The Life of Shaииoи

Well I’ve been holding off posting my impressions of S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl for a while now, mainly so I could give it a good run through instead of playing it for 5 mins and saying “its outdated and plays shit”. Like many people I’ve been waiting for this game since I first saw it in Atomic all those moons ago. Currently in game I’m sitting at the Save point at the entrance to the Chernobyl NPP so I’m fairly far along in the story. So I’ll get right into it.

Packaging: I have to post a picture of the Collectors tin + Contents cause its just sexy. The collectors edition came with A Tin, The game itself, Bonus Content disc, Map of the Zone, S.T.A.L.K.E.R Survival guide, bonus Downloadable maps and skins and the Instruction manual.

Gameplay: FPS with some RPG elements appeals greatly to me . Exploring is fun, but has its perils aka getting irradiated from straying into a patch of radiation and anomaly’s that will rip you in half or pound you to death and even fry your insides! There are however a few things I have noticed:

• The AI for the zombies being extremely accurate, considering they are infact zombies…
• The AI at the beginning of the game is alot stronger and more accurate than you are for quite a while until you progress a little further into the game and get some more powerful weapons. Though learning how to control weapons such as the assualt rifles would counter this.
• AI Allies push you into the line of fire if your blocking there path behind cover
• In the Bar theres this one guy that wont fucking shut up about giving you information. which I found EXTREMELY annoying

Overall I think the Human AI is a little over powered. Apart from that I feel the gameplay is fairly solid most of the time.

Graphics: My GPU is dying so I couldn’t experiance the most from the lighting and graphics systems, little bit of a downer but thats just my machine, even at 1600×1200 and med - high settings the game looks excellent in my opinion.

Engine: I’m totally in love with the game engine, Thunderstorms random weather patterns, rain, wind, its all just awesome . Thunderstorms and weather patterns changing did tend to lag me out a little bit at times but I suspect that is also my computer dying.

In Summary: I’ve really enjoyed S.T.A.L.K.E.R for the most part, accept for some little frustrations from getting lost, or eaten, or dying, and its actually a game thats managed to hold my attention for more than 15 minutes which lately, and as many of you may know, has been kinda hard, And yes I got to Pripyat and the ferris wheel STILL freaks me out…

Overall id probably give it a 7/10 but the game does have a bit of a unfinished feel to certain parts. That being said don’t just blow it off and say “meh” go play it and put a few good hours into it and you might be surprised.