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PC | Action | S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

Boxart for S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl 62 screen shots
  • GRAPHICS: 4.00
  • SOUND: 4.25
  • CONTROL: 4.00
  • FUN FACTOR 4.25
  • AVG USER SCORE 4.8
  • AVG CRITIC SCORE 4.3

Review: S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

Review by CSL | 03/19/2007 | 17:27:03 PM PST

Over the last few years we've seen many promising games coming out of Eastern Europe, but much of this initial promise has been lost in the finished product.

Perhaps the most impressively ambitious of these titles is S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, a game that has managed to take a very different view on the traditional first-person shooter; one that has been injected chock full of free form gameplay and RPG-lite elements. For Ukrainian developers GSC Game World, the release has been a long time coming, but as we have been gratefully shown, all good things come to those who wait.

Meltdown

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is set in a thirty kilometer exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear reactor. Since the original disaster, an even more violent phenomenon has occurred within the irradiated zone, bringing in its wake a cornucopia of physics-bending anomalies and horrific mutants. You're cast as a hardened mercenary-type who wanders the wastelands. The main quest involving a mysterious directive to kill a man named Strelok presents a promising base for a good story, but ultimately falls flat in the execution. Most of the quests involve typical FedEx quests (fetch item from point A and deliver to point B), and the characters you encounter are stale and forgettable.

But S.T.A.L.K.E.R. manages to set itself apart with its open-ended gameplay; you may abandon your hunt for Strelok in favor of side quests or simply wandering the vast countryside with your gun. Though the free-romaing aspects of the game have been significantly toned down from what was originally promised, the game world has roughly a dozen large and diverse areas that include wide open fields, urban areas, and everything in between. Of particular note is the amount of effort the developers put towards realistically modeling the areas around Chernobyl, such as the abandoned city of Prypiat, whose flats and ferris wheel are exactly rendered.

Lone Wolf

Several hundred of your fellow stalkers wander these wide areas with you. Many are loners like yourself, while others have joined one of several in-game factions that look to dominate the zone. Players can choose to divorce themselves from these conflicts or join the open warfare that rages. Side quests often deal with these groups and can end in some rich weapon or armor rewards. What is most impressive is its dynamic nature as factions regularly send out patrols to attack their foes, and to a large extent these groups don't do the same thing twice.


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