The S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games have always held a particularly special place in my heart. I discovered the original some time after it was released and was instantly swept up in its apocalyptic world. The atmosphere was complete: after a few minutes trekking around the ruined Chernobyl landscape, I began to feel as though I was really there. The sense of being part of something bigger than myself was intoxicating.

The second game, a prequel to the first, was a major disappointment. It made me weep bitter tears of anguish. I shall speak of it no further.

Call of Pripyat is the final chapter of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series (this seems as good a place as any to make the obligatory joke about excessive punctuation … I shall type Stalker from now on), and I wasn’t sure what to expect. The first was genius; the second was tragedy. The third could have gone either way.

Well, gather a herd of small goats and slaughter them on the altar of thankfulness, because this game is freaking awesome.

For the uninitiated, the Stalker games are set in the Zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. As we all know, exploding nuclear power plants create radiation; radiation, of course, is a lot like pixie dust. Sprinkle a little on an otherwise normal person and — BAM! — there’s Johnny Storm.

The world of Stalker was fortunate enough to receive more than a sprinkle; mutated beasties whose diet primarily consists of unprepared explorers roam the darkness.

In Call of Pripyat, you play as an undercover Russian agent trying to determine what happened to a squadron of helicopters the military sent into the Zone. The choppers all met with horrible fates at the hands of gravity, and you were just lucky enough to get the job of wading through hostile radiated territory to find each crash site and piece together what happened to their crews.

The story is more cohesive and sensical than either of the two previous offerings, though some knowledge of them is helpful in understanding the overall tale. It is also a lot more fun to play through. One set piece in particular has you making your way through a massive underground passageway with a team of allies while fending off mutants and mysterious Monolith soldiers. It’s intense, challenging, and memorably immersive.

Conclusively, Stalker is back in glorious fashion. Wide open world to explore with rewarding results? Check. Creative leveling system that gives a sense of progression without actual levels? Check. Freakish enemies that want to devour your soul? Triple check.

The intensely freaky survival/horror sections are back; the king-of-the-wasteland feeling you get as you master challenges is back; and most importantly, the sense of being in a complete world with its own politics and unwritten rules is very much back.

That’s not to say that the third game is a complete repeat of the first, although it may look that way at first glance. The game has been tightened down and improved across the board, most notably in the side quest department. Gone are the generic MMO-ish “pick 16 daffodils and I’ll give you a lolly” quests. Almost without exception, each side quest has a well-written plot, and will often lead to more quests.

Combat is an absolute joy. While your weapons are curiously quiet (enemy gunshots from across the room will sound louder than the gun you hold in your own hands; mods are available to fix this), they are balanced, realistic and upgradable. Defeating enemies, often in groups that attack with intelligent tactics, requires real skill and is quite rewarding.

Of course, it’s not perfect. Probably the biggest complaint is the mass recycling in the graphics department. It wouldn’t surprise me to find out the developers just fired the art team after the first game; almost everything is recognizable from earlier games, albeit in higher resolution. The game is poorly optimized in this respect, as well. I had to tone some settings down to get an acceptable frame rate — something I shouldn’t have had to do with my rig’s specs. Some elements look fantastic; others, namely trees and fauna, look terrible.

There are a few other quirks that are mostly due to the series’ historical disdain for polish: weather behaves oddly at times; some character animations are stiff and unnatural; and dialogue often suffers from unintentionally funny translation issues. But these are easily forgiven in light of the incredibly way the game sucks you into its experience.

Content issues are pretty typical for an M-rated game. Language pops up with some frequency. I don’t remember any f-bombs being dropped, but s-words and their ilk pepper dialogue. Violence is central to the experience, but it’s never gory or over the top. The biggest warning is that this game is just scary — it gets in your head, and when an electrical anomaly detonates right next to you without warning, or a Chimera soars out of the darkness to munch on your arteries, it’s straight up, fall-out-of-your-chair terrifying.

Personally, I love this. It means the game is effectively drawing the player in. But it’s not suitable for younger audiences or those without an extra pair of pants handy.

Huge props to GSC Game World for this incredible comeback performance. Stalker: Call of Pripyat is the best Stalker game by far, and is not an experience to be missed by any fan of open world games, first person shooters, or awesome games in general.

Jerod Jarvis is an independent gaming journalist and founder of Duality Games. He maintains gaming columns for The Washington Times Communities and for The Outpost. When not blogging madly about games, he freelances for the Spokesman-Review in his hometown of Spokane, Washington and attends school at Whitworth University. Check out his presence on Facebook and Twitter to stay up on Duality Games updates and the inside scoop on the gaming news you care about.