Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl

A well done FPS!

This game is set in the future, with a plot that begins around the time of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. It is a game of intense action, atmosphere and involves some strategy and choices.

As with any game there are positives and negatives...let me explain

The Pros:
1.)A great selection of weapons and ammo (with the better ones becoming available as you proceed in the game). Some are better than others and some are quite heavy (you have a limit to how much you can carry).

2.)Different armor is also available at different points in the game.

3.)Realistic "fog of war" occurrences; weapons jam (with increasing frequency as they become worn); your player tires and gets hungry affecting his ability to perform.

4.)Great atmosphere; spooky ambient lighting in dark halls and tunnels, in the outdoors you have rain, lightening and night time; and then there are always the unexpected attacks (anywhere) by an assortment of men, animals and mutants.

5.)Enemy AI that is realistic: their guns need reloading and occasionally jam; they hide behind objects when shot at; they sneak up from the unseen side; animals attack in packs and from behind while one or two distract you from the front. All in all an enemy that appears to "think" about what it's doing instead of just standing there and blasting away at you.

6.)Although the game requires you to the complete main missions to proceed in the game, you can roam around the country side unrestricted. As a bonus, however, there are several side missions that you can do (these are optional and not required to finish the game but may give you substantial rewards in money or items).

7.)Easy save and load feature.

8.)3 different endings, depending on the choices you make near the end of the game.

9.)Some re-playability; you may want to try different endings, side missions and other weapons and armor.

10.)Many hours of intense, hectic game play.

Cons:
1.)You'll need fairly good hardware and lots of RAM to run this game as it was meant to be played.

2.)No vehicles to ride for battle of transportation purposes. (and annoyingly, towards the end, you must walk back almost to the starting point to get an important piece of info) or you can't get into the last 2 endings.

3.)Maybe, just maybe a little too hard even on novice (especially towards the latter part of the game).

4.)You'll need at least 9GB of disc space to load this game.

5.)Occasional crash or freeze up after long periods of play (at least for me).

Suggestions; (SPOILER)
1.)Early on, go to "Dark Valley"; this will give you a chance to
a.)obtain a sniper scope (useful a little later) and
b.)do a side mission that requires you to "rescue a fighters friend" (here you'll find, in the same building as the "friend", but in a different room) a great piece of armor and several other useful and powerful "artifacts".

2.)Take every bandage you find; medkits will heal wounds but do not stop bleeding (and if you don't stop bleeding, well...you bleed to death).

3.)Save often!!!

This is a game I really enjoyed, as it featured my favorite type of game, that being, a FPS with some RPG upgrades. If you liked such games as Deus Ex or System Shock I'm sure you'll pleased with this game. 5 Stars.

Alone in an hostile environnement, find weapons and fight mutants and bandits. Cooool! It's an older game but still realy fun to play. If your looking for a cheap game to have a lot of fun: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a great choice.

This is the poster-game for innovative ideas, good intentions, and even better vision, that got somewhat lost in the way of development.

The original concept, the crossing-over of game genres, the beautiful graphics, the distant horizon, the RPG feeling (missions, NTCs, journal, etc) of this beautiful FPS game, get mostly ruined by endless glitches of laggings, freezings and overall unfinished development. Luckily, all of the above shortcomings can be fixed by a serious patch.

STALKER introduces a number of very smart gaming ideas, features beautiful environments and manages to create a realistic atmosphere in our room. Nevertheless, this still being an FPS after all, the gameplay is so unbalanced that it feels like swimming in thick syrup: a lot of effort adds up to only little progress.
Nice new weapons that jam all the time. When they don't, it's almost impossible to replenish their ammo. Enemies that seem to absorb bullets like cartoon characters: they go down only after repeated shots!
Your character gets tired and hungry, sure, adds to the realism of the experience - but isn't radiation suppose to cause fatigue as well? None of your enemies seem slowed down one iota...No, I am complaining about the difficulty of the game - it's the unleveled fields that got to me.

Playing STALKER made me nostalgic of the original UNREAL (another game which revolutionized the atmospheric environments at its time). UNREAL however was exceptionally balanced: a head shot with a snipper's rifle would take off both your own head as well as any enemy's head.

Now, I have a pretty decent system (P4 at 3.2MHz with 2GB RAM and a 512MB nVidia 7600GT on an ASUS P4P800), well beyond recommended requirements, yet it was impossible to play STALKER longer than a couple of hours before either the lagging eventually got to me or the whole thing just crashed. The requirements for RAM alone are staggering...

My advice: wait until the next big Patch is available (mind you, patching does NOT support older saved games...)

Recommended only for the next generation of PC systems
(unfortunately, my copy is gathering dust as you are reading this, waiting for my next system).