Hello, today, I have launched Shadow of Chernobyl, however once maximising all graphics settings ingame and restarting as instructed, the game stalls upon restart and hangs on the launch screen (the thumbnail in the centre of the display upon launch,) Is this a known issue or is there a way around this / am I supposed to play it as it is without messing around with graphics settings?

Thanks.

The game is nothing if not notorious for being a little...temperamental. Without knowing system specs or having a deep understanding of the code my advice would be to uninstall the game, reinstall and then use a mod package to stabilize the game. I have had success with a mod called STALKER Complete. It can be found on ModDb:

https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-complete-2009

Simply click on the 'Download' button on the side, select the non-archived version (as of writing the non-archived version is 1.5.2.73) and then the 'Download Now' button. Unzip the mod when it has finished downloading (this could take a while as it is over 5 GB) and follow the steps in the readme file. It is, in essence, a complete mod set that offers a slew of bug fixes, resolution changes, AI fixes and texture re-maps while trying to keep the game's mechanics intact.

I hope this helps you out; I myself had trouble running the game without a mod or two.

If it feezed when trying to run the game on Dynamic Lighting - you're probably hitting this bug: https://www.gog.com/forum/stalker_series/issue_with_launching_with_dx9

To fix this - download and install the Intel patch, you can find it in the EXTRAS downloads in your GOG library.