S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl - Standard Edition

Performance at launch is terrible. To get the game to run on a "normal" PC the game need to look like absolute garbage and, even then, you get severe stuttering. But performance aside, since that can eventually be easily fixed, this game has bigger issues. 1) The Zone feels dead. There is no A-Life. Mutants don't interact with each other. Stalkers are not going about their daily routines. The Zone exists as a bubble around you, the main character. NPCs stand looking at the horizon waiting for you to go talk to them. After you talk to them they continue to stand there. With no purpose. With no agency. This is not typical of a Stalker game. In this one you are the main protagonists, the reason the Zone exists and this makes the game look and feel more like a Call of Duty 2) Overuse of cut-scenes that completely rip player agency. There are a lot of very well produced cut-scenes but that turn the game, in pivotal moments, into a movie and not a game. You don't get to have that amazing gunfight with overpowered enemies. You watch it happen. Your character making decisions for you. This is not typical of a Stalker games and makes the game look and feel more like a Call of Duty. On the positives, when you manage to get enough frames to process what's going on, the atmosphere (visually at least) is there even though the real things that make the Zone, the Zone, isn't (Stalker fans know graphics are not even 3rd on the list of what matters for the Zone). Also gunplay can feel pretty good. Developers did not have courage to take risks and bring back the uniqueness of Stalker. They played it safe and followed pre-existing, blockbuster formulas. Overall, this is a Call of Duty game with Stalker makeover. A disappointing Stalker game...

I am lucky. Someone let me play their game at their beefy machine. Free and ALMOST without tech-issues. And still... As the tile suggests, playing was a chore. I will not talk of tech-issues since most reviews have done so in depth. I love STALKER. It may be one of the best games ever made. My feelings after finishing Call of Pripyat cannot be expressed properly without overly florid language. It is simply, a master piece. And one of the main things that made it so was the astounding behavior of the creatures that populated The Zone. Human and mutant alike. This game instead spawns mobs at timed intervals, predetermined distances and they hone in on the player. THAT is the replacement we get to one of the most extraordinary mechanics in any game ever: Needs. Needs of the denizens of this world. What the developers didn't change were creatures without any sense of self preservation. All animals are victims of a weird dichotomy: murderous and comically cautious. They will fight until killed unless you shoot them from a vantage point. Then they hide behind a tree and wait, as if they all were equally intelligent and aware. Aside from that, nothing or no one ever flees. Humans will snipe you from unseen distances, and when you kill and loot them, you find they were doing it with a broken inaccurate sub-machine gun. That has 2 bullets left. They also shoot before a cutscene is done. The greatest moment I had playing was when I discovered the comportment of an anomaly. If I moved very slowly, I would be able to hide inside the glass-shards cloud. So when I was hunted by 7 boars, I did that to lure them into certain death with minimal gunshots. It didn't work. The boars all hid behind little trees, and waited. Almost as if they knew. Like voices in C# were guiding them. I could go on, but just like with my free playthrough, I will not. Enter this Zone at your own risk, or if you are a whiny baby that seeks vengeance because your kitchen was damaged by an anomaly.

I know this is a Stalker game and that it comes attached with Vodka and jank but between the rather poor optimisation and basic things life the torch being useless (this is one of the worst one i've ever experienced), crappy save menu (limited, cant name saves, basic image so good luck rolling back when - not if- something breaks), bad inventory management (there is nome and stashes are half the size of your so you can scroll all day lonmg to look for stuff), the horrid AI and the often praised A-life nowhere to be found i would say that if you're not a Stalker die hard maybe wait a bit on it. It's unclear how much mods will save the game too. Other games were made jank masterpiece with mods, still unclear on this one given that the tools arent released yet. TLDR: as expected a janky mess, wait for a sale™ a one Karak from ACG would say exept if your a fan of the franchise and supporting it gives you hope that it would help the game and / or mod support in the long run.

It's very rough. There's so much that is wrong with the game. It needs at least a couple of months to a year of developement. The mood is cool but I'm considering puting this game on hold and wait for some patches and updates.

Longtime Stalker fan. I've played all the games and more mods than I can count. We expected tons of bugs from the new game, and they are definitely here. But there's more problems than just little "new release" bugs. Game-breaking bugs. Many of them. Your story missions will constantly break. Some break so severely that it will break the game - even loading old saves will not resolve it. At first I excused it, because Stalker games always have bugs at launch. But these bugs still exist after multiple patches. "It will get fixed eventually." I told myself, and kept playing. The game was extremely unbalanced. Enemies were too strong, taking 100's of bullets to kill. Weapons lose 50% durability in a single mission. Repairs cost insane amounts, and missions give you almost nothing. A few patches tried to re-balance it, but severe balance issues still exist after the patches - including new ones. "It will get fixed eventually." I told myself, and kept playing. The story is extremely bland, and focuses on random events rather than building on the existing story and (awesome) lore. The story has become a giant fetch quest extravaganza. Run here, get a thing. Run back. Now do it again. And again. "The story will get better if I play more." I told myself, and kept playing. The constant running and fetching hasn't stopped. It actually increased. Instead of running 500m, I now have to run 2km between missions. Mobs of NPC's are now randomly spawning within feet of me. My weapons have to be repaired after every mission. I'm no longer exploring and seeking fun new encounters between missions. Every sprint through this empty map is becoming a chore. "I'm not having fun playing this game anymore, and I'm trying to finish it purely due to the 'sunk cost fallacy' I feel from purchasing this 60$ game." I told myself, and returned it for a refund. It's more than just bugs. This game is nothing like the others, and ignores what made the originals so good.