There’s been a temporary lull in my game-playing of late, mostly due to a bad power supply in my usual gaming computer. So instead of a review this week, I’ll be providing you with a preview of what I hope will be the best game of 2004, or maybe 2005, depending on how the development process goes.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl follows in the grand tradition of The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind and the Grand Theft Auto series in taking place over an immense game-world, all of which is accessible and explorable. The game takes place in the near future, at the site of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster. Or rather, it takes place in a 30-kilometer area around the plant. Think about that. 18.64 square miles of totally explorable wilderness and urban area. Fully rendered in 3D.

As the story goes, another unexplained explosion occurred in 2006 in the now-abandoned plant, rendering the Zone around the plant extremely hazardous, full of mutant creatures and strange phenomenons called anomalies. However, the explosion also imbued some objects, called artifacts, with certain abilities. These artifacts are extremely valuable,due both to their rarity and the difficulty in acquiring them.

You play one of about 100 Stalkers, men who enter the Zone and brave its dangers, looking for artifacts to sell on the outside. It’s a brutal, nasty, and often short life, but you have a reasonably vast arsenal to help you. You also have vehicles, and the ability to “clan up” with other non-player character Stalkers.

The developers call the game a role-playing game, and from their descriptions it is heavily influenced by such fantastic RPGs as the Fallout series and the Elder Scrolls series. The game play itself is from a first-person perspective, nearly identical to any other first-person shooter. However, many features set it apart from other first-person shooters, and reinforce the developers’ claims that it is primarily a role-playing game.

You take on quests in a manner familiar to any RPG fan. Your first taskmaster, called the Trader, is a wealthy denizen of the Zone who trades with all Stalkers and pays you for artifacts and tasks you may perform. Dialogue and interaction are highly detailed, and involve such innovations as putting weapons away upon approaching another Stalker, and social backlash should you kill another Stalker and leave witnesses. Everything in the world reacts to your presence, and the other members of the world are all tracked consistently. That means if you leave a valuable item on the ground somewhere, whether or not it is there when you return depends on the other Stalkers in the game. If another Stalker happened through the area and had enough inventory space to pick up the item, it won’t be there—if no one happened across the item in your absence, it’ll be where you left it.

Moreover, the developers have altered the first-person style in subtle ways to emphasize the solitude and remoteness of the Zone. No glowing crosshair appears in the middle of the screen; instead, you must bring the weapon’s unique sights (some have iron sights, some have a scope) to bear in order to increase your accuracy. Extremely limited ammunition forces you to choose between fight and flight at every encounter. Even more extreme, every item in the game decays—including your own body. Weapons and armor must be repaired, vehicles must be fueled and maintained, and you must eat food to keep up your own strength.

This isn’t to say the game won’t be full of the kind of action we’ve come to love from shooters. In demos (available at http://www.gametrailers.com, or at the game’s official website http://www.stalker-game.com), the monster and human AI looks incredible. Groups of Stalkers work together in clear squad coordination to flank, take cover, and hold ground; monsters use their unique powers with great effectiveness.

Most impressively, the game appears to be a genuine Half-Life 2 killer. The graphics are absolutely gorgeous; the physics, while perhaps slightly less developed than that in Half-Life 2, are extremely impressive given the scale of the game. The multi-player, similar to Counter-Strike, but on a grander scale, has been reviewed very well by press representatives.

I can’t give the game a rating until I’ve actually gotten my grubby little hands on it, of course. But I can assure you that if it lives up to what the developers have promised us, it will rock the PC gaming community to the roots.