(My first ever review! Yay! ^-^) In the past year and a half I've been discovering pc gaming, thanks to my older brother letting my play on his pc. Around December, I stumbled on his copy of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl, which I've never heard of before but I was curious so I popped it in.

Let me warn players whose experience is mainly Call of Duty or Battlefield, STALKER is not like these games. I'm not criticizing the quality of those games, but the way they're structured, they are very arcadey. STALKER is to first person shooters what Demon's Souls is to action rpgs. There is a wide array of European, Ukrainian, and Russian firearms, as well as some British and American guns. Pistols range from modest Makarovs, Sigs, and later Desert Eagles. Machine guns for the most part appear only in the form of Heckler and Koch M P5s and the AK-74/SU(a variant of the AK-74 designed with a sub-machine-gun frame in mind). Assault rifles form the meat of the armament in STALKER, from the fabled AK-74, it's big brother the AN-94, and other uncommon fare from Belgium like the FN-2000 (by the makers of the FN-P90), the British Enfield L 85 A 1, and so on.

Now unlike most first person shooters I've played where the guns are only minimally different, in this game the guns have different weights, accuracies, recoil, and reliability. Worthy of note is the ammo. Take shotguns for example, where they are only seen as close range, but deadly weapons in most shooters, STALKER allows the player access to slugs for longer range as well as dart rounds to punch through body armor. Don't despair if you can't find slugs or dart rounds right away, as buckshot shells have further reach than they normally would in a pinch, but rely on rifles until you get a better handle of the shotguns.

Armor ranges from simple leather jackets to military grade body armor. While bulletproof is a plus, be mindful of suits to protect you from anomalies. Some suits come equipped with nightvision which will be crucial when night-time rolls around.

All that said, be warned. You'll meet other fellow Stalkers in the Zone, but not all of them nice. They can get to the same access of weapons and armor, and they WILL use them with frightening effect.

Problems with the game? Several third party mods exist for your convenience.

Enjoy.

I'm going to get this out of the way right off the bat: this series is notoriously buggy, poorly translated, and unpolished. The graphics are nothing special even at max settings, the animations are often weird, and even when fully patched each game has its own unique and wide selection of bugs.

That said, I love this series. It's easily one of my favorite game franchises of all time, even taking into account its many flaws. The game is just fun, even though all the evidence indicates it shouldn't be.

STALKER is brutally, punishingly hard, even on the lower difficulties. Even with decent armor you can't survive more than a few bullet hits, literally everything has weight (including ammunition), your guns can and often do degrade, jam, misfire, or even outright break, your armor protects you less the more damage it takes, your medical supplies are almost never sufficient to survive for an extended period of time, you'll constantly be short of food and probably short of ammo too. Friendlies are few and far between, and they usually have their own agenda and can't be counted on to provide much help. The wildlife will hunt you down and try to kill you. Hostile humans will hunt you down and try to kill you. The environment doesn't even have to hunt you down, it will just straight-up kill you. The atmosphere is dark and brooding, with a tangible sense of dread every time you venture out and an equally tangible feeling of relief every time you make it back to a friendly camp. Few games can draw you in quite as well as this one does. You are weak, you are vulnerable, you are a very low rung on a very long food chain - and before too long, you'll damn well know you are.

Surviving in the Zone is hard. You will die a lot. You won't always know why, or how, or where it came from. But you'll have fun every time, trying to outwit the positively brilliant NPC AI, or exploring the wonderfully well-realized world it builds for you, or any number of the practically unlimited things you'll find yourself doing. The game is a challenge, and overcoming it is genuinely satisfying. And, what's more, it's clearly the product of years of actual, honest-to-God effort. The developers poured their hearts and souls into this product, and really, it's hard not to love it.

In 2008 i saw STALKER:SHOC on the shop one day, i was a bit curious about the game but now i love it. everything from it's atmosphere to their unique A-life system which gives you the feeling that anything can happen. when i bought clear sky, I was literally close to throw the DVD at those Ukrainian devs,No offense,but that game, as described by reviewers as "bugged,and "Half-baked".(although the patches did help reducing the freq. of the bugs) now call of pripyat may seem a bit...."linear" but nevertheless it was the epitome of their hard work, it made me impressed and even if one fishes the trilogy there's a plethora of mods out there and now STALKER 2 is coming in 2012, one can be ecstatic as one can experience the part as a Chernobyl soldado. BTW good:story lines, graphics, gameplay Bad:Bugs, and Glitches.