Recent reviews by Strelok

A deliberately bad review for a mediocre, but quite playable game. I'd like to avoid the cliche's of quantifying my opinion with being a "long time fan since the very beginning" but it does matter here, because the experience of playing Sniper Elite Resistance to a brand new player will be very different than for OGs like myself. As the king of verbosity, I'm gonna do my best to make this a tolerable read.

-A brief mention of Sniper Elite 4 and 5

Most of us Sniper Elite old heads all revere SE4 as the pinnacle of the franchise's greatness. You will have a few argue for 5, but not as many as there are for it's predecessor. Sniper Elite 4 is everything it promised it would be. In particular, the level design, AI, ambiance, it feels intense when you're immersed. Many of us were insane with joy when 5 came out because we figured as the very worst case scenario, we would just get more Sniper Elite 4, and that was ok. Well, it didn't work out that way.

Unfortunately SE5 fell short in a few important areas. I don't know exactly what happened. The team members changed, or the development lead, I don't know, but someone with real talent clearly left. One of the most outstanding qualities of SE4 was the depth, layout, and excellence of it's level design. "Someone", "Some folks?" had a whole hell of a lot of talent and did tremendous work when they helped develop the levels in the game. It wasn't just that they were fun to play, but they were well thought-out, sensible, functioned beautifully as a real, in-motion, alive, enemy environment. The game was truly a landmark achievement in the series and it just got everything right.

One of the reasons for this (in my humble opinion), is that weapon unlocks weren't reduced to the "fetch-stupidity" of finding benches, instead you had to use the actual weapon, kill so many enemies, achieve so many head-shots, or ricochets, or environmental kills etc. It gave you a reason to force yourself to use each weapon and start to really intuitively understand the strengths and weaknesses, as well as explore the different functions and limitations, and it made you damn good at it. As you progressed, you open the upgrades for each weapon. It was perfect.

-Some core considerations that come down to opinion and preference.

I completely understand that some of you might prefer the simplicity of finding a bench in order get unlocks, but consider this... Each level in Sniper Elite 5, and Resistance are now bound to basing their design AROUND these benches. It means that instead of an organic piece of WW2 hostile territory designed to function as a real place for you to tactically approach, the maps are now just glorified target ranges that are really hollow, lack function, and especially lack challenge. Don't be afraid of enemy snipers in 5, or resistance. You will see each one long before they see you, and even on authentic they will barely bother with you until you disturb the peace. The replay-ability for an OG is abysmal, because all we had to do was find these stupid benches and we never have to revisit a level ever again. For new players it will be better, but certainly not great, because you'll be moving on once the shock and awe of brutal xrays, and the unlock process is complete.

Some of you might play on authentic like you're supposed to, but you won't really have a reason to keep going once your fetch quests are done. I realize it may seem like I'm trying to sell you a grind, and in some ways I am, but the superior environments of 4 made it hardly feel like a grind. How many of you even know that you can shoot an enemy in the grenade to cause it to explode and watch your target's body rag-doll into oblivion in slow-mo? Oh you had no idea? Yeah that's because the opportunities have been greatly decreased after Sniper Elite 5 and onward.

-Resistance

To put it simply, Sniper Elite 4 was the peak of Sniper Elite as a whole, it declined sharply with Sniper Elite 5. and now we enter RESISTANCE, which is similar to 5, except even MORE degraded. There are countless bugs, bad pathing, the AI is officially at an all time low, and I was angry with it in 5, but now it's atrocious. Sniper Elite Resistance is a nothing but a linear exploration of a shooting range. It's not a living, breathing, chess-board for you to try to out-think. If you are ok with this, and you just need to pop heads, i'd say go for it if it wasn't basically a 20 dollar expansion for 5, priced at 50 bucks. I once had so much praise for this series, I loved it, but you can see what happens to any IP once it reaches it's pinnacle. The developers come like the grim reaper to throw medicore weapon packs, and more "levels" of flipped assets.

-No Karl, not terribly important.

I'll mention that Karl isn't a playable character, but a skin you can unlock later, but I'm not really using this as a basis for my low rating. Even though Harry is AWFUL in every conceivable way. Pudgy, uninspired, annoying and infuriating to look at, but again, this is a matter of opinion. I would understand a new character if they took us to World War 1, or Vietnam, or to a new era, but if we are forever trapped in WW2, at least give us the man.

-Mild Quality of life changes from 5 but the bugs make them not relevant.

The typical stuff, graphics, fov options, and modes but otherwise remains an asset flip. I could live with an asset flip, and even a profoundly unlikable protagonist if only the game wasn't a mess. It's shoddy, your character gets locked up on things, you go to throw distraction salutes and literally it never works. They may shoot at you through the wall with their xray vision, or they may shoot in some random direction, or they will ignore it entirely. This game is broken, and most of the people giving it positive reviews are either new players, or surface level players pretending to be long-time players.

I guess that's all I got. If it were 20 bucks, Id say grab it for the lols. At 50 bucks, no FKnG way. Very disappointed in Rebellion as this series has gone the way of Far Cry, and if you think Far Cry 6 was good.... well, you probably wont like this review.

Did you love the originals? Well, if you recognized my name, my entire Steam account and most of my online handles pay homage to this series. I've been playing Stalker SOC and all of it's sequels and mods since it's release - long before anyone had ever heard of it or understood why it was so special. I can be a "wordy" guy, so I'm going to do my best to try not to slide off into an anomaly of verbosity.

Young folks who've never played the Stalker games may have a bit of a harder time understanding the Stalker formula and it's atmosphere. You need to understand that Stalker was never about perpetually intense action sequences, colorful, rich, highly-populated worlds filled to the brim with countless entities to interact with. If it were, it wouldn't be the "The Zone". Stalker games HAVE to be grim, feel isolated, and without TOO many friends or foes to encounter. It has to paced out, and feel like you genuinely don't know what's around the corner. An enemy faction? Mutant? Intestinal spaghettifying vortex? You don't know.. and you don't want to.

I feel that if you've never played a Stalker game, you may very well be disappointed by what you will inevitably see as a lack of innovation in Stalker 2. I'll staunchly disagree with you though, because if you take a Stalker game and change it too much, or try to turn it into Metro, Fallout, Call of Duty, or Overwatch, you're going to be missing the point entirely and miss the mark. Stalker was amazing because it managed to take a gray, dead, under-populated universe and make it utterly fascinating and intimidating, and they have repeated this formula beautifully in this sequel.

Before I get into pros and cons, some of you will inevitably be Stalker OG's like myself, and you're wondering if it's still truly Stalker, or if it has been franchised by people trying to sell a game they don't actually care about. I asure you, this is 100 percent S.T.A.L.K.E.R. You can drop 60 bucks now, or wait until later when the price goes down, bugs are worked out, and you have a few mods or DLC to play with. Either way, the soul, love and spirit of the Stalker universe is VERY much in-tact, and aside from quality of life and engine changes, and to the sheer joy of those of us that don't want innovation to alienate a game from it's own universe; there is nothing shockingly new about this game in contrast to it's predecessors. This is a GREAT thing, because it could easily have been ruined by any one of the countless cancerous elements ruining modern game design creatively and socially.

The story-line, the character you play, and the tone of this game is truly "Ukrainian" and I recommend playing English subtitles with it's native audio which is how I played the originals (which were in Russian). There are reasons Russian language is not available but that's a whole different subject. I don't want to give away spoilers, but the dialogue, little subtle humorous quirks (such as a guy you're beating up choking on bread lol) are unique, and every character even in a world where everyone looks the same feels like a real person. So when you play this you won't feel like its literally every other sci-fi, wasteland, story recycled 100 times with modern sensibilities. Nope, there's none of that. This world is pretty masculine, and unabashedly so.

-Bugs

It's 2024. I've been gaming for 45 years. I've been through it all. Fallout 1, 2 3, NV, Thief, Thief 2, Elder Scrolls, and I don't recall a time we had new games that didn't release with problems. When you consider the sheer scope of a modern open-world game, it actually amazes me seeing how many people cry about this. Not to mention the fact that the developers were repeatedly displaced by a war-torn Ukraine, shifted around, worried sick about their family and friends... honestly it's astounding to me they managed to turn this game out, and somehow still manage to keep it's soul in-tact. The original Stalker dev literally died fighting the Russians in Bahkmut. Hearing the crying about bugs (aside from pointing them out) is actually kind of infuriating. I'm giving them a pass and the good-will that they will fix them.

-You have your usual texture bugs, the occasional glitch, and yes if your system is old, Stalker 2 is probably going to make you adjust your settings. I've encountered only one bug that caused me to restart, having gotten stuck on the bridge when leaving the first zone.

-The AI in terms of combat is great, in fact they're going to piss you off lol. They will come at you, flank you, and you will not feel like you're fighting Skyrim enemies.

-One legitimate critique is that enemies spawn with varying opinions on where they should spawn, and how close or realistically they pop. I've never liked the popping enemies mechanic in any game, but this game is so massive as an interconnected map of zones that they're bound to struggle a bit with the best way to disperse enemies and its another thing I trust they will tweak and rework in time.

-Ballistic/gun issues. For some of you, you're not going to care about this but I am a huge firearms guy. The ballistics and gunplay itself is fine, the problem is that for example; the 9x19 platform weapons somehow do more damage than 45 acp. Somehow the 45 holds more rounds as well...... Im thinking they somehow got the profiles swapped as it should be the exact opposite. The 9mm pistol shoot shoot flatter, go a bit further, hold more rounds but do slightly less damage. No idea if this will be addressed, or if any other weapons have similar problems, im only 30 hours in and just left the first zone.

Stalker 2 is Stalker, they haven't reinvented the wheel, and for that I am GRATEFUL. If you can't make a sequel feel like a new and improved addition to it's predecessor, than I think you are better off making a whole new game and probably not the best person to lead a design team for an already established IP. I see this mistake happen again and again and again in the gaming industry. Going from Far Cry 5 to all of the nonsense that came later, is a good example.

Stalker 2 is NOT perfect. Neither was Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, or Call of Pripyat. It's only going to be worked, patched and get better though. If you are someone that doesn't already love and truly understand the originals, I think you're going to be disappointed with this, because at the end of the day, the biggest critique I think you will find from the younger crowd especially is that "I've played many other games like this already" and this is a fair critique. But you have to remember, this series is where all those others came from. The world of Chernobyl in Stalker is similar in some ways, but still impressively different from Fallout or Metro.

Stalker 2 is a worthy successor, and if you're reading these reviews trying to determine if this game has been bastardized by the modern gaming industry, rest assured, the programmers and devs managed to produce this while their entire world is ripped apart. They absolutely have proven this to be a labor of love. It is left unspoiled by Western politics, or "social-engineering". This review is coming from a guy obsessed with the originals, and when they first announced Stalker 2, I had VERY strong reservations it would even be completed, and if it was; I genuinely expected a bad game, marred by store purchase content, and converted for a fleeting multiplayer audience that would quickly get bored, and leave the series cheapened. I could not be more wrong.

I haven't bought a game on release or given a sh!t in a long, long time. I have taken every moment of my free time addicted to this exactly as I was in 2007 making myself late for my chump job and without enough sleep because Shadow of Chernobyl stole it all from me. Ahh, these old boots sure feel good. Luckily for me times are better now.

Stalker fans, buy this game already. You'll be fine, I promise.

I voted thumbs down simply because people tend to find the things wrong with a game more useful than the usual praise. Let me start off by saying that this game has a fantastic core. It's simple, is a wonderful spiritual nod to S.t.a.l.k.e.r, and if only they would fix a few massive flaws, I think it would turn the tide a lot. This is not a bad game, and I recommend you keep an eye on it.

Things I like...
-Simplicity of UI,
-great sounds from guns, to ambient,
-fairly in-depth crafting system.
-Fun selection of guns with "acceptable" consistency to their real world counterparts. The quests are simple and fun, and the game is good at what it's trying to do. Despite my unhappiness with it, I don't regret buying it, but the things that are bad, are BAD and have caused me more than a couple instances of frustration.

Things I don't like.

-Night time... it's way too long, and day time is way too short. I like this in most survival games, but this is a top down, blocky looking retro survival/shooter. You aren't always going to be close to an extraction point to get to a safe place when the sun goes down, and god forbid you just sit in the dark waiting for sunrise because you're going to be sitting there for a real world hour. Found a nice new gun, or lots of loot so you can't just save/quit? Aww that sucks, better sit there for an hour and wait. Hope you're not playing before work, or some other obligation because you either need to quit and lose progress or wait and be late..

-Gun jamming system. I don't mind this when a gun jams in a game and resembles the way malfunctions do in real life. Firearms malfunction when we fail to clean them, use imperfect cartridge loads, "limp wrist" certain models, "half-rack" a pump shotgun, or any other number of issues consistent with conditions. NOT in this game though... you can sit there and burst fire your rifle at the air for 200 rounds in whatever intervals you like and not have an issue. However the second a monster is charging, you enter a gun fight with an enemy faction, a wolf charges, or a mutant comes at you, guess what.... I promise your gun is going to jam and you're going die as it will happen at a bad time. I don't mind challenge in games, but this is a forced mechanic and it takes away from the realism.

-Bugs (not worth crucifying the game over, they all have bugs) Lot's of small, annoying things. Like attachments highlighting their counterparts in your inventory but not actually being compatible when you try to use them. Small, but annoying.

-Bullet sponges

I'm a firearms guy. I own a LOT of guns. Ladies and gentlemen, I promise you there is no wolf or person that is going to eat a 7.62x54mmr SVD round and require a second shot. In some cases, many enemies require 3 to 4 shots. With smaller calibers im ok with this, not long range calibers. You should never have to play a game using a sniper rifle as if it's an intermediate caliber rifle like an AR or an AK. I realize body armor is a thing in the game, but it still needs to be toned down a little bit and guns need to get their bite back, even if it works both ways.

All this aside, Stalker 2 released today, so no one is likely to see me again. I'm probably going to abandon my job, family, bathing, eating, and basically suicide by blood clot because I've been waiting for this game since 2007. It was nice knowing everyone, and I recommend keeping an eye on this game and playing it. It's annoying AF, but it has a ton of potential.

It pains me to do this, because I love Sniper Elite. I'm never expecting a perfect game, nor "perfect" levels which is admittedly subjective for each player. But let's point out the obvious. As pretty as Rough Landing may be, it's a copy of a Sniper Elite 4 map. There is an entire bridge with like 4 enemies on it. I'm not joking, I think there is only about 4 enemies on it.

Reviews are already mixed, and the people praising it obviously have low expectations, or haven't played Sniper Elite 4. That being said, I am not against flipping a few assets or recycling something people loved IF it is done well, and aside from visually; this just isn't cutting it. I hope the upcoming campaign additions are not going to be a rehash like this. At one point no matter how many times I play through rough landing there is a Nazi stuck inside a wall.

Rebellion, you haven't really let me down before, so I'm not breaking up with you over this, but I gotta tell you, this level has some problems, and I hope the upcoming campaign missions will be better.

Well, here we are. In all of my Sniper Eliting I hadn't felt compelled to voice my displeasure over something until now. lol. To save you the trouble of reading a novel, I'll get to the main issue. 29 bucks is WAYYYYYY too much money for what you get as this DLC is right now. Rough Landing as it is, stinks. It's pretty, but it is also an asset flip of a Sniper Elite 4 map. There are not enough enemies on it, and it is also buggy. There is a Nazi stuck in a wall, and no matter how many times I play the map, there he is.

When you download this DLC, it promises you a lot. But you aren't getting no new campaign missions, at least not yet. They aren't ready. You're getting the one DLC mission, and contrary to some of these folks that seem to love whatever you put in front of them, it's got a lot of problems. I am ok with re-using old maps if you do a good job, but as much as I love this series and want to support everyone involved with it, I can't praise something that doesn't deserve it.

Unless Im missing something, I got no new character skins, no new weapon skins, and certainly not all the weapons promised, but I digress; I trust Rebellion will deliver in the future so I am ok with it. Just understand that paying 29 dollars for what you're getting right NOW is not worth it. I honestly think they would have been smarter to just wait until all the content was ready so that they could avoid the mixed reviews.I have faith in Rebellion and I have no doubt they will get this right, but as of right now, I'm sorry that it is my duty to downvote what I have purchased.

Good, bad....it's all subjective in the end, and instead of inundating you with details you don't need, know this; it's a Brevik project. If there is any man on earth that can make you click a mouse for an unhealthy amount of time, and too much joy to bother feeling guilty: it's him.

Buy the game. You will enjoy it, and help us all pay the man's electric bill with absolute pride. Stay Healthy DB

This game is excellent, plain and simple. Of course that doesn't mean it doesn't have it's problems, but any early access game is a design that is still under construction, and I think people forget that. Information is vague as far as drops, materials, recipes, which mobs drop which items (especially with weekly updates) but you get a lot from just jumping in and playing, and the player base has also left plenty of threads and comments with a ton of useful info.

Is it hard with the Terminator Dragon? Sure if you're whiny and don't use a shield to block the fire, or get in good enough gear that you can take some fire breath. This game is not very hard considering it has the most forgiving death/loot system I've ever played to date. If you die, you can go retrieve your body/gear "Diablo" style, and there is a map marker that will lead you to every body. People that think this game is hard need to play some older games.

It's no harder than Rust, and about the only relevant nemesis you'll face is the cold, or running out of flint and having no hammer or something because you decided to make something less useful in the wrong order. For 15 bucks, this game is quality, that much I assure you and if the developers simply keep going in the current direction, get more items, more quests, more to do, this game is a success waiting to happen.