And it's a real shooter (ain't no V.A.T.S. lol), and the gun physics are pretty good actually. But it's a single player adventure/shooter/survival type of game. Mostly open world, up til the end when you go to Chernobyl itself, you can turn around and go back to where you started the whole thing. But there's NO fast travel.
It's a fairly wooly game (like, it's a little bit low budget and rushed) but like Fallout's, there some nice fan-made mods (and I mean there's A LOT of them).
The 'Complete' mods (there's one for S.O.C, Clear Sky, and Call of Pripyat ... each of the 3 games in the series) are definitely worthwhile, even for a first playthrough.
Where it REALLY succeeds is atmosphere, and the survival aspect. There's freaking scary places you go in this game, and a lot of fights that are no joke. ANd there's very little handholding, almost no tutorial, you just have to like ... figure the friggin world out. And SAVE A LOT, like, not just quick save. Make saves.
It's pretty beloved by a lot of gamers though despite it's rough edges. It has a charm and challenge to it that really no other FPS I've played has.
Oh, and it's also PC only, and Mouse/Keyboard only. And there's a lot of remapping of keys you'll want to do, some of the defaults suck 
. At this point though you don't need much PC power to play it.
If you decide to pick it up (it goes on sale on steam for cheap often), let me know.
DEFINITELY start with Shadow of Chernobyl though, not the other two.
Complete mod is here ... looks like there's an exe for it now ... nifty!
https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-complete-2009/downloads/stalker-complete-2009-14-exe-installer
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