holy shit what a ride. let's get the bad outta the way: the ending is fucking terrible gameplay-wise. it's incredibly linear and detracts from the entirety of what stalker is about: roaming the zone and trying to survive. it turns into a battlefield/cod fuckfest, and the sometimes iffy combat makes it worse. stalker: soc was a very ambitious game during its development, but it had to cut some content. you can see abandoned ideas of what it was once dreamed to be with physics puzzles, a more in depth stealth system, parkour, and more. the remnants of parkour is more prevalent at the end, but hey at least i get to appreciate the cool ass assets for the powerplant. there is a lot of fighting fatigue as well since the end is a corridor shooter that throws hordes of enemies at you. it's also worth mentioning that stalker is very buggy and AI can be oblivious. the x-ray engine most likely is a product of the zone itself. and hey, I know this may sound really unappealing but if you cant handle the bugginess and awkwardness, just download some of the many, many mods to fix those issues (I swear to god if you're one of those people who believes that if you have to mod a game to make it more playable makes the said game "bad," I hope that you know that sometimes its more about the experience rather than needing a "perfect" game).

now with that out of the way, the ending is still pretty cool from a story point. at least for the true ending. some of the story has cool things about it, like a super conscious using the CNPP as a means of trying to manipulate the "noosphere," a sphere of influence that can globally affect people's minds, emotions, and consciouses. but besides that, it's not a lot of special stuff. the world is one of the best worlds in a video game by taking inspirations from Tarkovsky's "stalker" and the Strugatsky brothers' "roadside picnic" while still making itself its own thing. rather than aliens visiting and leaving behind their litter, stalker's version of "The Zone" is caused by a science experiment gone wrong which caused the CNPP to have a second explosion. anomalies, mutants, and factions fighting over land is now the norm of the Chernobyl exclusion zone. the amount of dread, paranoia, and misery that I've felt walking throughout the zone is staggering. this game's atmosphere is DRIPPING, and when I say dripping I should actually be saying that it's LEAKING ALL OVER THE PLACE! the world not only has the atmosphere of gloom but also has the atmosphere of a place with living creatures. never have I, until the end of the game, ever felt that some NPCs shouldn't have spawned where they were. It feels like a real ecosystem of mutants and different factions trying to survive or kill one another. You'll encounter other stalkers having skirmishes with bandits, stalkers fending off mutants, or different factions fighting each other. the dynamic systems of mutants, factions, and anomalies interacting with one another makes a compelling argument to call s.t.a.l.k.e.r. an immersive sim. the game's world is the main reason that it took me almost 30 hours to eventually beat because there's nothing I enjoyed more than relaxing at a campfire listening to some slav guitar after spending the day hunting for artifacts, or by simply just aimlessly exploring the wastes, or even just sitting in a bush eating stale bread and kolbasa to heal up after surviving the mauling of a bloodsucker.

for this reason alone I'm able to excuse shadow of chernobyl's shortcomings of bugs, awkwardness, and end game frustration because it creates such an immaculately immersive world of horror in a familiar yet foreign setting. there's really nothing like being chased by a pack of mutant dogs while drunk in the fields of chernobyl.