S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl tells a story about survival in the Zone – a very dangerous place, where you fear not only the radiation, anomalies and deadly creatures, but other S.T.A.L.K.E.R.s, who have their own goals and wishes.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is a atmospheric, post-apocalyptic and open world game developed and published by GSC Game World.
Released on March 20th 2007 is available only on Windows in 9 languages: English, French, Italian, Spanish - Spain, German, Russian, Ukrainian, Polish and Traditional Chinese.

It has received 45,198 reviews of which 42,787 were positive and 2,411 were negative resulting in an impressive rating of 9.3 out of 10. 😍

The game is currently priced at 3.99€ on Steam and has a 75% discount.

The Steam community has classified S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl into these genres:

Atmospheric Post-apocalyptic Open World FPS Survival Action Survival Horror RPG Shooter Horror First-Person Singleplayer Classic Based On A Novel Moddable Adventure Immersive Sci-fi Inventory Management Difficult

Media & Screenshots

Get an in-depth look at S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl through various videos and screenshots.

Requirements

These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.

Windows

Supported OS: Microsoft® Windows® XP(Service Pack 2)/Microsoft® Windows® 2000 SP4
Processor: Intel Pentium 4 2.0 Ghz / AMD XP 2200+
Graphics: 128 MB DirectX® 8.0 compatible card / nVIDIA® GeForce™ 5700 / ATI Radeon® 9600
Memory: 512 MB RAM
Sound: DirectX® 9.0 compatible sound card
Hard Drive: 6 GB free hard disc space

Reviews

Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.

Nov. 2024

With Stalker 2 here now, writing a quick review for the OG feels necessary: Shadow of Chernobyl is the "truest" of the first three games. Its all about the mystery, allure and quite horrific nature of the zone. While the later games would try and explore the bright side of the zone, SoC just oozes darkness, danger, radioactivity, violence and flesh ripping anomalies. The gunplay can vary in quality. Its definitely a frustrating experience with the starter guns and especially if they have non-green durability. Mid and high tier weaponry is rewarding and second only to CoP. The story is serviceable. Its not grandiose and altough it follows a protagonist, its definitely world-centered. Its pacing is strange but personally in a good way, keeping enough details in the dark to imagine crazy stuff. The world itself is a 10/10, no other game in the series has this much detail and evident effort visible in its maps. Textures are raw and cold, the skyboxes are breathakingly overcast, the CNPP looks as mighty as the game hypes you up. Sound design is so iconic even S2, years later, reuses most effects in it. Game pacing is decent. The beggining can be very slow, the midgame as long as you want, and the endgame is a race to the finish line, depending which ending you get. The second half of the experience is well directed, never overstaying its welcome (except for the true ending, a real ammo-dump). Personally, SoC is very different to its succesors in tone, in the jankiness of the xray engine, the quality all around. It really feels like an anomaly, a forbidden sight just barely keeping it, always threatening you with a crash, but at least in my case only 2 happened. If you dont know which of the three games you want to try, Shadow of Chernobyl is the CORRECT answer.

Nov. 2024

A gravity anomaly annihilated a military platoon shooting at me, very generously and kindly allowing me to pick all the ammo and sausages off of their corpses without having to spend any resources of my own

Oct. 2024

A teenage me was sold on the hype of what this game should've been. It ended up having half of its content scrapped to get it out of development hell for years. Even being incomplete, it ended up being the absolute peak of 'eurojank' This said piece of eurojank has ended up becoming the golden staple of what a game should've been. It used to be my favorite game of all time, even with it's many flaws. It ended up becoming even better, even with a bit less, but stil existent flaws. And yet to this day, very few games have this same level of polish, quality and yet be so fucking inconsistent and weird that you'd think this was made by some stoned college students. No, to be more specific, it's like having to hold a piece of Van Gogh's paintings, just shortly afterwards him vomiting over the painting due to drinking the painting liquid for sustenance. This game is an utter shitshow, which is covered in gold.Nothing can, will, or yet compare. That jank is to the max, but yet, one that will - to this very day - contiue to capture thousands in its grasp. You owe it to yourself to play this unique piece of gaming history. It's fucking amazing. To me, it is yet still the gold standard of what a video game should be as a form of art.

June 2024

Started game. first task. go and take out some bandits at the warehouse nearby. meet with fellow stalkers to kill the bandits. kill stalkers and take their guns. kill bandits and take their stuff. go back to task giver and kill everyone in the village. get ak. go and spend 30 minutes raiding the nearby military outpost. steal all of the ak's i can carry. go back to task givers village and put the stolen ak's in a backpack for safe keeping. decide to go to pripyat to sight see. met other stalkers and trade. use the bolts to detect anomalies. small army squad at bridge. sneak and get a good position on the bridge. slowly pick off army troops from long range. game crashes. 10/10 i cant wait to play more

April 2024

This game is rough. In the past I tried it out a couple of times, but as usual I dropped it after a few hours, unable to actually understand / focus on what I was doing and ultimately immerse myself in the game's ecosystem. And I need to reiterate that this game is rough. It will fist you, repeatedly. It will force you to abuse those F6 and F7 buttons until they'll be worn out. This time though I was determined, so I prepared myself with a bit of lore beforehand, and also a quick research on how to modernize the game a bit with mods. I actually used the “starter pack” mod and a couple of high resolution texture packs, in order to keep the gameplay as vanilla as possible but at the same time avoid some headaches. And so, after some quick prepping I dove in head first and I pretty much straight up completed the game's main story and some side quests. And I loved it. Don't get me wrong, the game is extremely janky, it didn't age very well, but if you're even a little bit interested in the lore you won't be disappointed. It actually takes inspiration from the book “Roadside Picnic”, and in some aspects it's quite similar to that, the main difference being there is no alien intervention in the game events. In short, we will be exploring the Chernobyl exclusion zone as a stalker who is affected by amnesia and is trying to recollect anything about himself and his past. The zone was contaminated by two nuclear disasters and aside from the radiation it has generated mutants, anomalies and special artifacts which have some powers and are really sought after by stalkers who sell them for profit. At the time of this review I just completed the main story (unfortunately I found out afterwards that there are multiple ending possibilities, and the most common one will happen if you have a certain amount of money). The story though is just a means to get us moving forward, but it doesn't provide much lore about the world and its characters. In fact most of the information is scattered around the large semi open world hubs, in the form of PDAs, side quests and visual storytelling. I realize that completing the main quest I just barely scratched the surface of what this experience has to offer. What makes this game special for me, however, is the atmosphere which is conveyed. Despite the technical limitations of its time and overall jankiness, Shadow of Chernobyl really shines at immersing us in its world, offering lots of possibilities, areas to explore in order to look for precious artifacts and stashes hidden around. Every location, even if a bit empty, feels handcrafted and has a lot of personality. I really loved exploring underground bunkers where weird experiments took place, abandoned buildings and occupied military bases. Everything has an Eastern European feeling which really fascinates me and actually enhances the overall environment. Every location has some story to tell, if you are patient and curious enough to find out. This game oozes with lore. I actually found myself so fascinated by it that I turned a blind eye to the technical issues that plague it. The most annoying ones in my opinion are the somewhat frequent frame drops or freezes. It's amazing how some 17 years later SoC still struggles maintaining a consistent frame rate on any PC (I guess that won't ever be fixed), even though I must say that I had no problem during combat or tense situations, since those issues mostly presented themselves while traversing areas and moving around. This review was really difficult to write because SoC is such a weird title. It has a unique setting, and it's kind of niche, so it's difficult to recommend it to everyone. Most people will probably be put off by the dated graphic presentation, or by the difficulty. But if you can get past the roughness of this game I'm pretty sure you won't be disappointed. Recommended!

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