Gameplay

The game’s RPG aspects come into play again as the player character encounters some friendly stalkers who want to help you storm the farm where the data disk can be retrieved. You are given the choice of having these AI allies join you or you can go the stealth route and try to take on the task yourself. We decided to use the former option and had our team storm the farm.

Since you are armed with only a pistol, we discovered that going for head shots was the best way to take out an enemy quickly. With the help of our teammates our foes were quickly defeated. Since resources are scarce you are allowed to ransack your former foes bodies for anything of value (including much welcomed and more powerful weapons) and of course your goal of getting the data disk. The game’s inventory system isn’t infinite, by the way; it has both weight and space limitations, so you have to keep that in mind when you forage for more items.

With our first task accomplished we headed back to our mysterious merchant to give him the device as well as sell off the items we received from the raid for cash.


Of course this is just the first mission. S.T.A.L.K.E.R will give the player a chance to participate in even more missions for money or items and they will usually be similar to our first encounter, dealing with killing people and/or getting access to artifacts. You have a PDA that you use to look at maps of the environment, mission objectives, conversation logs and even personal diaries. One of the cooler things about this game is that each NPC you encounter has the potential to help you, either by giving you the option for a mission or trading items or even telling you about some interesting historical facts that your PDA then stores in its encyclopedia.