Okay, so I haven’t exactly played it forever yet. I just picked it up for cheap on eBay of all places. But so far, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. does not impress.

The concept is interesting. Chernobyl is chock full of potential, what with radiation and mutant zombie sci-fi stories and stuff. Throw in some pseudo-militaristic edge and it sounds like a real hoot of a first person shooter.

Until you play it that is.

And after unloading a hundred rounds from your pistol, sights dead set on your target, out in the open, and you still can’t hit the jerk because your shots just ring out in every direction but your crosshairs…

Let’s just say the accuracy of the weapons leaves you disappointed.

And it isn’t helped any by the rest of the game. You have bolts to throw around to get people to look in the wrong direction. Okay. But the stealth system is so bad that you might as well be throwing rubber duckies filled with unstable nitroglycerin and marshmallow fluff. Or coffee with sprinkles. The point is, the stealth system fails about as badly as the aim of your sidearm.

Then there’s your “character development” which is in the form of goofy radioactive magical artifacts or some such. Which all either suck, or are so amazingly good that it’s like going from gimp to god in a heartbeat. The balance is not only completely off there, but it’s all just … stupid. I mean it had some potential to really be interesting and cool. Instead it’s, well, like the rest of the game. Just crap.

Oh, and there are goofy little tags marking each secret stash of stuff that frankly make no sense whatsoever. Like, “I dug here the other day and sh_t in the hole and **poof** it became a Christmas Tree full of ammo.” Okay, so that’s not a literal quote. But that’s about the level of thought that goes into them. They leave you wondering who the hell (in the game) wrote these weird tags and why anyone thought they were worth even putting in the game at all.

Meanwhile the game is full of the many bad things people do with video games. Like you have armor. Except you don’t, because no one sells any, you don’t really find any anywhere, and especially none of those people you shoot are wearing any … even though they are … you just can’t take it off of them. Or their uniforms to sneak around in. And enemies just seem to pop out of nowhere and shoot at you for the heck of it, even though no one could possible know who you are at such a long range. But everyone that’s an “enemy” shoots at you right off the bat without giving you the benefit of a conversation.

You have a weird weight and “readiness” system that kind of rather defies reality. I mean not that I want people toting fifteen million guns around, but the weight sure seems off and I’m not sure why it’s so hard to have a decent selection of guns ready. I mean they make holsters for pistols that can pretty much cover every part of the body. Same with sheaths for knives, and so on. What, a sawed-off shotgun is too big make a belt holster for? SMGs have shoulder straps but you can’t possibly have one slung over each shoulder? No one has a decent belt with ammo pouches? We just throw everything into a backpack and dig around in the middle of a gun fight for that other grenade because we couldn’t possibly strap two different kinds to the bandolier on our chest? And so on. It’s all absurd. If I was a gun-toting paramilitary solo psycho running around, I’d be much better prepared than that. Heck, I’d tear up the uniforms of some of the people I’ve knocked off to make things to hold more items at the ready.

And why do so many people have sawed-off shotguns but no one has one that’s whole? Why are there so many pistols and SMGs but no rifles? It’s like the whole game is a study in the utmost worst of weapon accuracy. I find it very hard to believe that so many soldiers have so few decent firearms around. And that my aim, even while crouched low and stationary as I rest on/behind a tree, is still so terrible that I can’t even be assured to hit the broad side of a wrecked helicopter at fifty paces. In real life I can throw rocks more accurately than most of these weapons fire!

But so the game goes. It’s like one bad thing after another. Not to mention packs of radioactive dogs that sometimes won’t even run from a grenade blast, and sometimes run if you just look at them for a moment. And other weirdness that isn’t good weird. Like a constant need to eat food, but never a drop of water is drunk.

You start off thinking how cool it is going to be, and the longer you play the more you keep playing just to see how much worse it can get. There’s just no balance. It’s like a cool idea so poorly thought through that you just can’t help keep staring at the train wreck.

But I guess either way it keeps you playing. Or something.

So I give it two shadows out of five.

I’m just glad I paid so little for it. I’d have been pissed if I’d have played anything remotely near full price.

If anything it’s a study in disappointment. There really is such potential there. There are a lot of cool ideas in play. Unfortunately they were so poorly executed, so badly balanced, or just so random in reality vs. video game that it leaves you wondering how anyone could have made so many misses without even accidentally hitting any nails right on the head. That is S.T.A.L.K.E.R. It’s a mere shadow of the game it could have been.