Yet given the quality of the smaller indoor areas, with strong lighting and shadow effects, one could attribute the poor outdoor visuals to the size of the game world.

The latter is particularly noticeable as bodies lay on the ground with limbs in various comical yoga positions. Character models too, while often well detailed, seem slightly blocky and stiff, particularly in the animation and physics.

They have stated in their development diaries that their “newly-created X-ray engine allowed near-photo realism.” Yet sadly the game suffers from some poor visuals, with a horribly drab and grey colour palette and some very flat textures, lacking in normal mapping. Certainly from a Ukrainian developer there is a quite a personal story to be told here and you can really appreciate the efforts that GSC have gone into trying to model the environments on its real life counterpart. The world of Chernobyl is a rich setting and one that we have not seen too often in other shooters before. Yet it is quite clear from the opening stages of the game that this was an overly ambitious project, lacking the definitive polish of so many other shooters. The final result is certainly ambitious, with a mix of First Person Shooting and horror elements.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Shadow of Chernobyl was in development by GSC Game World since 2001 and the game was met with many delays and setbacks over the course of its production. With little choice you must complete jobs for the men who saved your life, find out who Strelok is and discover your true identity. Awaking from a road accident, you are left with amnesia, a tattoo on your arm that says STALKER and a PDA with an instruction to kill a man named Strelok. The land of has been deformed and left with many abnormalities, deformed wildlife and men known as STALKERS who scavenge the area of Chernobyl, looking for valuable artifacts. The year is 2012, six years after a second meltdown occurred within a Chernobyl nuclear reactor.

Stalker shadow of chernobyl gameplay