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.
