After getting my save corrupted in Fallout 3 (which happens every time I try to play a Bethesda game), I got so sick of it. It happened with New Vegas, it happened with Skyrim, and it happened again with 3. Bethesda games are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ trash at actually working. So I decided to just play another RPG hopefully made by a company that isn't just making houses of cards and calling them games, where the slightest issue will ruin your entire save file.
I remembered that I had STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl and its sequels in my library. I decided to finally give them a shot. And boy, am I glad I did because STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl is an excellent immersive simulator that still holds up today. Despite a couple of issues, it remains as one of the best RPGs I've ever played.
Best of all? I experienced zero crashes, no save corruptions, no softlocks, no ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

MODS USED:
Zone Reclamation Project (+SoC Script and Sound Fixes)
Absolute Nature
Absolute Structures
Modified Actor.ltx to raise the height of the player to be more eye level with other NPCs

OPTIONS:
Maxed graphics
No crosshair
Turned off music
Turned off antialiasing
Played on Master

As another member of the Zone, an area surrounding Chernobyl after the nuclear reactor explosion, you play as an unnamed STALKER (a person residing in the Zone illegally). You wake up with amnesia, and the only objective on your PDA: Find Strelok. Kill Strelok.

COMBAT
--
STALKER is an immersive sim;, and one thing you immediately discover in STALKER is that you die *really fast.* Headshots are instant kill, and all NPCs have about as much HP as you do. Cover-based shooting and quick thinking is a must. You have to constantly stay on your feet in firefights and anticipate what the enemy might do, and catch them out in the open. Mostly, you'll want to go for headshots, as you won't find a lot of ammo and enemies can take quite a few bullets before going down. Luckily, there's a stagger system in place, where certain shots will stagger enemies, allowing you to line up a headshot. This is easier said than done, considering most firefights will involve you in you or a group plus you versus another group.
Weapons have certain ammo types that they work with, as well as certain weapons having ammo types that are best for certain situations. You can switch between them on the fly, allowing for different decisions based on the type of enemy you're fighting. Ammo types aren't labelled for gameplay purposes and instead for realism purposes (aka GP-23 ammo is 5.59x45mm i think), so you'll need to learn which ammo types go with which weapons. You learn it over time pretty easily, and the icons are different for types of ammo so it's easy to find while looting bodies and stashes.

AI
--
Human enemies are quite intelligent for the most part.. They have tactics, and mostly stay under cover unless to change position or fire at you. They'll properly hide behind cover to decrease their hitbox as much as possible to avoid dying. They'll flank you, or rush you at the same time to catch you off guard behind cover. A couple of times, I swore they waited until they heard my reload to push me, just so they could catch me while I'm not ready. All the fights vs humans are very involved, as its usually you vs a group. There's a lot of decisions to make, which makes for very engaging gunfights.
Animals and mutant enemies have the most realistic-feeling AI. Dogs will run around in circles to avoid gunfire, and hunt in packs often. If you shoot one dog out of a group, sometimes it'll scare the other dogs away and sometimes not. Different types of mutants will act differently when attacking. Some choosing to stay put and others moving quickly into darker spots to ambush. Of course, since this is a game from 07, sometimes you can exploit either AI to your benefit, which hurts the immersion.

INVENTORY
--
In STALKER, you have a set weight limit of 50kg, with one late-game piece of equipment allowing you to up it to 70kg. 50kg sounds like a good bit, but keeping a full arsenal for different situations, plus plenty of health and antirad items, as well as food, different weapon attachments, and artifacts means that you soon will find out you don't have as much as you thought. Often, you'll come into difficult decisions where you may have to sacrifice a great weapon in order to proceed while under your weight limit. These types of decisions add to the gameplay.
While your weight limit is definitely a limit, it's a soft limit. This means that you can carry 10kg more than your weight limit, but suffer severe detriments to stamina and stamina recovery. You'll sometimes want to carry above your weight limit so you can mule weapons back to the trader if the path is mostly safe. Once you hit 10kg over your weight limit and beyond, you will not be able to move though.

On the topic of inventory, I'll talk about artifacts. Artifacts are various items produced by anomalies in the Zone. You're able to equip the items, but they often come with both buffs and nerfs. Such as, one will give you bullet damage resistance BUT you'll constantly gain radiation unless you mitigate it with another artifact. While I did not use this system to its fullest extent in my playthrough as I should've, it can make the game a lot easier or harder depending on your artifact combination.

You can also equip a variety of armor and suits that protect against the elements, physical damage, or both.

STALKER also has durability. For armor, this affects the potency of its buffs to your stats (such as, a radiation suit that sustains damage will slowly get worse and worse at deflecting radiation as durability goes down). For weapons, this can affect your damage and accuracy (I think). This does not affect artifacts.

STALKER's humans often carry weapons on them with plenty of ammo. Except for when you loot their bodies, the ammo they expended was just enough to only give you a few bullets. While this isn't the best for realism, it's done for gameplay balance. You'll want to loot pretty much all enemies you kill, as the ammo you can get from them is invaluable.

TRAVEL
--

STALKER lacks a fast travel system. Instead, any place you want to go to, you'll have to walk/run there. While this sounds like a pain in the ass, I was not bothered by it. With the aliveness of the Zone (enemy patrols, packs of animals, radiation pockets, etc), each trip to a place will feel slightly different. You can also get artifacts to boost your endurance, so you can just run everywhere without much trouble at all.
You'll also come across random barriers, various sidequests, and random events that will help keep you entertained and give you rewards.

HORROR
--
Yeah, this game is a horror game (at times).
In the Zone, you'll often find yourself going on underground expeditions going through quiet tunnels, abandoned buildings, run-down laboratories, etc. With anomalies, mutants, and other STALKERs occupying these grounds, you'll find yourself terrified during these expeditions.
For example, you'll be walking through a quiet corridor in an underground lab. The hiss of a pipe two rooms away echoing through the maze-like hallways makes you think there may be someone or something over there. It could just be machinery. Maybe an anomaly. It could be a fellow STALKER. Worse, it could be a mutant, lurking in the shadows, so far removed from anything normal. Then, you hear a clatter. A box, dropped in the room ahead. You can barely peer into it; with no nightvision on your suit and all you have is this ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ flashlight, you have no clue what you're getting into.


CONTINUED IN COMMENTS BECAUSE STEAM LIMITS THE AMOUNT OF CHARACTERS YOU CAN HAVE

After getting my save corrupted in Fallout 3 (which happens every time I try to play a Bethesda game), I got so sick of it. It happened with New Vegas, it happened with Skyrim, and it happened again with 3. Bethesda games are fucking trash at actually working. So I decided to just play another RPG hopefully made by a company that isn't just making houses of cards and calling them games, where the slightest issue will ruin your entire save file. I remembered that I had STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl and its sequels in my library. I decided to finally give them a shot. And boy, am I glad I did because STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl is an excellent immersive simulator that still holds up today. Despite a couple of issues, it remains as one of the best RPGs I've ever played. Best of all? I experienced zero crashes, no save corruptions, no softlocks, no bullshit. MODS USED: Zone Reclamation Project (+SoC Script and Sound Fixes) Absolute Nature Absolute Structures Modified Actor.ltx to raise the height of the player to be more eye level with other NPCs OPTIONS: Maxed graphics No crosshair Turned off music Turned off antialiasing Played on Master As another member of the Zone, an area surrounding Chernobyl after the nuclear reactor explosion, you play as an unnamed STALKER (a person residing in the Zone illegally). You wake up with amnesia, and the only objective on your PDA: Find Strelok. Kill Strelok. COMBAT -- STALKER is an immersive sim;, and one thing you immediately discover in STALKER is that you die *really fast.* Headshots are instant kill, and all NPCs have about as much HP as you do. Cover-based shooting and quick thinking is a must. You have to constantly stay on your feet in firefights and anticipate what the enemy might do, and catch them out in the open. Mostly, you'll want to go for headshots, as you won't find a lot of ammo and enemies can take quite a few bullets before going down. Luckily, there's a stagger system in place, where certain shots will stagger enemies, allowing you to line up a headshot. This is easier said than done, considering most firefights will involve you in you or a group plus you versus another group. Weapons have certain ammo types that they work with, as well as certain weapons having ammo types that are best for certain situations. You can switch between them on the fly, allowing for different decisions based on the type of enemy you're fighting. Ammo types aren't labelled for gameplay purposes and instead for realism purposes (aka GP-23 ammo is 5.59x45mm i think), so you'll need to learn which ammo types go with which weapons. You learn it over time pretty easily, and the icons are different for types of ammo so it's easy to find while looting bodies and stashes. AI -- Human enemies are quite intelligent for the most part.. They have tactics, and mostly stay under cover unless to change position or fire at you. They'll properly hide behind cover to decrease their hitbox as much as possible to avoid dying. They'll flank you, or rush you at the same time to catch you off guard behind cover. A couple of times, I swore they waited until they heard my reload to push me, just so they could catch me while I'm not ready. All the fights vs humans are very involved, as its usually you vs a group. There's a lot of decisions to make, which makes for very engaging gunfights. Animals and mutant enemies have the most realistic-feeling AI. Dogs will run around in circles to avoid gunfire, and hunt in packs often. If you shoot one dog out of a group, sometimes it'll scare the other dogs away and sometimes not. Different types of mutants will act differently when attacking. Some choosing to stay put and others moving quickly into darker spots to ambush. Of course, since this is a game from 07, sometimes you can exploit either AI to your benefit, which hurts the immersion. INVENTORY -- In STALKER, you have a set weight limit of 50kg, with one late-game piece of equipment allowing you to up it to 70kg. 50kg sounds like a good bit, but keeping a full arsenal for different situations, plus plenty of health and antirad items, as well as food, different weapon attachments, and artifacts means that you soon will find out you don't have as much as you thought. Often, you'll come into difficult decisions where you may have to sacrifice a great weapon in order to proceed while under your weight limit. These types of decisions add to the gameplay. While your weight limit is definitely a limit, it's a soft limit. This means that you can carry 10kg more than your weight limit, but suffer severe detriments to stamina and stamina recovery. You'll sometimes want to carry above your weight limit so you can mule weapons back to the trader if the path is mostly safe. Once you hit 10kg over your weight limit and beyond, you will not be able to move though. On the topic of inventory, I'll talk about artifacts. Artifacts are various items produced by anomalies in the Zone. You're able to equip the items, but they often come with both buffs and nerfs. Such as, one will give you bullet damage resistance BUT you'll constantly gain radiation unless you mitigate it with another artifact. While I did not use this system to its fullest extent in my playthrough as I should've, it can make the game a lot easier or harder depending on your artifact combination. You can also equip a variety of armor and suits that protect against the elements, physical damage, or both. STALKER also has durability. For armor, this affects the potency of its buffs to your stats (such as, a radiation suit that sustains damage will slowly get worse and worse at deflecting radiation as durability goes down). For weapons, this can affect your damage and accuracy (I think). This does not affect artifacts. STALKER's humans often carry weapons on them with plenty of ammo. Except for when you loot their bodies, the ammo they expended was just enough to only give you a few bullets. While this isn't the best for realism, it's done for gameplay balance. You'll want to loot pretty much all enemies you kill, as the ammo you can get from them is invaluable. TRAVEL -- STALKER lacks a fast travel system. Instead, any place you want to go to, you'll have to walk/run there. While this sounds like a pain in the ass, I was not bothered by it. With the aliveness of the Zone (enemy patrols, packs of animals, radiation pockets, etc), each trip to a place will feel slightly different. You can also get artifacts to boost your endurance, so you can just run everywhere without much trouble at all. You'll also come across random barriers, various sidequests, and random events that will help keep you entertained and give you rewards. HORROR -- Yeah, this game is a horror game (at times). In the Zone, you'll often find yourself going on underground expeditions going through quiet tunnels, abandoned buildings, run-down laboratories, etc. With anomalies, mutants, and other STALKERs occupying these grounds, you'll find yourself terrified during these expeditions. For example, you'll be walking through a quiet corridor in an underground lab. The hiss of a pipe two rooms away echoing through the maze-like hallways makes you think there may be someone or something over there. It could just be machinery. Maybe an anomaly. It could be a fellow STALKER. Worse, it could be a mutant, lurking in the shadows, so far removed from anything normal. Then, you hear a clatter. A box, dropped in the room ahead. You can barely peer into it; with no nightvision on your suit and all you have is this shitty fucking flashlight, you have no clue what you're getting into. CONTINUED IN COMMENTS BECAUSE STEAM LIMITS THE AMOUNT OF CHARACTERS YOU CAN HAVE