S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl
Fair · Shooter · 2007
Steam Deck UnsupportedThe verdict
NO RUSH.
Fair at $19.99. Buy it if you want it.
- Reviews
- 95% positive
Watch this gameOne email when it is worth buying. Your call on what that means.
Get one email when S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl is worth buying.
One email per game. Unsubscribe in a click.
Minimum on the Steam store: 512 MB of memory, 128 MB DirectX 8.0 compatible card / nVIDIA GeForce 5700 / ATI Radeon 9600, 6 GB of storage. Windows only.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl tells a story about survival in the Zone – a very dangerous place, where you fear not only the radiation, anomalies and deadly creatures, but other S.T.A.L.K.E.R.s, who have their own goals and wishes.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
- How long it takes to beat isn't in our data. The score is docked for the missing length.
The value story
The lowest price on record is $3.99, set in April 2022. 70 discounts in the 14 years on record. They run about 70 percent off, roughly 6 weeks apart.
On value it sits in the top 26 percent of its genre. It is pricier than 82 percent of its genre, and better reviewed than 95 percent. Among the games that feel like it, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Clear Sky ($19.99, scores 61) beats it on value, while it beats S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl ($59.99, scores 50).
Critics scored it 82. Players sit 13 points higher at 95 percent, which usually means a game that plays better than it reviews.
Of the 399 Steam-purchase reviews this site sampled, 1 comes from a buyer who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written November 2025 to August 2026. Inside the two-hour refund window, 83 percent of the 2,920 reviews written there were positive, against 95 percent overall, and those are 8 percent of everything written about it.
Players
185 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
No data upstream: achievement curve (Steam global achievements).
Cite this score
Embed the live badge, copy the line, or download the card.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl scores 58/100 on the BANG Score (fair value). Length is not in our data, so the score is docked. The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/4500/s-t-a-l-k-e-r-shadow-of-chernobylThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Aug 3, price as of Sep 24.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.