This game is great, and is probably the best free-roam FPSRPG in years. There are lots of complaints about this game, such as bugs, bad graphics, etc. The Truth is, while the game fights with any DX10 hardware (Vista), most other PC's run it great, and it looks great, people have just been spoiled looking at Crysis 24/7. Since this game is a few years old with updated textures, the poly count in low enough not to lag, while the textures look brilliant, so you get great graphics with less lag.

This game is untraditional because of how different and more realistic is it from different FPS's. Sure, your gun jams in Gears of War, but the system is easy to beat with a good eye and reaction time. In Stalker, your gun seems to jam at the most inconvenient time, just like real life. You also don't encounter enemies every 5 feet, but rather bases and makeshift camps of bandits, and full-fledged HQ's of different factions. You also have to carry about 1000 rounds with you at all times if you don't want to worry about running out, because good luck finding ammo in an already looted underground silo. Which brings me into my next topic, weapons.

The weapons in Stalker are supurb. There's about 10 different ammo sizes, with armor piercing, regular, hollow-capped, hollow, sniping, and sub-sonic ammo types for most caliber. Plus shotguns have dart, elephant shot (one huge bullet), and scatter shot ammos. There's standard AK ammo, which is mostly found in low-value zones. There's 3 basic weapons that operate off AK ammo, including the AK 74, AK 74U (submachine gun), and Okoban (modified AK 74 for better handling, accuracy and rate of fire). There's then NATO ammo, which has about 10 different guns designed for it. This is basically the most available ammo in the last parts of the game. There's then 2 different typed of sniper rounds, sub-sonic and sniping. Sub-sonic is used in a special silenced and no-flash sniper rifle, and a machine gun that also uses that ammo, plus a slightly worse gun. There's then 4 main types of pistol ammo. The worst pistol uses the most common type of rounds in the game. The "best" pistol fires sniper rounds which are extremely deadly in a fast firing pistol. There's also 5 types of grenades, as well as a grenade launcher and 4 types of grenades for that. There's also a RPG, but the ammo for it is bugged and weighs too much to be worth it. All this, plus you find many modded types of weapons, such as an AK 74 with a insane fire rate (the best in the game) and that sniper pistol I talked about. But there's more! Most weapons can be equipped with a scope, grenade launcher, and silencer, so making the perfect weapon requires a lot of finding parts. Even with all that, you find that ammo is very scarce in the outer regions of the zone. This may be the only game where you actually are forced to use your knife a lot if you are not careful and waste your ammo on body shots rather than sniping in for head shots.

See how diverse just the ammo and gun system is? Not to mention how well the bullet dynamics are done. Plus the shadows are the best I have ever seen outside of Crysis, they just look real. And there is so much more to this game, it is truly worth your money.

Learning Curve: Takes a while

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