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

Just wondering if anyone's played this game. I've been playing it for about the last 3 days and it definitely rocks (except for those moments in ruined buildings/underground complexes).

I never really played the original. What's it about?

It's pretty much about a second nuclear disaster in Chernobyl and the events following it. The game takes place in 2012 and your character has just awoken in the Zone, a massive stretch of land in the Ukraine surrounding the Nuclear Power Plant. From that point on, you're considered a stalker, one of many individuals who have abandoned their lives outside in "The Big City" (guessing they mean the areas that aren't The Zone) to search for artifacts within The Zone. Artifacts are various items within the Zone that are spawned by anomalies from time to time.

Artifacts can either be sold for money depending on how rare they are or they can be equipped on your belt. Many of them offer both advantages and disadvantages (one will quadruple your health at the cost of making your armor less effective against bullets and ruptures/animal-based damage.)

Although there's a few RPG elements involved, it's mostly a first-person shooter. There's a central storyline to follow through various missions and there's also jobs. The jobs can be done for money and items (ranging from kickass suits of armor to grenades and artifacts). I'm not too far into the missions yet, but the jobs mostly involve things such as killing a certain stalker, retrieving a body part of a monster, defending certain stalker encampments from bandits or monsters, and simply finding certain artifacts for the person who sends you on the job.

The damage system takes a bit to get used to but it's not a major downer. You can't rush into enemy hideouts or firefights unless you're hoping to become Swiss Cheese in the next minute. Some players will likely find themselves hiding behind cover and leaning out to deliver a volley of rounds at targets in order to avoid taking a lot of damage. Armor factors in greatly sometime around the middle of the game though. Shots from the same weapon which formerly took out 1/4th of my total health later took out only 1/10th of it. The enemy can also be fairly well armored as well, and you'll have to go for a headshot. Although the game doesn't force you to use the iron sights on weapons, it becomes extremely helpful at certain points.

There's a few issues with the game though. It's probably a no-brainer for some people, but the game should always be patched to the latest version (it's somewhat infamous for bugs). Also, there's a few hacks and mods that people have made for it, such as the weight hack, which allows you to carry more than 60kg worth of items in your inventory (it's fairly easy to reach that default capacity). Another hack that was made was the non-decay hack. In a similar fashion to Diablo (2), the condition of your armor and weapons gradually degrades over time (it can be a total bitch when you find a perfect condition rifle ingame only to face the fact that it'll eventually turn into a piece of shit), so the hack causes no degradation at all.

Didn't mean for it to turn into a mini-review, but there you have it. XD

Sounds interesting.....