S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl reviews

This is a hard one to review. The game is very unforgiving and explains very little; allied with the fact that your first weapons are incredibly imprecise, and you get a frustrating start. But later, once you get nicer weapons and start to understand the game's systems, it becomes a lot of fun. Though your character does not "level up", the loot and quest systems make this feel a lot like a RPG. The game can still kill you quickly, but this is a minor drawback if you QuickSave/QuickLoad a lot. Moreover, the A.I. is quite varied (sometimes the enemies come looking for you, but often they patiently wait around a corner or behind cover; they often speak, but some of them are silent), which makes the fights exciting and tense. The story is... weird. It reminds me of Indigo Prophecy, in the sense that some things happen that just seem randomly "grafted" into the plot for no good reason -- some story bits felt like they belonged to another post-apocalyptic game, with cutscenes disjointed from the gameplay bits. This is one of the few games where the "bad" endings are more interesting than the "true" ones. Another technical complaint: someone has to tell developers (even the "Witcher 3" folks) that encumbrance in videogames is not fun! I get that it is unrealistic to lug around more than 60Kg while you are shooting, jumping and running, but walking miles just to stash your valuables is really boring. But anyway, the star of the game is atmosphere -- outdoor scenes change from a breezy day to stormy and back, and some of the interiors are quite scary (X18 and X16 are awesome in that regard). The ticking of Geiger counters and anomaly proximity alerts can keep you on your toes, and reinforce the idea of "invisible dangers" all around you. It is really impressive how other stalkers walk around, fight monsters whether you are near or not, factions fight each other with or without your interference... This makes this dead world very lively, and, for me, this was the best aspect of the game. Score: 81/100. Notes: I played the game in "Stalker" difficulty, and used only one mod/patch, the "Zone Reclamation Project", in order to get rid of the nastiest bugs.

E meraviglioso, questo gioco è il futuro degli FPS horror, spero davvero che STALKER 2 sia la soluzione finale perché e il meglio del meglio. e immersivo a tal punto da creare una condizione mentale persistente anche dopo averlo giocato... lo consiglio a chiunque..Ma ovviamente non e un gioco per tutti, se siete deboli di cuore non giocatelo, avete voglia di quantu jumpscare prenderete ;)....

There is a very good game here if you can get over the flaws. Stalker was a very buggy game at first release, updating to the latest patch is a necessity and even then there are still bugs such as long transitions and load times and some draw distance issues with texture pop in. All that aside it does pay off if you are patient, this is a very deep and rewarding game with an excellent atmosphere and deep gameplay. It is very unique and worth a play through.