff, by the way -- I went the whole game without having to buy a single thing, as you can pick anything you need. As to the shooter experience, it is well done, and it is fun when you get factions shooting each other. But the enemies are mostly all the same - armed humans, and two or three monsters -- and the most fun weapons don't have too much ammo lying around, so near the end I got quite bored. The story, I'm afraid to say, I found it kind of lame. It starts mysterious, but when you get to solve the mystery it pretty much falls apart. You get a couple of different endings, none of them is great, so don't play it for the story.

I cannot stand this game. Landing shots is complete RNG. The head bobbing was making me nauseous. Save games and configs did not work. I Also the weight limit is such a pain once you get good weapons as they are heavier. If you do not have lots of ammo for one weapon, then you are easily weighed down. I found only changing the user.ltx file worked. Editing any other ltx file gave me an error, it would look for other files in these directories for some reason. Some of the sounds are almost-ear piercing. Sirens are incredibly annoying and sometimes there are creature sounds out of nowhere, which are very confusing. This is out in the open too. Accuracy of weapons is ridiculous. And the silly thing is when testing they can seem very accurate. Perhaps it's simply a hitbox problem. I found the wild animals very hard to headshot. I would spray into them and not even kill them, even very close up, the bullets would not even hit them. Things like this simply make the game feel frustrating rather than challenging. Once I started finding better weapons, I found 2x and 4x scopes but couldn't attach them to the weapons. And I don't understand the ammo weight. They seem about the same per bullet. I found making money very easy and ammo plentiful early on, when I can lug multiple weapons and lots of artifacts around with me. It wasn't obvious but I thought stashes were radiation sites, they wouldn't appear in the logs. Very weird design. Also, if your character is too close to a marker, then on the map you can't see the description of the marker...

One of the worst stories ever (there isn't even one, actually, it's at the end that you learn what's been going on), crappy shooting mechanics - but the absolute best atmosphere in a video game ever, hands down, and it's really enough to make anyone fall in love with and stick through it. Grim, charming, depressing, broken, and comfy at times, that's how I'd describe the game's world.

SEX

I've known about STALKER for years and years, but only recently decided to purchase it as it was on sale. Honestly, I don't understand the love for this game. It's tedious from the word go. The gunplay is abysmal, with enemies needing around 10 headshots before they go down - assuming you can land a decent shot in the first place. Unless I'm right up close to an enemy, I find myself constant missing and failing to inflict any damage whatsoever. I know the pistol is supposed to be poor, but I find the shotgun to be equally depressing to use and the automatic rifles are only a slight improvement. For a stealth game, the stealth mechanic makes no sense. Crouching down and moving slowly through bushes towards an group of enemies seems to just invite every single enemy nearby to begin shooting at me - and hitting me with pinpoint accuracy. In fact, the cycle of dying/re-loading/dying/re-loading gets incredibly frustrating in no time at all. Why swamp me with dogs, boars or bandits right at the beginning of the game and not give me the weapons or sneak skills to deal with them? I like difficult games, but give me some glimmer of hope that I can fend off the enemies or avoid them altogether. I don't seem to be able to do either. I do like the fact that it (appears to be) open world and I'm left alone to do what I want, but the NPCs seem to be fetch-quest givers and nothing more: "Go here and shoot this thing. Go here and talk to this person. Go here and collect this object". There isn't an obvious reason to be doing any of these quests, aside from earning some money. I find myself not caring about any of the NPCs whatsoever and have generally just ignored them whilst I explore. So to conclude, what we have is a FPS/Survival Horror game with poor gunplay, poor stealth mechanics and a plot which I couldn't care less about. Unless I'm missing something utterly obvious, I can't recommend it at all and didn't enjoy my time with the game. Sorry...