3/5 ★ – forlornronin's review of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl.

+Great setting and premise +Soundscapes and OST were really really good. The game's sound design is centered around establishing paranoia and making you check over your shoulder, which it does great -Sound mixing was just terrible. Distant creatures sound like they're inside your eardrum and you can hear conversations between two other people from the edge of your render distance, while enemy footsteps are borderline silent among other important additions -Shooting didn't feel amazing. The gunplay "is what it is" for 2007 but it wasn't exactly pushing the genre forward -Pripyat having no real destinations or work to do beyond a pass-through for the dash to Chernobyl is pretty lame. I spent the entire game peering at it on my map and thinking "I can't wait to explore this massive city" and its just one big shooter dungeon +Every faction all racing toward the center the second the brain scorcher is disabled produced one of my favourite action sequences in a videogame in recent memory. Really well done +The apparitions in the red forest blew my mind. Very very cool -There are a lot of factions who just don't get a lot of screentime or even really naturally establish a motive or interest. Generally speaking this game feels like a sequel that relies on its worldbuilding already having been done by the game before it because there is a lot of stuff that is very out of the way or seemingly nowhere at all. The concept of so many different bodies of varying tactics and strengths all vying for the zone is such a great idea that isn't followed up on well. Yes, I read every PDA entry. -Being able to turn in quests at different points would be immensely helpful. I understand why it isn't there from a ludonarrative standpoint and the scenery is generally enjoyable so it isn't too bad. But there were a lot of times were i took up a quest that was on the way to my next goal with the plan of "cashing in" when I loop back, but the plot is so unpredictable there were many times I simply "ran out of time" on the quest to collect my reward because it was fifteen walking miles away +Lighting played a surprisingly big role in combat situations and i loved it -Many many copied and pasted rooms and chambers within dungeon levels made them very confusing and frustrating to navigate -Hunger is a neat idea but mostly meaningless. I ate like ten times over the course of the entire game and literally every single enemy drops an entire loaf of bread. Hunting and cooking wildlife could have helped with making the player feel like they're struggling to survive more and get them to spend more time at campfires with other quest-giving stalkers -I wish weapon modifications were more prevelant +Pretty skyboxes +FMVs were very well animated and edited -FMVs were gba video tier compressed, which I understand is just something that comes with the territory but I have trouble believing no one at any point saved those animation files or never rendered them at a higher resolution to package with modern releases -Dialogue choices might as well have been just linear conversation prompts. I remember exactly one conversation that had any flavour at all (the ambush in army warehouses) and pretty much everything else was just "yes" or "no" which is fine but it just could have been so much more -Generally speaking, it has a lot of hints of things that would be good but they don't come to full fruition. Shadow of Chernobyl with actual dialogue and actual survival and not just the idea of those things gestured at would be so much more -Every sidequest was just an empty headed fetch quest for epic loots that are pretty much worthless. I can barely remember more than 2-3 characters by name which is not great for a game that advertised and sold off its narrative Run time: 26h17m The game was fine. It's definitely worth playing, but I really struggle to find more positive things to say than negative, and I realize while typing this that almost everything good I had to say was about the charming visuals. I hope the sequel has a little more energy to it. 6/10