Tunguska: The Visitation - Enhanced Edition

This is a ton of fun. It really is and the production is fantastic despite not being from a large studio. The atmosphere is extremely powerful, the mechanics are great, the story is intriguing and you can't play this and not have FUN!!!. This should be a major hit!!! I don't know Stalker much but this should be compared against the best Fallout ever, Fallout 2 and other isometric post-apocalyptic games because these are the gamers that would really appreciate this. People who have played Fallout 1,2, or Fallout tactics, or even games such as Jagged Aliance will understand this. The universe is well sized, and the game has grown with the years and DLCs. What an amazing job by the single developer!!! Support him by trying it out - not just because it helps indie developers but because you will love this if you like the games I mentioned.

I had fun playing this game, but due to 3 issues, I finished the game early without bothering to finish all the remaining quests. These flaws bothered me enough that I would have given the game a 3/5 if not for the fact that it's an indie game that deserves a chance to succeed. 1) No obvious means of fast travel I HATE it when developers force players to constantly back travel through areas we've already cleared only to have to clear out these same areas OVER AND OVER again. This wouldn't be so bad if either a) enemies don't respawn so damn quickly, or 2) I can bypass them by fast travelling. I don't enjoy grinding or repetition. It's a waste of time. Don't waste players' time. This was the main reason I rushed to finish the game without completing all quests, and it's the reason I won't be replaying this game or any of its DLCs. If fast travel exists, it wasn't obvious, which brings me to my next complaint. 2) Game mechanics not well explained Throughout the entire game, I collected a ton of bullet casings but never figured out how to manufacture ammo. The piece of paper next to each workbench says I need scrap metal and gunpowder. Where to find or buy these items??? This is just one example of many. It doesn't help that there are hardly any forums for this game since few people know about it. 3) Easter egg hunt quests My biggest pet peeve when it comes to level design - quests that force you to waste time searching high and low for things that are hard to find, especiallly when it's not obvious what you need to find in the first place. Easter egg hunts are not fun. They waste time. Don't waste players' time. Running around the whole map for an hour searching for a key only to realize, after reading on some forum, that you actually need to find nails to open some door, then find the key - ugh. Summary: good game, but could have been great. Since it's indie game without huge budget, I give it high score 4/5.

Four hours in now, and I want to say this so anyone jumping in can get past the steep opening. Once you go into the mill you will be attacked by two wolves. There are 50 rounds of training ammo for a makarov handgun on the table. On the corpse of the guy who was supposed to teach you things is the handgun. Grab the handgun off his corpse, grab the ammo. Then run inside the mill house. Equip the makarov and drop the training rounds onto the handgun in order to force it to load them. Leave and run away from the wolves while shooting until both are dead. Congrats, you have gotten past the most frustrating part of the game. It's all a rough economy and a surprisingly decent isometric Shadows of Chernobyl Pastiche from there on. And one which seems to keep Hobo mode going for a while.

If you're a fan of the Stalker series, then you really need to play this game. A unique take on yet another post apocalyptic scenario, but this time in the area of Tunguska, where the famous 1908 event happened. This game is highly influenced by the Stalker series, lots of easter eggs and discoveries that will have you constantly remembering that beloved series. Other than the Stalker series, the gameplay takes elements from the old Fallout games, as well as Atom RPG and gives it a nice twist, with real-time combat... not turn-based. The game is rich in dialogue, in which you're able to talk and trade with pretty much any NPC. The overall feel makes it seem like, despite it being in a post apocalyptic setting, the environment is alive. I easily got immersed in this game, not an easy feat for a top-down game. There's a decent variety of weapons and other items in the game, and I believe it is pretty well paced and balance. The combat takes a bit to get used to if you get swarmed by NPCs but it's very fun nonetheless. I cannot give enough praise to this game and developer (yes, this game was made by ONE guy!). Well worth the original price! Go ahead Stalker, and pick this gem up! And... good hunting :)

Honestly, I want to like it, I love Stalker, I get the market they're trying to aim for & it's likely why it has good reviews. The start is very much like Stalker & if you're a Stalker fan, it's trying to sell you that Nostalgia. I'll start with saying that I didn't complete- or even get that far, I couldn't. I don't think if feels "great" to play, I don't think the top down view is bad but they've made it "feel" bad to utilize/use, it could do with a quicker & cleaner way to view surroundings, snappy & instant, instead of this "gliding" that the camera does- and this "gliding" is seen through out the game. The way the character moves & interacts with the world, there's no weight to anything, it looks & feels like something they decided to skip development on when they shouldn't have. The character "glides" around his surroundings, when he's interacting with the environment- you can even see this with other objects/characters in the game world, monsters will walk on top of the character, making Melee feel terrible, boxes that you must smash with a crowbar, randomly go flying through the terrain. There's also this odd bug that will happen where if he "glides" to close to a door, he'll close it as soon as you open it, so you're stuck fighting the character just to open a door, I think with a much more grounded and weighted character to the world, they could have focused on the shooting aspect and created a semi-decent top down Stalker-Shooter, even with a tacked on cover system, but I personally can't get over how terrible it feels to play.