I just finished Shadow of Chernobyl. It's not a bad game, but it's so close to being good that it's painful. I had gripes, but was having enough fun to put up with them until around X16, started having fun again once I left, and stopped giving any sort of a fuck about anything two minutes into the Sarcophagus. The image I attached covers most of what I hated, but there's a bit more.
<The anomaly detector turns mysteries into annoyances
I loved the film. Imagine how lesser it would have been with such a device. Instead of listening for audio cues, looking for visual distortions, and throwing bolts to lay the best path, it's all reduced to keeping the tone from becoming too frequent. It's also deafening during firefights in certain areas, which can be life-or-death.
<Kruglov is everything wrong with escort missions, and you have to escort him twice back-to-back
"Let me run ahead of this well-armed Stalker with my shitty pistol, picking up better weapons as we go but not using them, and completely disregarding what makes for good cover. Also I'm a bullet magnet so the zombified people ignore him and only aim at me. I am a physicist, somehow."
<Indoor levels suck dick
X16 is the worst offender by far, being filled with the glorified bullet sponges known as snorks and zombies. The Sarcophagus was only slightly less terrible in that regard, but far worse in every other way.
<The wasted opportunity that is the Sarcophagus
The mad dash before the blowout was a better finale than this shit. The NPP is Ground Zero for the Zone, its factions, and everything you've done up until now. I was wondering what could be in there. I've faced a fair few strange creatures getting there. What untold monstrosities could be in that place?
Dudes with machine guns. Secret lab? More dudes with machine guns.
Fucking yawn. I could write a thesis on the fuckup that is this level alone, but I'll just put it this way instead: imagine you had never faced a Controller up until this point. I think there's only two, and one of them is entirely missable. Imagine going through the dark corridors of the Sarcophagus, trying to keep your radiation levels acceptable, and you run into a fucking Controller. You panic, run backwards to regroup, and after taking it out, you start peeking around every corner a little more deliberately. But honestly, the Sarcophagus being totally empty would have better than the linear corridor shootan we ended up with. Once I saw the Secret Lab was more of the same I totally checked out and made a wish for immortality instead.
SoC was still engaging enough for me to finish it, but I don't see myself ever doing a second playthrough without a mod that gives it a major overhaul. I will play the subsequent games and Call of Chernobyl in the hope that they provide a more polished experience.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. General, I guess.