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The much awaited game, "Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl" will hit stores later this month, the game's developer, GSC, said.

GSC revealed that Stalker is a bit deeper than the standard linear first person shooter game, and gives players the feeling of being in the living world, with events happening outside of the player's missions. Besides, the user interface (UI) offers players a range of choices much like role playing games, and assigns tasks to characters like in RPGs.

As such, GSC says Stalker combines deep RPG like game play with action elements of a FPS, together with impressive visuals and graphics.

The game, previously called Stalker: Oblivion Lost, has a storyline and setting that revolves round the infamous Chernobyl nuclear reactor in Ukraine that exploded in 1986. While the explosion killed not so many people, the harmful effects of radiation continue.

Stalker, the game, features a fictional universe that postulates a second explosion at Chernobyl two decades later. This time around, the radiation causes quite a few deaths, Cancer, and what's more - mutated creatures of all shapes and sizes. On the brighter side, it turns ordinary artifacts into items of considerable value.

In "Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl" the player plays "stalker", a sort of scavenger who tries to find anything that might be of value inside the affected zone. As the game begins, the character develops Amnesia, that much tried-and-tested gimmick, so that the only memory he's left with is that he is on a mission to take on a fellow stalker.

'Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl' will be ship to stores via publisher THQ end of this month.