Tunguska: The Visitation - Enhanced Edition

Played 2 hours now and really getting into it! Very well done strategy game!

Based on my experience, limited as it is. Tries to be a STALKER game, that can't be denied. Tunguska fails to do this by not learning from how the first game, Shadow of Chernobyl, did it start by keeping it's gunplay going up linearly but it works for STALKER but not Tunguska as it quicky goes up to AKs rather quickly after a while where as it only gets to AKs after 2 map changes for STALKER. Assuming you don't attack the military at the bridge. Back to gunplay is how spongey the enemies are. I decided to see what 100% damage to myself was like and even with the Vest you can buy from Sidor, I was still getting torn up by even pistol rounds. I got as far as towards to the Ravenwood area with Bandits(Legionnaires) and they just soaked up the 7.62mm ammo I was saving. Also aiming is hit or miss, can be aimed right on a target just to see the bullet go off far right or left. Anomalies (Distortions) were just there, easily avoided for the most part except the one that kept moving and did not react to rocks. Mutants were spongey as well, mainly the scythes taking quite the few hits with a crowbar. Crafting should be optional, not a core component, in my honest opinion. I rather the craftables be quest rewards for repeatables (if there are any repeatable missions) The only redeeming part I liked was the Skill point system, very simple and the bonuses were nice. The story of a reporter didn't really draw me in, only the atmosphere and I couldn't feel it as much as I would hope to. The people turning into ghouls thou was interesting a tad but not nearly as much as it could've been. The biggest point is the lack of some A-Life like system for AI appearing on maps, maybe after clearing the military checkpoint, either Military return or Bootleggers(Stalkers) are seen fighting Legionnaires/mutants made a lair. Overall, I feel like combining STALKER with ARPG style elements could be great but Tunguska doesn't quite hit the spot.

I loved Stalker and had high hopes for this, but it's clearly built for controllers. The keyboard/mouse controls are really clunky and imprecise, and are inferior even to many games made in the 90s. There are a few control options, which is nice, but some of those are entirely unplayable (e.g. you can't rotate the camera with your mouse), while others are simple very janky. No matter the option, everything locks your controls to interactable objects and enemies. This works on controllers with imprecise controls. It does not work for mouse, at all. This is a "select the enemy, press fire they're dead (or until you're dead, more likely)" type of game. Yeah, sure, cover, positioning, tactics and all that is important. But that seems to be all that's important. Aiming isn't a thing. If you like turn-based tactics games, but you want a little more action, you might like this. But it just doesn't have the typical precision controls of similar games with real-time combat. Other than that, guns work fine. You point one at a bad man, the bad man goes away. If you try to shoot an enemy who's behind cover, you'll miss most of your shots, but this might be by design. Not a design I like, but your mileage may vary. Melee also needs a lot of refinement. Your attack range is very small, so you'll sneak up to an enemy, press attack, and you'll just miss entirely. This will happen a few times. When you finally hit them, they'll start shooting (if they haven't been shooting yet) while backing away, which makes you miss some more. It's has small single-location maps, so it feels somewhat unimmersive. It's based on crafting and resting (eating then sleeping heals you, you don't regen). You don't seem to really just randomly find healing items and combat is very punishing, and sneaking up on people to take them out in melee almost seems required (which may have been fine if it weren't for the issues above). Disclaimer: I got halfway through the 3rd combat area before giving up.

So, on the surface this seemed like a super nice Stalker type game. Sneaking, crafting, I'd have preferred turnbased to realtime combat but oh well. It's atmospheric and fairly well visually designed. However, it very soon became apparent that this is the kind of game that insists on punishing the player at all times. You can only save by sleeping in safe areas, it's super easy to die, and you actually need not only prepare and cook food; but actually plant and farm! The absolutely biggest issue is the camera handling imo. You can only sensibly rotate the camera by holding in the mousewheel and moving the mouse left and right. And there's a lot of manual aiming in this game (to fire a gun, you aim with right mouse and fire with left). So basically you can't control the camera while doing anythin else. There are keys to turn the camera, but it's totally useless. Even though you can click to move, the game has NO pathfinding, so your guy will run run into a wall. In addition, there are so many absurd design decisions all over the place. When you buy a big item from the trader, like an armor, you need to have space in your inventory. You can't put it on while in the trader window, and you can't exit the trader window while having an item in trade. So you need to start selling stuff you don't want to sell. A big part of the game is bashing open hilariously lightweight crates with your crowbar (seriously, you'll send them flying), and if you accidentally hit a friendly with your wild swings, it's instantly game over. Noone cares if you just steal their vital supplies right in fron of them though. Quests are also stupidly broken, dialogue is totally meaningless, and the whole thing of course reeks of typical slavic machismo and misogyny. Avoid, even if you think you like this kind of thing.

If you've played the Crusader series, you know how maddening obtuse control schemes can be. Well, this is 20 years later and it has the same problems. A wide choice of control options and yet none of them are intuitive or finger-friendly. Get used to re-doing sections over and over and over. If STALKER played like this, you'd never manage to leave Cordon.