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

Easily one of the most immersive and atmospheric games Ive ever played. Genuinely feels like SoC set the stage for games like Fallout New Vegas with it’s non linear story telling and character interactions. Sure the story is nothing ground breaking but provides a perfect enough pretext to set out and explore the zone setting in motion an addicting gameplay loop: finding new loot, meeting new characters, discovering rare artifacts, etc… A solid game through-and-through, but I’d be lying if I said it was perfect. I had two MAJOR issues with this one that caused an otherwise amazing game to feel incredibly unpleasant to play at times:

- The amount of backtracking is atrocious. I swear half my play time was spent running between point A and point B to complete missions (endurance artifacts are ESSENTIAL, for sake of your sanity). Having the option to fast travel to and from missions upon starting and completing them in Call of Pripyat was a welcome inclusion.

- The final act is pretty bad, especially when compared to the rest of the game. It suddenly becomes a generic FPS game and throws everything else that made the game so great out the window. Ubering your way through waves of Monolith soldiers goes against every core philosophy this game had been perfectly setting up up until this point. Out with a simmer, not a bang.

Regardless of it’s faults, Stalker SoC has quickly become and all time person favorite of mine. You’d be hard pressed to find any other game like it!