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Recent reviews by Desecrator

Showing 1-4 of 4 entries
4 people found this review helpful
30.7 hrs on record (29.0 hrs at review time)
Game's only half-finished at the moment, needs a LOT of polishing, stop fanboying, stop trying to make excuses for the devs, leave politics at the door, they had 10 years to develop it and polish it.

Game in it's current state is comparable to Cyberclunk 2077 6 months in.
Don't wanna read? Cool, don't scroll down, there's an essay you don't really care about.
Is it fun? Yes. Is it good? No.

[The negatives]
● Core stuff that disappointed me personally the most:
○ WHAT THE ♥♥♥♥ IS OPTIMIZATION, RAAA! (terrible performance issues)
○ There's no A-Life in this game, let alone 2.0. THIS IS THE CORE OF STALKER GAMES. THIS IS WHAT MADE THE GAME FEEL ALIVE. NPCs feel like they're spawning next to you just to make you feel like you're not alone, but they stop spawning after a while and it feels desolate. They don't interact with each other and sometimes you have to get close enough for patrols to shoot dogs (I didn't even see them, 3 times this has happened).
○ Lack of options. Do you wanna side with these guys, or those guys? Too bad, you don't have a choice.

● The map:
○ Feels desolate. Major locations that feel like should be a camp/base to NPCs (I don't care what faction) or mutants are devoid of any life until you go, explore it, and 3 bandits spawn right outside.
○ Not much to do outside of stash hunting because of aforementioned reason. Even then, stashes are disappointing, will elaborate further down.
○ Having explored the entirety of the following regions, Rostok, Garbage, Lesser Zone, Cement Factory, Wild Island, Zaton and Swamps, I've to admit although they look wonderful in their own regard, they feel underwhelming due to the lack of things to do after you've finished stash hunting, apart from some fun/unique side quests that I've not seen in other games. Kudos for that, gotta give credit where it's due, however, again, map feels empty after you finish those side quests, nothing spawns there again, it doesn't become a camp, nothing.
○ You see a new place? Cool! Explore it! Okay, looks like a factory of some sorts, probably has a couple of enemies in there, probably a camp, let me get ready and make sure my guns are loaded. Wait, it's empty? Aw man :(
○ On the other hand, with some other places (checkpoints, per se), you can clear them, leave them, come back in a minute, and they're full of enemies again. I'm not saying, leave, go sell items, come back right after, I mean go outside the fence/wall and then come back inside.

● The stashes:
○ Most of the stashes are split into 3 variants. Awful, mid and actually decent. I've not been counting but I think I've looted around 40 or 50 stashes so far, most of them offer you the tiniest amount of ammo imaginable, some bandages, sometimes a medkit, sometimes energy drinks, but that's about it. Best thing I've gotten was the Journalist suit and a shotgun, that's literally it.
○ Journalist stashes are way better than "just cosmetics" and you can't get them without buying the deluxe or ultimate version, if you're like me, you're ♥♥♥♥♥♥.

● Weapon and melee mechanics:
○ You have to be glued to boxes if you want to break them melee, cuz you have T-Rex arms. Half of the time, even then it doesn't work. I've given up and started shooting them instead.
○ Hip-firing doesn't always work, i.e. an enemy is in front of you and you can hipfire your shotgun, only for your bullet to go straight through them. "You probably just missed", I'd call it a skill issue as well if it wasn't done in a hallway and I killed the guy behind him, same angle.
○ Sometimes, it feels like you have to shoot someone in the head 10 times for them to die. Armor piercing rounds help. Even so, I think that surviving 6-7 shots to the cranium from a 5.45 is a little bit too much, but that's just my opinion.
○ If your gun is silenced, enemies will have no idea where the ♥♥♥♥ you're shooting them... even if you're directly next to them. Stelf!
○ Mutants are tanky, so bring a big boy gun to hunt them. I personally don't mind the tankiness of mutants, I endorse it and think it's fun, however I do agree with the rest of the comments that it's a little bit much sometimes, and that their resistances shouldn't scale with the difficulty, rather their damage should.

● Various game stuff:
○ Corpses and items will despawn too quickly , go through the ground, or sometimes start sinking into the ground (sometimes lootable, sometimes not).
○ Sounds are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ themselves. I don't mean just NPCs talking, or the "radio filter" disappearing, I mean a grenade can blow up silently, gunshots will no longer be present, aliens f---ing in the background when multiple sounds combine, dogs that sound like they're right next to you are on the other side of the map, boxes silently breaking or just the items in the boxes busting your ear drums until you pick them up.
○ Sounds again, patrols will start shooting something... while they're asleep. You can hear the ♥♥♥♥♥♥ snoring while he's shooting something.
○ Repairing items costs way too much to the point where you're better off never upgrading any guns and just replacing your guns when they break.
○ You can get stuck in a dialogue with an NPC and the only way to leave it is to restart your load or your game.
○ Some side quests can't be turned in, I've got 4, 2 of which tell me "Not now stalker, I'm busy.", 1 guy is nowhere to be found, and the other ♥♥♥♥ won't open the door to talk to me and there's no other way in.
○ You can also get stuck/bugged when inspecting artifacts.
○ My weapons went invisible (could only see the scope) after picking up a bandage. Only happened once, reloading the save fixed it.
○ UI is awful, dragging items around your inventory feels sluggish at best, can't rotate guns to sort it out, and you can also get infinite money because of this poor design/overlook.
○ The world will feel either overwhelming or lonely at moments, sometimes you will constantly run into mutants and bandits, other times you will feel like you're alone and there's literally nobody there. I ran an entire kilometer without seeing anyone or anything. It was a weird feeling.
○ Models and textures are clipping, sure, it's not important in some areas and nobody really cares as it doesn't mess up your game entirely, but in Icarus and Slag Heap, core locations during the story, I am pretty sure this is a major oversight.

[The positives]
● It's Stalker. That's literally it. Game's fun regardless of how bad it currently is, guns feel extremely satisfying to use even though they feel like peashooters at times, they sound great when the sound is working properly, and the amount of modifications at the moment feels a little bit meh but I'm sure we'll get more attachments with due time, be it by the modding community or by the devs themselves. There's a big world to explore, I've played for about 30h now and I still have a LOT of the map to explore, but with the way that it's been going so far, I feel like there won't be much to do :/

● Interactive world and NPCs, some of which have fun stories to tell, some easter eggs, cool/funny side quests here and there, but there's really not as many as you'd think. I've done everything that there was to be done (at least what's been marked on the map) in the aforementioned regions, in only about 30h. To some, that's a lot, to me, it really isn't as I've been taking my time.

● There's a cool little cave with some zombies inside of it, kill them, crouch underneath the wooden tunnel and there's a chest with a heart drawn on top if it.
Posted 21 November. Last edited 24 November.
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4 people found this review helpful
3 people found this review funny
3
244.3 hrs on record
Gonna leave a positive review to counter all the Linux crybabies that have 10h in the game.

Womp womp.

Cry in this box, Africa needs water |_____|
To the rest of the Linux community that was legit, I am sorry to all three of you that you're going to have to swap to a superior gaming OS to "enjoy" this "wonderful" game.
Posted 6 November.
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2 people found this review helpful
2.7 hrs on record
Got into the games through the music first, believe it or not, "If the music is amazing, the games must be pretty good". Wasn't disappointed by the PS2 games. The remake? Pretty good to be honest. I love the overall aesthetics of the game and FPS was not that bad as I read from some reviews who had stutters, I only had issues while loading the game initially or when loading in a new area, but that went away after a moment or two, so I believe it might be an issue for them as they might be running the game from a hard driver rather than an SSD? Don't quote me on that.

I have yet to finish the game but I thought I'd jump on the review bandwagon first.

Vibes and aesthetics are good, controls and movement are not the greatest but they get the job done, it's not meant to be a combat game after all, it reminds you of the old SH2 (so far at least), your encounter with Pyramid Head is literally "definition of aura", I dig it. Gonna be ordering some junk food tomorrow, get some beer and finish it. Will come back to re-review it after.
Posted 8 October.
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No one has rated this review as helpful yet
1,514.6 hrs on record (1,481.9 hrs at review time)
12/10 game, one of my top 10 all time favorites.

Game has so much to offer it's not even funny. It's got a fantastic modding community and even more servers to choose from, I've yet to meet any annoying runts and I'd say the majority of the community is, "mature" in comparison to Rust, per se.

You can go out and 'venture into the wilderness, explore fantastic maps (made from both the devs and the community (except Livonia, that map's the worst thing to ever touch DayZ)). There's no goal other than to survive and make friends (or enemies) to be honest. That's the beauty of it. You can take a different route each time, prioritize what's more important and just. Explore? Maybe build a base, a city, an empire?

If you're thinking about buying the game, trust me, buy it, you won't regret it. Content updates are "scarce", as in, once a month, but if you feel tired/bored of vanilla, there's always a modpack to fit your needs.

Love the game.
Posted 30 November, 2021. Last edited 1 November.
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Showing 1-4 of 4 entries