But first things first, and our initial mission is to find Nimble, who's in possession of a flash drive containing sensitive data the trader wants to retrieve.

Climbing stairs and walking into sunlight, we get our first proper look at the world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Running on our state-of-the-art XWorks X8i-C2D PC, it's an impressive visual feast.

A blue sky with wisps of cloud looms overhead filled with birds, while small bushes sprouting from the ground are blown around by the wind, trees bend in the breeze and dust periodically gusts across the landscape.

A minute spent soaking it all up, we then move off to a nearby camp where a stalker called Wolf not only informs us of Nimble's whereabouts but hands over a pistol and a knife to go with a pair of binoculars already in our possession.

Gun! Hurrah! Unfortunately, it turns out that Nimble's been captured by a group of bandits and so, along with a group of Wolf's cohorts, we've got to go bust Nimble's ass out of jail, so to speak.

Unfortunately, it also turns out that these NPCs don't take kindly to you waving a gun in their face, so I have to lower my pistol to get their sawn-off shotguns out of my face. Whoops. Reputation and relationships with other characters is an important part of the game, you see - build up rep with certain NPCs and you'll benefit from cheaper items when trading and additional info for missions that you otherwise wouldn't receive.

Benefiting from the added fire power of Wolf's buddies, we charge off over a rolling landscape to a dilapidated factory where the bandits are holed up and a firefight ensues, the air filled with shouts of the living, cries of the dying and bullets whipping past our ears.