Earlier this year, GameSpot was invited to visit GSC Game World in Kiev, Ukraine. GSC is best known for its Cossacks series of real-time strategy games, but come the end of this year, that is unlikely to be the case. The reason? S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, the developer's second attempt at a first-person shooter (the first was Codename: Outbreak) will be released. It's a game that, if the hype is to be believed, will deliver a single-player experience as immersive and engaging as anything on the market. Details of the game's multiplayer capabilities are being kept under wraps until E3, but we're happy to report that our visit to the former Soviet Union (to be one of the first people in the world to get hands-on time with the single-player game) was well worth the time and effort.

The ghost town of Pripyat is one of the many real-world locales you can explore.

Housed in a large gulaglike building with dimly lit corridors, floor-to-ceiling cold surfaces, and receptionists who wear camouflage clothing, the GSC office is an oasis of wooden floors and tasteful decor. The office is only a one-hour drive from Chernobyl, so perhaps it's not surprising that the site of the world's worst man-made disaster was chosen as the setting for the game. A number of the developers at GSC have friends or family who were affected by the Chernobyl explosion back in 1986, so they are anxious to create a game that not only entertains and immerses players but also serves as both a reminder of what happened and a warning so that the same thing will never be allowed to happen again.

Despite its somewhat fantastical premise, realism is definitely the order of the day in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. The gameworld, which spans some 30 square kilometers, has been painstakingly re-created using thousands of photographs taken during the developers' visit to the "Chernobyl zone." Needless to say, it is quite different from any world that we've explored in a first-person shooter to date. GSC has employed a little artistic license in moving the zone's key landmarks a little closer together and in making the terrain in between more interesting and varied. However, the world you're presented with in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is wholly believable as a man-made environment that is slowly succumbing to and being reclaimed by the forces of nature. Since we visited the exclusion zone at Chernobyl, we can also report that the game is as close as many of you are likely to (or would want to) get to the doomed nuclear power plant. A former safety officer from the plant, who has been in regular contact with GSC, even told us that he was able to find his old office while playing an early version of the game. It's not just the graphics that make the gameworld seem realistic either, because the game boasts a physics engine that's right up there with what we've seen of Half-Life 2. The environment itself is inhabited by all manner of unnatural creatures and non-player characters that go about their business regardless of whether you happen to be close by.

The main landmarks in Pripyat are an unused Ferris wheel and a sports stadium.

Eager to show off the game's physics, GSC allowed us to get hands-on with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. in the confines of a physics test level. The level comprised nothing more than a room filled with weapons and destructible objects, but you'd be amazed at the number of things we found to amuse ourselves with. Light sources were plentiful in the physics test room, and while shooting out the bulbs Splinter Cell-style is sure to prove useful in the game on occasion, it's also possible to make light fixtures swing wildly from the ceiling, which results in an impressive display of real-time shadows. Other objects in the room included barrels, crates, furniture, doors, heavy pipes, and television sets. Armed with a pistol, a shotgun, a machine gun, and a handful of grenades, we set out to rearrange the room. As a result, piles of barrels were scattered by grenades, wooden doors were reduced to splinters, and heavy doors swung open but remained intact after we tried the shotgun. Additionally, chairs and tables were reduced to firewood once we started shooting the legs off of them with an AK-74. The list goes on, but all you really need to know is that every object in the room behaved exactly as we expected it to, so many game objects were destructible. The lone exception to the rule involves the game's barrels, which appear to be indestructible. In fact, they don't even get dented from falls to the ground after they are thrown into the air by the force of an explosion.