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

An amazingly atmospheric game. What always captured me the most about it, was how, despite the dreadful atmosphere, the violent clashes and the struggle for survival, there's always a tender humanity at this games core. Additionally, I did like the mysterious story turning philosophical towards the end.

bandits, mutants, abominations and worst of all the government all want you dead. your iventory is a 50kg max load so dont think you can loot goblin your way through. everything has weight from some moldy sausage to your fancy (soon to be destroyed) gear keep anti rads and med kits at all times. conserve your ammo, its not cheap. keep some food youll get hungry. dont attack those around you, unless you really want to. But Most Of All. Have Fun.

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 sun is rising and I hold tight my rifle as if this piece of scrap was my life line against horror… Why am I here? In this slurry pit which is the Zone I thought I would find wealth and wonders… and glory maybe. As a welcoming, this old crook of Sidorovitch sends me doing his dirty work with an old Tokarev and few disgusting rations. And it’s been few days I’m advancing cheating death at any moment. I’m starting to lose my mind… so many of my dreams have turned into nightmares. The Zone, the biggest quarantine in the world! 1986 was not enough apparently. It was needed to study again the whys and the wherefores. And the tragedy happened again. Fortune they said. You only find plants with exceptional proportions, radioactive anomalies that defies science, mutated creatures that defies understanding… and men who’s acts defies reason. And in his hell he reigns supreme. Some factions try to dominate the Zone whatever the cost. And it’s not counting with bandits and others raiders waste of humankind that massacre innocents and idealists like me. But the Zone has always the last word because its children feast on our corpses. It has a life of its own that spreads more and more. I hear it… it speaks to me… these voices… they come back sometimes. Or maybe it’s the radiation poisoning that starts again. A draft of this bottle and it will be okay right? And next morning will be blurry with the stomach upside down and the body covered with injuries. The sun is rising. Gun shots and screams in the distance. So I make a fuss of my rifle. My only friend … because I’m a Stalker. One more day in the Zone. " N.B: Stalker is one of the hardest games ever created where survival will push you to the limit. The atmosphere is incredible and mods created by the community will hold you for dozens of hours. Try AMK mod after you've beaten the game to feel how Stalker would have been when finished. Its only flaws were its chaotic development and release. A classic.

Ukrainian developer GSC Game World, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is an impressive accomplishment. This first-person survival game is at times amazing and engrossing and on par with such classics as Deus Ex and System Shock. From its alternate reality setting and realistic gun mechanics to its trading system and action horror formula, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is radioactive rareness.