Recent reviews by 4 wood plank

Very good and sometimes frustrating game. I haven't played the previous stalker games other than some stalcraft (lol), but have been meaning to get into the series for a while. I got into this game not 100% knowing what to expect or how different it would be from what I was already familiar with. I gotta say, one of the best-looking and most immersive experiences I've had in a game.
Story is very engaging and you may have to catch up to speed from previous games' story elements since those get brought up repeatedly in this game, but I didn't find my experience to be hurt much from not playing the old ones. In the opposite sometimes; it added to the mystery of the zone and game elements since I was experiencing them for the first time. I did sometimes wish I played the other ones before since some "reveals" would've hit a lot harder if I was more familiar with the franchise.
The gunplay feels pretty good, kindof like a fallout 3 to 4 situation just without hitmarkers. The world feels nice and full of content, and majority of my time spent on the game was from looting and exploring. I loved finding unique named weapons and giving them a try. I also loved build-crafting and seeing which weapon pairs worked best together. I frequently found myself having new favorite weapons and the novelty of new guns never wore off till the end of the game.
The game is also incredibly immersive. I recommend playing in a dark room with the volume up to get the most out of the experience. It felt like every moment was full of suspense, and the music knew just when to kick in to augment that feeling. There were some bugs with the audio however, and sometimes music would just start/stop abruptly.
Now to issues, performance being the most glaring one. The biggest downfall of combat is just how bad the game runs, and I had 60+ fps consistently without frame generation. It just really made encounters 10x harder since aiming never felt that smooth. Exploring and traversing the world was also made less enjoyable because of performance. Don't get me wrong, the game and world look incredible, just not worth the huge performance cost in my opinion. In terms of the challenge of the game, it could sometimes feel unfair regardless of what you do. Sometimes stealth simply doesn't work, and you get spotted by people facing the complete opposite direction and didn't make any noise. The mutant health pools in the game need readjustment. I found myself just running away from most of these encounters since it just wasn't worth my time, my ammo, nor my weapon/armor durability. Mutants were mostly just a hindrance and were rarely fun to fight, unless using a fully auto shotgun to melt bloodsuckers and not get slogged for five minutes for once. Armor/weapon repair prices are also absurd, which wouldn't be that big of a problem if items sold for more or if quests didn't reward in pennies. I'm assuming the repair prices are this high just to get you to experiment with what weapons you use, which worked since I ended up taking a different kit out of camps most of the time. Purchase prices are also crazy and never worth it. I don't think I've bought a single weapon or bit of ammo from merchants in my full veteran playthrough. AI is often broken, and sometimes just spawn in front of you or clog up doorways just walking one by one into your gunfire. If you encounter the sphere while playing, you'll know what I mean. They're also incredibly inconsistent, with some AI having perfect aim and one-shotting you and other times you can run around like it's Call of Duty and survive somehow. Mutant AI are also pretty dumb, as they run into hiding when you get on top of something where they can't reach you. They run right back at you when you get off, so you can just jump on and off a box to have them repeatedly run towards then away from you making them much easier to deal with. I have no doubt in my mind that every player that killed a pseudogiant cheesed the fight in some way. I'd highly recommend exploring the world in-between main quest markers, since I made the mistake of exploring most of my time then doing the main story afterwards. I found that this burnt me out much quicker, and also made traversal in the world much more tedious since I'd already done most of the stuff to do in the in-between locations. You can also fast-travel between camps using a guide, which helps a lot (I admittedly learned this pretty late in the game). The game is also really buggy, but not to the point that it's unplayable (sometimes). There was a case where a specific quest required a door to be open to talk to someone, but that door was permanently closed and you couldn't do anything about it. Thankfully, the quest was an optional side part to the mission, but it killed like 1-2 hours of my time trying to figure out how to get the door to open. Bugs are pretty common and funny sometimes, but I didn't find that they completely ruined the game or my immersion.
Overall, I really liked this game and couldn't stop playing it days straight, regardless of how frustrated It'd make me sometimes. I really enjoyed the challenge, and loved how immersive it could be. I'm very glad the developers managed to put something this unique together, and can't wait for further expansions.

Not much of a roguelike player, but this got me hooked. It takes a bit to get the appeal, but once you start scoring huge hands it gets addicting.

Genuinely horrible

Fun and challenging at times, but difficulty scaling is really off. I think it starts off harder than it ends. I expected the end puzzles to tie all the new mechanics together since there were a lot of throw-away mini chambers that seem like they're intended to get you familiar with a concept, but those never get re-applied. Really threw off my expectations. A lot of chambers also require lots of back-tracking. It feels like artificial challenge when I'm forced to do something multiple times to complete a chamber (the ending required backtracking THREE times). Character motivation was also hard to understand, why exactly is the villain doing this? They kinda just become evil out of nowhere since the plot calls for it. Writing is also overly comedic, throws off attempts of getting you to connect with the characters. Portal 2 was comedic also, way more than Portal 1, but it knew how to strike a balance of when to be funny and when to not. Story felt like a rehash of Portal 2 at times, especially towards the ending. You and friendly bot try to stop evil guy from doing evil thing while throwing quippy dialog at each other. Ending was also very abrupt and out of pace. I do have great things to say about this mod though, certain puzzles were really fun and challenging. The new mechanics were really good, just not applied to their potential. Music was fantastic, and visuals were noticeably better than Portal 2's. If you like Portal give it a shot, especially since it's free. But for people saying that these guys made Portal 3 or they're doing Valve's job for them, the game misses the mark for that comparison. It's just a very complete, well-polished mod. Kudos to the devs for accomplishing that, and hope they decide to keep making more.

ASS ASS ASS ASS

Too many invisible walls

By far the worst matchmaking in cod history

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Remember when video games were supposed to be fun?

One of the most fun and engaging games I've played in a while. Absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ ruined due to crashes/hackers.