Скорошни рецензии на Ｍａｋｉｎａ

WARNING: Slight spoilers ahead so be warned.

This is coming from someone with thousands of hours invested into the STALKER franchise. Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, Call of Pripyat, the countless standalone mods like Anomaly, Call of Chernobyl, NLC7, OGSE and OP2 just to name a few, i have played them so i feel pretty qualified about writing this review.

Now with that out of the way and the reasons why i do not recommend this game at it's current state.

The horror aspect of the game is completely absent which is extremely important in this series. If you have played Shadow of Chernobyl, you know that first moment when you enter X-18 and some ambient noise and the knowledge of something lurking below you is enough to make you cower in fear and reconsider your choices? I was looking for that same feeling in STALKER 2 when exploring the underground areas but unfortunately never found it.
The night time in STALKER 2 is not dark because we don't get night vision unlike in the first 3 games which drastically eats away the horror aspect of the game.

The economy is tuned to never be starved of supplies and the lack of A-Life presents itself as a non-threat (of course some of this can be remedied through mods but this review is solely based on vanilla experience).

Then we get to the non-explorable parts of the Zone, and the clearly unfinished areas. The Nuclear Power Plant and Iron Forest regions are not explorable. What the hell were you thinking GSC? The NPP is the most important landmark of the Zone and we cannot even get there?
The Jupiter region very clearly being unfinished. You have 4 or 5 POI's there and that's it.
Some NPC's do mention Lymansk, but that is another region we cannot get to and apparently is not in the map either, though we can see buildings of said region in the game.
There is so much content missing from the game judging from early build images it's impressive, or altenatively some of it is being added in as DLC. Imagine having to pay more money just to be able to explore the NPP area, in a STALKER game?

I will not comment too much about the story, because overall i liked it, but the last 10-20% of the story felt a bit rushed. I'm also not the biggest fan of including a Point of No Return. Just let me beat the story and explore afterwards.

I will say though, the game looks beautiful and GSC has managed to retain the general feeling of playing a STALKER game. I cannot comment too much about the performance because it ran well enough on my PC and i didn't experience too many game breaking anomalies.. i mean bugs.

With all being said, i would wait for GSC to fix A-Life, implement night vision and add in NPP and it's vicinity and Lymansk to explore before buying. At it's current state the game is not worth 60€ to me and thus i will not recommend it for now, despite being a massive fan of the series. I do have faith though in GSC, that they are able to eventually deliver the experience we all have waited for.

While i don't have a problem with the game using a Kernel-level Anticheat, i do have a problem with SBMM (Skill-based Matchmaking) being present when playing with Ranked disabled in Havoc Warfare and i am already seeing the effects of it at play. Lobbies taking longer to find, sometimes being put into another region server with high ping, lobbies getting sweaty. You would think SBMM was only present when playing with ranked enabled, but alas that is not the case.

I was going into this game hoping for matchmaking to be just like in Battlefield. I have not tried Operations yet so cannot say anything about it.

Even though it is free-to-play, i cannot recommend the game for now. That's how much i despise SBMM. Once this gets addressed, i will change from thumbs down to thumbs up because otherwise the game is solid and is well worth trying if you are a fan of Battlefield or extraction shooters.

But if you don't care about SBMM, go right ahead and download it, you will have a blast.

For absolutely no cost, this game offers a more enjoyable gameplay experience than Diablo 4.

For a fraction of Diablo 4's cost, this and Vampire Survivors offer much more enjoyable gameplay experience.

The game is enjoyable somewhat up until you reach the North, when it truly becomes unenjoyable at it's maximum if you are (like me) a Merc on EU servers. The difference between the amount of Mercenaries & Covenant players is so massive, that it's incredibly hard to farm materials there as a Merc. And i am not swapping to Covenant out of principle just to have an easier time farming North, the game shouldn't work like that.

I like the game at it's core i do, but i just don't find a reason to spend any more hours until it gets better for EU Mercenaries.

Future players be warned!

The opening scene made me tear up a bit cuz it reminded me of my little loved one who has crossed the rainbow bridge. Beautiful environment, simple controls, adorable story. Easily one of the best 5-hour experiences i've ever had playing video games.

Cleared on first playthrough in just under 3 hours. Always been a fan of challenging platformers so it was a no-brainer to pick up Jump King. I really like the basic movement and how you can get punished for messing up jumps. Level design of the base game was ok, i do appreciate the checkpoint once you reach Chapel Perilous.

Looking forward to the DLC's.

Can definitely recommend for those who are masochists or like brutal platformers.