Recent reviews by shadow

Played the game for 80 hrs with no issues. I come back to play it a few weeks later and it is just straight up unplayable. I can barely even load into the game but when i do it is followed by huge performance issues, memory leaks and crashes. This is a widespread issue affecting most of the playerbase on PC and consoles. This has been an issue since launch and even after waiting months for updates (what little they have done so far) they still have not fixed it..... Its actually absurd how fking bad this game runs.... Loved it for the time i was able to play it though and it is the best way to play oblivion in my opinion. I cannot recommend anyone to buy it though. Its unplayable garbage right now and it makes me so sad. FIX YOUR GAME!!!!!!!!!!!

A depressing amount of bugs, clunk, and lack of content. Severely underdeveloped and released prematurely. This game really does capture the atmosphere of the original games! It is even better now and more immersive with photo-realistic modern graphics technology. This unfortunately comes at a cost because this game does not run well right now and has performance issues on most hardware. DLSS or FSR + Frame Generation is required. This unfortunately will increase the input latency to the absolute worst I have ever experienced in any AAA game but thankfully there is a mod that can fix that. The thing is though I should NOT have to install a mod to make a game work properly out of the box. That itself is disgusting and I'm genuinely baffled they released it like that.

The A-Life 2.0 system that was promised during development is broken and unfinished at the time of writing this review. In the old games, events such as shootouts between NPCs were simulated "offline" in the background as you played, even if they are not in your area because all NPCs and their schedules were loaded in when the game booted up. This gave a great illusion of an alive world with the possibility of the player stumbling across the aftermath of said event during their exploration of The Zone. This does not happen in Stalker 2 and NPCs only exist within the players render bubble (100m). They will walk from point A to point B, then once they reach point B and they are outside your 100m bubble, they despawn. Enemy NPCs are dumb, copy/pasted coding and behaviors, are not unique and don't have any kind of special actions they can perform compared to the first games legendary A-Life systems that were developed 20 years ago. Seriously, look up a comparison video of the old and new A-Life systems on YouTube.

One thing I did find immersion breaking is that pretty much every enemy has medkits. You will end up looting so many that you are essentially invincible. I had to purposefully limit my meds to give myself an actual challenge in this game.

The game has an amazing foundation but seriously needs to be finished and have major systems reworked in the next year or so. I am crossing my fingers hoping for a Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 situation to breathe life into this game and revive peoples excitement for the amazing S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series.

For now I regret to say that I cannot recommend this game. I still support the developers, they genuinely do love and care about this franchise, so I have hope for the future. The game is just flat out unfinished.

This is an amazing game and one of my favorites of all time. Hardcore fans of the series will say the first one is better. In my opinion this one is miles ahead of it. The movement has improved tenfold and is much much more fluid and fun. New abilities like the grapple hook make it super fun to traverse the city and open up new areas to get to. It is a beautifully crafted open world game which is another improvement over the first game, which featured linear levels. The combat is PHENOMENAL. Once you get a few perks put in it, it becomes even better. It feels impactful, fluid and is easily one of my favorite parts of the game. The story isn't anything to write home about, but the games mechanics and levels hold it up enough to keep the game interesting. Even in 2021, this game from 2016 is still one of the BEST looking games I've ever played. The city's views and various districts are all unique and are drop dead gorgeous. Do yourself a favor and play this game. Easily worth the 20 dollars and if you want to wait for a sale, snag it.

A world filled with deep storytelling and elder scrolls lore, virtually infinite amount of quests, and new content is being added regularly. Great soundtrack, graphics, and elder scrolls feel. The in-game community is one of the best and nicest communities I've ever experienced in a multiplayer game. Well worth its price for how big the game is.. 9/10

its alright...... its close but not like the feeling of CS:GO. The "subtick" networking is complete bullsh*t and feels terrible. Maybe in a year or two it will get better but for now it has less content and features and is insanely inferior to its predecessor. Valve released a beta game prematurely with the modern gaming mentality of releasing a game with 20% of the content then over the years fixing and finishing the game. The only reason still I play this game is because I genuinely love counter-strike, and the only option I have is to play CS2 because they replaced CS:GO with it. it sucks balls --- RIP CS:GO

I love this game.