Possibly the greatest fps i've played in a long time

User Rating: 9.5 | S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl PC
By leorules666 | Review Date:
You are walking down a road, the sky is gloomy and dark and there is a melancholic feel to everything as you hear the wolves howl and gun shots fired off in the background, however at that point you grab out your gun, load onto it a silencer and scope and aim into the surroundings. From the looks of it you can barely make out a form of shimmering light before it leaps towards you screaming hisses of fury and terror whilst you blast it with all of your ammunition however; your gun jams just as you're about to pump the last few rounds into it's sickly flesh and you're forced to equipt your side-arm and fire into it finally killing the creature. However, in this time you realised you didn't equipt a silencer onto the pistol or forgot to when you bought it from the dodgy Russian trader and a nearby patrol of heavily armoured nomads hears your fire and begins to duck behind trees and fire at you, but this time luck is on your side and as you see them about to unload all hell upon you they are savaged by a large pack of hungry vicious wolves and half of the squad go down. At this point you happen to notice on your radar several friendly troops *a sigh of relief* as you run towards them and gather your friends for a counter-attack. They tell you of radiation near the armoured troops and that if we are to scavenge what little they might be carrying we should carry anti-radiation measures. They pass a bottle of Vodka followed by medikits created specially by scientists for extra protection. By now the sky is dark and many of the troops who are not carring new suits of armour are lacking nightvision and are scared as they must rely on their puny flashlights...Luckily after doing several trade and assassination missions for a group of Ecologists you have a suit of body-protection with night-vision mode. All appears to be going well before one of the enemies fires a high calibre sniper into your leg, and you are immediately slowed down by the bleeding. You use a bandage being careful of time as even opening the inventory screen does not pause the game. You decide then to go it alone perhaps, and crawl slowly like a serpent towards the enemy, making sure the noise bar does not elevate too high or you will be detected. You raise your knife and right click to slam the blade directly in a stabbing motion, the trooper cries out in agony and the others turn and begin to open fire but not quick enough for you have already gathered a rare shotgun and begin pumping ball bearings into them, before changing ammo to a dart in order to shoot those further away. The battle is won and the team and yourself check the bodies for ammunition and supplies.

Hopefully that describes well enough what it will be like for anyone to play this game. It starts off with you as a an amnesiac S.T.A.L.K.E.R. called 'The Marked One' and you must essentially be the **** of the group you have found yourself in and rise through the ranks, fulfilling tasks including assassination, trades and gathering intel in order to pay for new armour and weapons, whilst staying friendly with the bosses and new-found friends.

It works at a really quite well pace too, once you have felt like the soldiers/renegades/dogs/hogs are starting to get tedious and repetative, you move onto a different even harder group of marines/mercenaries. At one point I found myself crawling through a darkly lit tunnel, my shotgun low on ammunition and zombies all around me. In the darkness I could hear what is known as a Snork. Snorks are the most horrible creatures I have seen in a game, and remind me slightly of lickers from Res Evil 2 but much more pissing annoying. It leaps at me and just in time I pump a shell into it's face, however this has only slowed it. It prepares itself and I time it right and get it again just as it comes towards me, blasting Snork brains allover the ceiling. My ammo was running low and i was scrambling for anything that the zombies might be carrying. I think i'm deviating a bit from the point here. The point is this game could essentially be the first person successor to Resident Evil 1-3 before it completely lost the point of being a SURVIVAL game, caring for ammo and whatnot. Which this game definately is.

The main hub is pretty well done, you have a health and armour-status in the bottom right hand corner, with sound and bodily position in bottom left. You also get a very nifty ability to attach 5 'artifacts' onto your body. This gives the game a certain RPG element to it (which many definately approve of) as you can modify certain elements of gameplay, such as being immune to radiation or being able to run endlessly.

Some people do complain however (and this is the games one fault) as it does have several bugs within it...However, these have been pretty much completely irradicated by patches which are easy enough to install and fix the game. The game also carries a hefty amount of mods on the internet which are really quite fun, such as being able to drive broken down cars, new weapons, new armour, constant night etc. It even features a family guy mod where on one of the T.V's it has an episode playing.

The inventory in the game plays very well as it adds on to the whole realism factor of not pausing whilst going through items, and each item having a certain weight to it and that sort of stuff. You can only carry about 50kg worth but between 50-60kg you are semi-encumbered, and so lose stamina rapidly. 60+ and you cannot move.

Weapons are a very good part of the game, with roughly 10+different machine guns/ rifles. 4 different Shotguns (+ variations using ammo, rare shotguns etc) and 10+ pistols (+ Extra ammo variations, addons such as silencers). Many of the machine guns are also customizable with addons such as underslung grenade launchers, a few different scopes, silencers and the like. Armour comes in many variations for example the Ecologist body armour is a prevalent protector of natural hazards like fire, radiation etc but lacks damage reduction from physical attacks (i.e. gun shots, wolves/dogs) whilst there is an exoskeleton which features absolute protection against most variable damage "Should protect against anything less than a 1Kilotonne Nuke" is what I believe it says in the description, which also adds a minor sense of dark humour.

All in all, this is possibly one of the most unique games i've played recently and deserves all credit possible. I mean, the developers even lived around the Chernobyl incident so all of the areas are to detail and realistic.

I managed to get this for £9.95 off Amazon. Even if you don't like the game as much as I do, £9.95 is definately worth every penny. Thanks, enjoy the game.

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