S.T.A.L.K.E.R pt2
The documents are on the third floor. A concrete cube of a building that only communist sensibilities could ever describe as anything but ugly.
Sneaking between two barracks to avoid the patrols and guard towers the radio starts playing. Specifically it starts playing this. The sun is setting and I've got an unknown number of guards to deal with. This mood music is totally unscripted, but absolutely perfect.
From what in another shooter would just be a "sneak 'em up" or "gun and run" exercise I'm suddenly tense. Checking corners, lines of sight and actually feeling nervous. When it all kicks off I'm panicked into shooting wildly just from the atmosphere of tension.
S.T.A.L.K.E.R isn't a technically fantastic game. I'm sure there are much prettier games out there and it still occassionally crashes. It took me about a year after buying it, with three or four restarts, and a graphical mod overhaul to get me playing it. But damn, for a sense of total immersion and an atmosphere of blasted desolation infused with highly dangerous encounters, it's absolutely fantastic.