I got STALKER Shadow of Chernobyl, STALKER was discussed early in the thread. I have to say... I have a rather mitigated feeling towards it. Up to now, probably a 4 to 6 out of 10. I just made it to the Bar (Duty), so I'm not so far in.
It has a nice atmosphere, cool monsters... Something keeps me playing, I guess it's the exploration/gloomy factor, I dunno...
But it's so obviously flawed. The PDA you get your info from is annoying to navigate and while it's realistic that time passes by and action keeps happening even when you're looking at it, it just doesn't translate well in gameplay. Far Cry 2 did the same, with minimal interface and no pause to look at the map, but Far Cry 2 didn't need to convey that much information either... It's annoying as hell to try to figure out the next objective, or what exactly you're doing, reading diary, looking at the hard to use map, etc. and suddenly getting attacked. Argh.
Then there's all the side quests. They seem interesting, but the developers did the criminal mistake of putting time limits and restrictions on the quests. Not only that, but the time limit is still there after you completed the objective. You have to return to the quest giver for the reward IN TIME. What the hell. Can't I bring you your artifact later? No. you have to walk all the way across the rather boring map 24 times and you have to do it NOW. No, just no. This is so tedious, all this walking. Seriously, who took the quests from the Cordon area? I did a few, but once I hit Garbage, I was like, "you want me to waste 15 minutes to walk back and forth to this place?" ... no F U.
The developers used the "main character has amnesia" cop out and missed out entirely on great story line opportunities. Also, I hate how "The Zone" is so extremely detached from the outside world. I mean, sure, it can be isolated, but don't make me feel like this isn't even planet Earth anymore. Anyway, I felt that I had no real motivation to do whatever my character is doing. I was expecting a more "realistic" setting, like, some mutants, some scavenger guys in the ruins... Not a whole new world and isolated society with different factions, all formed in what, 4 years? ... Right.
The fact that you keep shooting straight at guys and they don't die or take way too many hits to fall down... Argh... I know they used a model where even if you aim well, there is a percentage of chances your bullets will miss. Fallout 3 does this also. But for some reason, I found the Fallout 3 model a lot more acceptable than what it is in STALKER. The guns feel a little tame.. Also, stealthing is really annoying and guys see you way too easily, again. So many games have this problem.
So yeah, cool mutants and gloomy places to explore, the AI is actually pretty good, except for the eagle eyes of anti-stealth part. Keep coming back to it, but deeply annoyed at some other stuff.