Shows the intro clip from STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl along with the starter area in Cordon. Contains a few small spoilers of crates that can be smashed open to obtain supplies. No combat in the starter area, just exploration and getting used to the controls.



S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is a game from 2007 or so that spent a lot of time in development and is a very rough and unpolished gem. The Stalker Complete mod cleans it up a lot. It ends up looking pretty decent for a 4 year old game.

In comparison to other games, I would compare it to a trimmed down copy of Fallout 3. There is a lot of exploration, sneaking around and combat, but the game world is separated into maps connected by zone points. Total play time will probably be under 30 hours if you press straight towards the goal and maybe 50-80 hours if you decide to explore a bit and do the side missions to get more money.

Combat can be a bit brutal as the enemies are super-accurate with grenades and head shots are deadly. So you'll need to position yourself behind good cover and have a plan of attack and fallback positions.

Important tips:

• Weapons have a "condition" attribute and will start jamming a lot below 50-60%. Very similar to Fallout 3, except that self-repair is not in the base game.
• No point in exploring until you talk to Wolf (who gives you a pistol, ammo and your knife).
• The starter area is not that dangerous as long as you stay south of the railroad track and avoid the packs of dogs, bandits, mutant boars, and pseudo-dogs.
• The military at the railroad bridge will not shoot you on sight, but other military will.
• After checking a body, check your PDA to see whether you've uncovered a new stash location.
• Static containers (blue chests) are good for permanent storage. Spread your loot pile around though in case theft occurs (and lots of items in a container also increases load times). Stash containers (varies in type) are considered "not safe" (different results for different people). The big issue that you'll have is remembering which box you put that strange item in that you now need (which is an argument for sticking to just the blue boxes). There is one blue box in the trader area where you start the game and a 2nd blue box out by the campfire in the starter area.
  
• Square grey crates can be broken open for loot. There are also white/blue metal boxes that can be broken open for better loot.
  
• The junk / bolts that you can throw by using the "6" key are unlimited and are ideal for discovering the exact location of the anomalies. Toss the bolts, see whether the shimmering area reacts. You can also use the bolts to get a feel for how far grenades will go and holding the right-mouse (a.k.a. "alternate fire") button will let you control the range.
• The mini-map will show you the location of dead bodies (grey dots), friendly NPCs (fellow "Loner" faction stalkers), or hostile humanoids who have spotted you or are alert. The binoculars are also useful for looking around and finding hostiles / friendlies.
• Veteran difficulty in the base SoC game means that head shots are more likely to be deadly instead of glancing away. Others have said that Veteran difficulty will feel about right once you get better weapons and armor while Stalker difficulty is easier at the start but then gets too easy towards the end.
• Bandages stop bleeding and heal you slightly. By default, this is bound to the right square-bracket key "]". Any time that you see a yellow or red blood drop on the right of the screen, you should use a bandage to stop your health from leaking away. Green blood drops will stop bleeding on their own and you will not lose too much health. You should plan on carrying 10-30 bandages at the start.
• You will recover health over time, or if you sleep, or if you consume food or use bandages / medical kits. The red medical kits (medkit) are key-bound to the left square-bracket "[".
• Food also keeps your character from getting hungry. You will need to eat a few times per day, so always carry half a dozen to a dozen food items (for health regeneration as well as feeding yourself).
• Vodka cures radiation, but also makes you drunk (so the camera viewpoint gets wobbly). There are also artifacts that will remove radiation (with minor side-effects) if you wear them. Or you can use anti-radiation medication for a heavy duty fix to radiation poisoning.
• Artifacts are created by anomalies or given as quest rewards or found in containers. If they are out in the wild, they will be about the size of a soccer ball and will pulse with a yellow glow. They are used as quest items, vendor loot, or you can wear them (drag them to the upper right boxes in your inventory screen) but have various side effects. Early on, you won't use these much, so save them for quests.
• The early artifacts will cause you to absorb radiation (see Stone Flower which is +5 Radiation and +3% Bulletproof). Others have downsides like making you more vulnerable to impact, rupture, bullet damage in exchange for more health regeneration (not +health it just helps you regen faster). The ones with defensive stats or that reduce radiation are much more valued.
  
• Early weapons don't do much damage and are very inaccurate at range. You will spend a lot of time with a pistol (or the silenced pistol which is slightly better) and a sawed off shotgun. The shotgun is good at killing boars and pseudo-dogs in 2 shots at close range. The pistol has a slightly better range, but takes more rounds to put a critter down (unless you get a head shot).
• Most weapons have multiple ammo types that you can switch between with the "Y" key. But the ammo count in the lower-right reflects the total of all ammo types that you have, not the ammo type that is loaded.
• Unless you manage to kill one of the military or a bandit NPCs, you probably won't get a semi-automatic weapon until you get north of the railroad tracks in Cordon.
• Combat between the factions is common, and key NPCs can be killed. Most of the time this is not an issue because you can simply glean the required information for the quest off of their PDA.
• Any time you loot a body, any information on their PDA gets automatically transferred into yours.
• Holster your weapon before talking to neutral NPCs.
• Other "Loner" faction stalkers are a good source of basic ammo, bandages and food via trade and will buy excess handguns or weapons that you have picked up.
• In the unpatched game, there is a "stalker" suit in the starter village, but you really have to look for it and do a bit of jumping on the roofs NE of the camp fire. In the patched versions of the game, this has been changed to a different suit type (mercenary) which is not quite as good. I still haven't found it in my version of STALKER (from Steam, with Stalker Complete 2009 mod installed).
  
• Most modern machines ($100-$200 video cards released within the last year) can run STALKER on high settings at reasonable resolutions (1600x900). If you have performance issues, dynamic lighting and dynamic shadows are probably the biggest culprits.
  

I'm a few hours into it (maybe 4-6 hours) and I have yet to get past the railroad in Cordon. But I've restarted a few times and spent a lot of time poking around. I'm just about to the point where I'm going to try and kill the military guards at the railroad bridge so I can get their weapons.