Imagine one of your favourite FPS games and combine that with ESIV: Oblivion and that is how good this game is.
The Bad: Still has some bugs Takes some time to get into the story Hard to tell who you can kill
The Ugly: Sometimes crashes for no reason Can be a bit `too` realistic
Well if you havent heard of this game, then you must have been living in a hole for around 6 years. Thats how long it has been in development for!
But the when the game was actually released, sometime in March, you start to realize why they spent such a long time developing it. So lets start with the gameplay. You start off at the beginning of the game as a `Rookie Stalker` hence the name of the game is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. A stalker is someone who goes around `the zone` which is what the 10km or so area around the Chernobyl power plant is called, collecting artifacts produced by the mass of radiation. At first you dont know who you are, all you know is you have to kill another stalker called Strelok. And the main story line revolves around this mission. Also because it is a RPG style it does have many side quests you can do, mainly collecting stuff or killing stuff. The main game can take around 10 to 20 hours to complete depending on how you play, doing side quests all that stuff. But despite the length of the game you dont get bored with it there are many obstacles along the way, from rival stalkers to poltergeists. Also like all other RPGs it is realistic to an extent. If you get shot, you can start to bleed and need a bandage to stop it, if you go to near radiation you get radiation sickness for a while, until you drink whisky (who knows?) or take an AntiRad injection. And also unlike some other RPGs if you dont eat you start to starve and ultimately die of starvation. The only real downside of the game is the fact you have to go everywhere on foot, although there are some mods already that allow you to drive vehicles some are versatile and blow up every time you crash.
So the main thing everyone likes; Graphics! Despite being in development for so long the graphics dont seem outdated, of course there not like dedicated RPG games such as Oblivion they are still very very pretty, you still get the all important HDR or you can choose to have normal static lighting. The detail on the guns is beautiful and it seems the developers took a lot of time into developing the gun textures and all of the other textures. The details on the NPCs are also pretty, more importantly on the melee attackers! With HDR at full and every other detail at full it has a good try at scaring you when the mutants attack you mainly because they look so realistic. The animation for everything else is also well thought out, although some of the rag doll physics do start to clip into the world you dont really notice it.
The next important thing, Sounds. Like every other part of the game it sounds like no corners were cut, the only obvious one is that quite a lot of the NPCs and the play dont have speech sounds. Only the main people do. But you dont really care because you want to get back into the action so you can just keep clicking your response. The sounds from the guns are also impressive they sound like you would expect and the changing of magazines or clips sound like you would expect. Of course they also put effort into the explosion sounds (and the graphics I forgot to mention!) they are very loud! Just what you would expect.
So a bit of a long review but its a good game! I recommend it to anyone who needs a new game; it will be a classic for some years to come. But of course no game is perfect this is no exception, it has its own collection of bugs which the developers are trying to kill ASAP.