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

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.

This is the kind of game that thinks dying alot and reloading is fun. You will be spamming quick save. This is not as open world as is claimed. You are often times funneled in a certain direction or down a certain path. There are no alternate ways of completing objectives. It is at its core a "cover" shooter. You can't just walk into a room with a shotgun and mow everyone down. The problem is the only "cover" mechanic they put in the game is the ability to lean around corners and shoot, or crouch behind something. Thats okay, but the enemy bullets often just go right through the walls, or cement block, or tire you are hiding behind, or they shoot you the second you pop your head out .They can see you in the dark from a mile away. They can see you when you try to hide in bushes. They will hit you alot with inaccurate weapons from a ridiculous distance. When helping friendlies defend or take a position, you are invisible to them. They will push you out of cover to take cover themselves. There is hardly any dialog, it is mostly text based conversation. It also has the most nauseating head bobbing mechanic of any game I have ever played. No one walks like that. I never had a feeling of accomplishment or achievement. There was no character progression or growth. I did finish it, but there will be no more playthroughs, once was enough. The poorly implemented combat mechanics and overly accurate enemies kinda took the fun out of it for me.

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)

The fact that this series appeared on GOG just blew my mind! And here I was with the resolution to save up some money. The game has one of the best atmospheres in gaming. Personally I couldn't play it for a long time because of the overwhelming grittiness of the portrayed here post-chernobyl world. After a few hours of playing SoC I felt so "crushed" and "darkened" (if that makes sense :P). It's hard to describe that specific factor of immersion in the game that makes you take a break because it's just "too much". That's what makes the STALKER series stand out among games. If you look through sometimes clunky controls, seldom random glitches and occasional stability issues you are in for a ride you'll never forget... and now DRM-FREE! Now let's go drink some vodka to drop our radiation levels...

Игра очень атмосферная и всем стоит в неё поиграть.