Posted on: November 27, 2024

catburd

Games: 51 Reviews: 2

A return to form

I want to give the game five stars, but nostalgia has clouded my judgment a little. It is a very good game but it has the usual euro-jank flaws. I'll try to go through them without spoilers. The good: -The exclusion zone is now seamless open-world. You can explore a positively enormous Chernobyl exclusion zone withrelatively minimal pop-in. There are a few problems with this, but I'll discuss that later., On the whole I like it. -Good variety of anomalies, suits, ammunition, and consumables. -Dynamic weather system really enhances the gloomy mood. -Aggressive autosave system insulates against some of the more annoying bugs. -Gunplay feels weighty and effective. Slower, more cumbersome reloads and jams force you to play more strategically, and you will die quickly if you act like a one-man army. This is not a Calladooty game. -Old locations stitched together with new ones for some familiarity and nostalgia. All rebuilt and looking great. The bad: -Optimization. I7-13700, GTX1080 SC, 64gb DDR5 RAM, running on a FireCuda SSD, I had to run at 1080P to get playable FPS. -Bloodsucker spam. Too many around midgame makes them less scary and more annoying. -Stashes are kinda lame now. -ALife has been replaced with spawn-ins which are inconsistent and feel unfair. No more spotting and picking enemies off at long range. This is a major step backwards in an open world. I imagine the over-dense foliage was added to help hide this. -LOTS of bugs. Although some are actually just poorly communicated and poorly thought-out game mechanics. The weird: -English VO is mostly from the UK. Voices range from brummy northern English, to Londoner-doing-Boris-Badenoff, to the occasional Pacific Northwest American liberal, to the striking Irish accent. I was not prepared for a leprechaun in a Sunrise suit greeting me with "Hooh, me fellow Stalker! Top o' the marnin' to ye, laddie! 'Tere be an emission a-comin!

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Posted on: November 28, 2024

Neirda-95

Verified owner

Games: 80 Reviews: 1

Good to be back in the Zone

I love this game, the atmosphere is incredible, I really missed having a game with such character. Exploring is difficult but rewarding, the environments and sound design are absolutely immersive, I love visiting abandoned buildings with absolutely no music, just the ambience of the environment. And when you're exploring outside, the weather effects are absolutely incredible, great work by the developers on this point. Otherwise, the music is cool, whether it's atmospheric music or music that's playing on the radio. I haven't finished the game yet, I'm about 40 hours in and I'm a long way from the end because I spend so much time exploring. I haven't had too many bugs during these first 40 hours of play, sometimes problems with enemy spawns, that's what's bothered me the most but I know it'll be patched in a short while and I've had a few NPCs half in the ground but no blocking bugs for the moment and I know the game's going to be refined with patches over the next few months so I'm not holding it against it too much for a game of this scale and given the conditions in which it was developed. The game runs pretty well on my 2K configuration, with an Intel 8700k CPU, 32GB of ram and an RTX 3070. It's not all Epic, but with a few adjustments I'm getting well over 60 fps. In short, I love this game and I'm so happy to be able to enter the zone again. Congratulations to the devs.

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Posted on: November 22, 2024

Ycarnos

Games: 89 Reviews: 1

Old Time S.T.A.L.K.E.R Fan's Opinion

I had trepidation about this game, with the different Dev Team, it being just released, the mixed reception- Ive played S.O.C and C.o.P both vanilla and Modded to all heck throughout the years, and dont get me started on Gamma. I'm only about 12 hours into Heart of Chornobyl, and so Far- I am loving it. as an OG stalker fan I know it does not use A-life for the AI, which is unfortunate. But overall the spirit of the game is otherwise intact. The anomalies are fun, dangerous, and difficult to navigate at times. strategy is varied depending on terrain and enemy type/number. I knock off a star because the default control bindings are trash, and do not let you really rebind some of the important ones- the quickslot bindings force you to bind 4 slots to 2 keys (something i expect will be changed or modded in the future) and there are of course the just released bugs. most are minor, I dont mind any graphical or npc mods, those are just the zone being the zone.. but game breaking bugs like at the post office location locking the camera on a door because some random npc died before talking to them... that needs to be addressed. difficulty wise it is stalker. it is punishing. it is not a game you can just sprint from objective to objective. the zone will punish you if you try anomalies. dangerous mutants. anarchists, and bandits. Overall I fully Recommend it, and wish you good hunting, IF YOU ARE HESITANT DUE TO PRICE OR SPEC REQUIREMENTS, MAY I RECOMMEND THE ORIGINAL TRILOGY?? YOU WON'T REGRET IT! rig spec notes: I run an amd ryzen 5 5600x CPU, rtx 3070 ti GPU, with 32GB RAM

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Posted on: December 31, 2024

Pitaniello

Verified owner

Games: 152 Reviews: 3

Better now that it's patched

tl;dr - Fun game, good atmosphere, and feels like a notch up from Stalker SOC. I'd say it's more like Call of Pripyat 2, if that matters to you. Still missing some parts, but devs are diligintly updating and its showing. Many of the game breaking issues mentions by other reviews have been fixed. Now that performance is improved, I can whole heartedly recommend. A little more detail - I'm writing this as of patch 1.1.3. By this point performance has been hugely improved and we're starting to see A-LIFE come online. I'm running the game underpowered but I'm still able to hold my own without using perf mods. I'm using GTX 1650 (low-profile), 16gb ram, and an i5-4690K cpu. That being said - It is sadly missing some features introduced in previous games. I have seen the factions, but haven't found a way to meaningfully interract with them. Initial shader cache build is also offensively long, but at least load times are short once you actually get into the game. Patches are also huge, though that's a complaint at the devs, not necessrily the game.

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Posted on: December 2, 2024

ultra321

Verified owner

Games: 38 Reviews: 3

Needs Some Polish But Hella Fun!

Having a great time with this game so far... a few crashes here and there but haven't run in to anything game breaking. Are there bugs that need fixed? Yup! But they have already release a 2nd patch which I'm waiting to download now. The atmosphere and freedom of the open world are great... I dislike games that lead you around by the nose or hem you in to a single path/set of choices to do some thing necessary to the story. Really enjoy the exploration and figuring things out. There are some annoyances with certain monsters that have been improved and could IMO still get some tweaks. Another thing that may be hit or miss with many is that the anomalies should be navigated slowly, takes time yes but I believe that is part of the design. for those review bombing the game, If you are old enough to remember when the original came out is long delayed and still released with dozens of bugs, game breaking and otherwise. At the end of the day is it worth your hard earned money? If you are a fan of the franchise and enjoy open world, FPS, Exploration, Questing, and a dash of Survival/Horror It's a safe bet...

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

Ultimate Edition for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl provides all the Deluxe bonuses, including weapon & armor sets and Bonus Side Quest!

Deluxe bonuses for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl provide unique in-game items that will wait for you in the Zone:

Discover the legendary S.T.A.L.K.E.R. universe and experience:

EPIC NONLINEAR STORY IN SEAMLESS OPEN WORLD

VARIETY OF ENEMIES AND HUNDREDS OF WEAPON COMBINATIONS

LEGENDARY MUTANTS WITH DIFFERENT BEHAVIOUR MODELS

ARTIFACTS OF INCREDIBLE VALUE AND UNFORGIVING ANOMALIES

GOOD HUNTING, STALKER!

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