This game is fine until you are past the Garbage, when it turns into a rail shooter with infinite spawn points that pay no attention to being beside the player. The immersion is easily shattered, and the COD run & gun is about as anti-stalker as it gets. At that point it completely abandons the open world exploration that SoC and CoP are lauded for. The worst aspect of CS is the lack of balance or any character development after the Cordon. I was able to finish the game without gear that was all available in that early in the game (AN-94 and SEVA suit). The regularity of crashes with a fully patched (including fan patches in the latest stable version of ZRP - avoid "complete" as it is far less complete or upto date as ZRP is) version is also a major knock against it. I will concede that this is the most optimized of the three, and looks great under the video setting: Dynamic Lighting (aka DX9). While DX10/DX10.1 mode looks even better, the significant increase in crashes prevented it from being used for more than a few minutes. The greatest disappointment is that GSC did not import the the maps, architecture, and optimizations into CoP. For the record, I have play SoC 20+ times, and CoP 14+. This was my first, and last CS playthrough, and makes me regret having caved in after all these years to try it. If I had never known how good their level design could be, I would be more satisfied. CoP now looks even more rushed and unfinished than I previously thought (though CoP is still a 4.5/5 with mods).
