It's rare that the general public gets to play a version of a game that's actually older than what the finished product turned out to be. GSC Game World has given gamers that chance by releasing an alpha build of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Oblivion Lost. That's not a typo; that's the original name for their post-apocalyptic shooter before they changed it into S.T.A.LK.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl.

The final game was years in the making before it was released in 2007. The release of this earlier build of the game comes from 2004 and contains all of the levels plus many that were cut along with other features that didn't make it into the final version. As you might expect there's no official support for this build; it was released just for fun so don't cry if your system crashes.