Money is never really an issue in the game, since the artifacts you find lying around The Zone's fields sell for substantial sums. Large quantities of ammunition for each of the game's rifles, shotguns, and pistols are available at any major vendor. Though a few side quests offer valuable rewards (one particular quest in Yantar nets you an excellent armor piece), the majority give you money and bullets, both of which can be easily obtained through other means. Upon your first footsteps in the early areas, it's an undeniably compelling prospect to trek across the dreary fields pocked with anomaly clusters to question the inhabitants and root out secrets. The game's zones, which take a minute or two to sprint across, are separated by load times, meaning you can't pass from one end of The Zone to the other uninterrupted. The more involving ones toss you into battle with A.I. They mostly offer simple tasks such as kill a single target, wipe out a camp, or retrieve an object. Sadly only a handful of them are truly interesting. If you really want to test out how S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s open world elements work, you'll need to embark on the many side quests The Zone's NPCs offer.

In a strange twist, several of the main story missions take place underground or indoors, shifting the aspects of gameplay toward that of a traditional corridor shooter. Be sure to get one of the two true endings to fill in all the plot holes. Though some of the story's twists and turns are interesting, the pacing and storytelling methods could have used some refinement.

It turns out the Zone's NPCs aren't the best storytellers, so to more accurately understand what's happening you'll need to regularly check your PDA the Marked One turns out to be quite the diligent note taker. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s main story missions provide the most engaging experience, as completing the challenges sometimes bestows useful rewards, opens up new territory to explore, and advances the mysterious plot. As the journey progresses, you'll move through the game's various self-contained zones that together make up The Zone, from the relatively placid Cordon to the war-wracked Army Warehouses, Pripyat, and finally the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant itself, from which all things sinister seem to emanate. You soon meet up with a man named Sidorovich, who hands out your first tasks and introduces the fiction of the environment. Events kick off with your character, known only as the Marked One, tumbling off a death truck on the outskirts of The Zone.

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