Recent reviews by Flyguy 2000

As a veteran STALKER player, despite some issues, I absolutely love the game. If you enjoyed the originals, it is basically just more of that, same gameplay loop and everything while looking better as long as you can run it. If you are new to the series, I still recommend the game but you may not know certain story elements or characters but most do get explained. Looks like the original trilogy will get remastered though if you want to wait for that.


I have been playing STALKER games since 2010, The aesthetic and atmosphere of this series, exploring a world turned alien has always had great appeal to me and the A-life system (for the uninitiated, basically random npc encounters with different faction patrols or mutants and persistent life and routine for npcs including encounters when the player isn't there) adds great immersion to the games. I love the old games and for a long time I've wanted a sequal, but it seemed it would never release. To my absolute surprise it actually came out! I was and am still shocked about this basic fact, I had basically given up on its release since 2012 as GSC Game world got shuttered then, the game was re-announced but I figured it would be canceled again. Somehow, despite all odds including a literal war in the devs' country, the game actually released!


I will say that the game did release in an absolutely horrendous state being plagued with crashes, having severe performance issues, and lacking lots of features including A-life and mutants eating bodies having bleeding animations, and being lootable. The game has come a long way since launch, lots of issues were ironed out, the severe stuff like crashes especially.
Optimization has improved to a point, though the game does still require a beefy PC to max out and lower end hardware, especially with low vram may struggle even at medium/low at 1440p 1080p is probably a bit easier though. Upscaling definitely helps here since native is really tough to run, the listed recommended requirements should be able to get decent performance at 1440p. A-life was introduced although it is still in an incomplete state, mostly just adding random encounters back in but lacking the persistence. The devs have stated it is a goal to update A-life to include that persistence in the next month or two along with other ai improvements, mutants eating bodies, and lootable mutants.


There are definitely some questionable choices, the most apparent to me was probably the English voice acting. A lot of the NPCs seem to be voiced by British people, which seriously broke my immersion. I quickly switched the language to Ukrainian to avoid that, I really do miss the classic goofy lines from the old games like "howdy ho" or "get out of here stalker" too but I will live. The faction rep system also seems to be under-cooked, with going from neutral to good standing not affecting much, it seems like it's just voice lines, repair costs and guide pricing atm. It would also be good to have faction reputation maybe change based on helping rival factions and include more indication of what causes rep to change, the game has a tool-tip for bribing faction leaders but I don't think that's in the game. Certain mutant types also seem to be a bit too tanky but you do get equipment later in the game that helps in that area.

It is important with the popularity of mods such as Anomaly or STALKER Gamma to note that this is a sequal to the vanilla trilogy, not to any mods. The gameplay is not going to be as punishing as those and won't have certain mechanics that they incorporate.


Despite the issues the game has had, I still get the same itch to play I had over a decade ago because of the world. Despite the pretty brutal system requirements, seeing the zone with this much fidelity is really impressive. The game incorporates the different sub-areas of the zone into one cohesive open world, which is something I always wanted from the series and has many more enterable buildings. There are also new areas to explore as well. The game has new types of anomalies, including unique ones which contain unique artifacts and there are many small anomalies sprinkled around the map. There are also lots of interesting puzzles for stashes that, to be fair, do sometimes feel kinda bs with their logic and lack of hints but are also really cool sometimes. Stuff like this shows me that this isn't some barren open world devoid of content, but one which was hand crafted to contain interesting elements all over the place.


The story is really interesting, it involves new factions mostly, although some of the old ones are still a part of things, and includes a lot of old characters, including old protagonists which is really cool. It also fleshes out concepts which were not explained thoroughly in the old games. I also appreciate the effort that went into making the cutscenes this time around. There are moments of player choice which lead to different story paths, I'm not sure of how significant the differences are yet though since I have not done a 2nd playthrough. The core identity of the factions is still definitely there in the attitude of their members and the broadcasts in their bases. There are of course side quests as well, but I would appreciate more of them.


Overall, despite it definitely being an imperfect game, I have been having an absolute blast playing Stalker 2. It achieves that feeling from the other games with way more content and a beautiful, seamless open world. Hopefully everything still missing gets added in soon. The main things I look for in a Stalker game are here in spades and I really am so glad I get to play it. I recommend the game to anyone who played the old games, as long as you have a beefy enough PC to run it. For new players, there is still a lot to love here and it does do a pretty good job getting you acclimated to the world, you just might not know who certain characters are or the background of certain factions but the player character is new to the zone himself so a lot does get explained.

TLDR: Game is great and you should try it, you probably won't be able to put it down. It's free to play so why not?

Full review below:

This game is a real breath of fresh air for modern shooters. It really raises the bar in terms of environmental destruction, which makes sense given the devs' experience as ex Battlefield developers. While that series has been getting further away from destruction with each entry post BC2, this game leans into it in a big way and is way more unique for it. It is very nice that all destruction is server side to make it all consistent between clients. Destruction on this level can be used to drop objectives or even obliterate buildings where there is a particularly hard to break defense.

I love that it gets away from the Battle Royale saturation we have seen in recent years. This game borrows elements from other games, gunplay and movement is somewhat similar to Apex Legends. Some of the equipment and specializations are close to those in Overwatch and Apex. There are even aspects from Battlefield and Tf2. The main game types are similar to CS or R6 Siege but with revives and limited respawns. This is a heavily team based game and all the better for it, it is extremely fun when played with friends.

The game looks very visually impressive with a clean, almost Mirror's Edge type aesthetic. It is very fitting and creates a nice visual contrast between the start of rounds vs the end. This is an effect similar to Control, where pristine environments are absolutely demolished during combat. The graphical fidelity of the game is even more impressive considering it has a very modest filesize compared to the monstrously enormous installs of games that have become more common as of late.

It is also very nice to see how responsive the devs are to community feedback and how quick they are with updates. While it does have its issues currently, the main one I have seen is cheaters, this is not at all a unique problem these days. I also expect this to be addressed by the devs moving forward, we have already seen major progress with the elimination of exploits to use aim assist on mouse and keyboard. Overall, I strongly recommend giving this game a try, especially since it is free to play!

Are you an old chivalry player?
Would you like to bash someone's head apart with a mace?
Is it really only a flesh wound?

Then this is the game for you! The combat is so tasty, it has a mountain high skill ceiling which makes getting kills absurdly satisfying. There is a level of quality with the animations and graphics that puts chivalry to shame. There is a ton of customization for characters, you can make yourself a peasant covered in rags all made of red armed with a hammer a sickle and some rocks and represent for the proletariat.

As for negatives the game has relatively few maps atm and could maybe use a more focused large mode. Despite these issues the gameplay alone makes this game entirely worth the asking price.

The game was in a nearly unplayable state at launch with severe lag, a nonfunctioning server browser, and frequent crashes as well as being a change in the pacing as well as other elements of gameplay that many players of the original found offputing.The game managed to attract many players at launch, eventually getting to the point where it gathered over 10000 players online.This launched in a market dominated by huge companies and had still sold very well, the company's biggest launch ever.The dust finally settled and many players left due to the issues I have described but I never completely left.I saw this go from the unplayable mess it was at launch to a functioning, fun game but still not the experiance I loved in the original.The updates started gaining frequency and the developer started communicating more with the community, this is the approach tripwire has taken with this game, to continusly improve and update it.
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