Summary: Get Call of Pripyat or Clear Sky and read about what happens on the wiki. (Pripyat is the best)

Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl is a decent start to a game franchise but it as itself isn't really a fun game in my opinion, for starters the gunplay is really wonky as you need to pretty much get headshots or your out of luck (especially with the invincibility animations for every human enemy), It has a lot of bugs which I bet mods fix but still bugs are bad, everything isn't translated to English, there really isn't no thrill in artifact hunting and a few more things.

I managed to "beat" the game in exactly 10 hours believe it or not and got one of the fake endings, what this means is that somewhere along the line I did the game a little out of order, or something bugged out, or I just didn't meet the right people. To me having a game mechanic like that isnt really my thing. (Would rather have 3 endings than 5 fake endings and 2 real endings that you have to look up a walk through to find.)

This game exists between a open world game and a linear game as in it has side quests like things which are alright but you don't really get any reward other than rubles and maybe one of the 4 common artifacts that are literally laying on the ground everywhere you look after the first area.

There are a bunch more things you can rip from the game but it does it job well as being the first of the stalker franchise, thus at the time establishing an ip that has a cool setting. But in the end the game isn't that great and if you really wanted to play it I suggest getting a big mod to fix the bugs and some other things.

All else just skip the game, go to clear sky or call of Pripyat and read about what happens on the wiki because even so I still don't understand some parts because I feel as the game forced me to get a "fake" ending and if I didn't know better then I would of assumed that it was a real one.

If you were to force me at gun point to put a number at it I would say 3 or 4 /10 only because of the cheekie breekie.

Summary: Get Call of Pripyat or Clear Sky and read about what happens on the wiki. (Pripyat is the best) Stalker Shadow of Chernobyl is a decent start to a game franchise but it as itself isn't really a fun game in my opinion, for starters the gunplay is really wonky as you need to pretty much get headshots or your out of luck (especially with the invincibility animations for every human enemy), It has a lot of bugs which I bet mods fix but still bugs are bad, everything isn't translated to English, there really isn't no thrill in artifact hunting and a few more things. I managed to "beat" the game in exactly 10 hours believe it or not and got one of the fake endings, what this means is that somewhere along the line I did the game a little out of order, or something bugged out, or I just didn't meet the right people. To me having a game mechanic like that isnt really my thing. (Would rather have 3 endings than 5 fake endings and 2 real endings that you have to look up a walk through to find.) This game exists between a open world game and a linear game as in it has side quests like things which are alright but you don't really get any reward other than rubles and maybe one of the 4 common artifacts that are literally laying on the ground everywhere you look after the first area. There are a bunch more things you can rip from the game but it does it job well as being the first of the stalker franchise, thus at the time establishing an ip that has a cool setting. But in the end the game isn't that great and if you really wanted to play it I suggest getting a big mod to fix the bugs and some other things. All else just skip the game, go to clear sky or call of Pripyat and read about what happens on the wiki because even so I still don't understand some parts because I feel as the game forced me to get a "fake" ending and if I didn't know better then I would of assumed that it was a real one. If you were to force me at gun point to put a number at it I would say 3 or 4 /10 only because of the cheekie breekie.