Please do not play this masterpiece with Complete 2009/2012. In addition to being outdated and riddled with bugs, it makes the game far too easy. You should rather play it with Zone Reclamation Project and some graphic mods such as Absolute Nature/Absolute Structures if you think it looks dated. Now, all of my favorite games are more or less from 1994 to 2000, with a few exceptions in the recent years. Shadow of Chernobyl is one of these exceptions. The atmosphere is extremely thick, the Zone is very dangerous and almost everything out there is out to kill you, even the environment itself with various anomalies and radiation pockets, as you can imagine. Gunplay is very good, the exploration feels rewarding and the sheer amount of caches around will make you search places from top to bottom. You can gather artifacts in anomaly fields you can either equip or sell, these usually give you boosts but you can get irradiated in the process. STALKER is not an RPG even if it has very light RPG systems; quests, dialogue trees and some stats. You do not level up and you'll be constantly looking for better weapons and armor. Explore lush, radioactive areas, visit underground and secret soviet laboratories, scared of something that might jump out of the shadows to get you, scavenge weapons and equipment, run around the vast wilderness, hunt mutant creatures, discover the secret of the Chernobyl NPP and more importantly: kill Strelok.
