Recent reviews by Church

All around a fantastic game. Lots of puzzles, lots of combat, lots of Indy. If you're not a huge fan of the original movies the price point may be steep, in which case this is on GamePass! But I highly recommend it regardless of cost and eagerly look forward to the DLC in the future.

The story is straight out of an Indiana Jones movie, especially the original trilogy and the character of Indy is portrayed great here. Additionally the villains and other cast members, especially Voss, are perfect in their roles.

The game has a lot of puzzles, the mandatory ones more simple than the optional ones as you work your way through the collect-a-thon of the relics, lost artifacts, photo spots, and journal entries, all of which Indy has a relevant comment about.

My save file took me 27 hours according to the main menu, Steam says 43, a deviation from some idle time, getting lost on one map, and wandering around to look at the scenery. I did 100% the game, getting all collectibles, so 25-27 hours is a solid estimate I would say for total time.

For optimization, the game runs great. It does have a requirement of hardware raytracing but raytracing ingame is optional and the game ran fantastic my entire playthrough.

Ultimately, I have no regrets buying this game and I look forward to the DLC in the future expanding on such a fun story.

TL;DR: For its price tag, there's better use of your money. The game is buggy, empty, and noticeably more polished in its opening act than anything after. There's a far more indepth review at the bottom.

Cringy title aside, I'm posting this review after finishing the main story line and letting my thoughts air out as well as try to give a comprehensive reason as to why Stalker 2 has a lot of soul and potential, but as a fully released $60-$110 USD product (I bought standard), is just not there currently.

• Gunplay is solid with fantastic audio design making everything really pack a punch
  
• Story is good. I only have done 1 ending of what I can guess is 4 total
  
• Visually stunning. The Zone looks gorgeous.
  
• Modding support out of the gate. Unsure how capable the tools are however.
  
• The cast of characters are good. Many are returning from previous games, however I went into this blind.

• Act 1 of this game is more polished and content dense than the rest of the game. The latter 2 acts are very slow inbetween missions and often are just long periods of running with nothing happening.
  
• Performance was *awful*. DLSS on performance mode & frame generation was required the entire play thru. Ran on medium settings, 1440p, ~70FPS avg. GTX 3080ti, i7-9700k, 32GB RAM @ 3000Mhz.
  
• Said frame generation introduces noticeable input delay and sluggish mouse movement
  
• Mouse smoothing enabled by default, plenty of guides online to disable
  
• The spawn radius mechanic. Not to be confused with the psi-effect ghost spawning, I'm referring to the 80m spawn bubble around the player character as a replacement for A-Life. More on this below.
  
• Bugs. Many bugs. A mod to enable console commands was needed to fix 3 main story quests.
  
• The flashlight is incredibly bad for no reason other than providing a horror atmosphere in certain areas, however for the other 99% of the game, its completely worthless. There are no NVGs or upgrades.
  
• Economy. There's already been one patch to address this but the economy is incredibly unbalanced, being stacked against you at the start then quickly spiraling in the opposite direction. I ended the game with $563,000 after upgrading all max quality gear and having extra sets.
  
• The swamp. This entire portion of the campaign was just not fun. Slugging through the swamp in a game where you cant swim and water slows you down to less than 1ft/sec was awful.

This is Stalker 2's strongest and most disappointing aspect. The story overall is good and I'll preface by saying I have not played any other Stalker game. The story has a whole host of characters, many returning from previous games apparently as well as the many factions from previous games. Throughout the story there are multiple major decisions to make that will alter which ending you get. Personally I went the route of Strelok's ending and enjoyed it minus some mechanical related stuff. While the story was good however, after the end of Act 1 (SIRCAA facility) the game slows down considerably. Additionally the number of side quests completely plummets with a majority coming from a random encounter in the woods. I ended up having to use a map online to try and find some of these because they're literally unmarked NPC's sitting by campfires away from POI's. With so little side content you end up just sprinting from main story mission to the next, nothing occurring inbetween as you run across identical grassy fields.

This is Stalker 2's weakest aspect. In earlier STALKER games, a system called A-Life read the world as a persistent entity and everything in it was tracked. Some events occurred whether you were present or not, enemies roamed to regions on their own, and their positions persisted beyond you being present. In STALKER 2, this system does not exist. For this game, there is a radius around the player (appx 80m) that the "Game Director" system will spawn entities into. This can be friendly loners, freedom units, some mutants, etc. but only in this bubble. Outside of this bubble, nothing exists. For static placed NPC's and mutants, they too only exist in the bubble. You can test this easily with any 4x scope and a little elevation. Because of this system, the world is functionally dead. Nothing exists beyond your vicinity. There's no binoculars to scout a base you must assault, or a reason to use the couple snipers in the game because nothing is far enough away to warrant it.
On top of this, something that quickly becomes apparent as you traverse the world is that the light capacity sprint speed is faster than the director's spawn rate. This means in Acts 2-4 when you're constantly running 1-2km to an objective, you will outpace the spawning of enemies and nothing will spawn. You will go for kilometers on end, running for 10+ minutes, with nothing happening other than stumbling into an anomaly because you were checking discord on your phone while holding w. This is my single biggest gripe with the game and led to so much wasted time and a truly boring experience.

The world of Stalker is very very big, almost too much so with how little is actually in it. Depending on story choices, entire vendor hubs can go undiscovered if you don't take the time to explore to find them. In the same vein, due to certain story elements, entire safety hubs can be removed from the game. One of which (STC Malachite) is the main hub for multiple regions in the western half of the map and once its gone, it really hurts travel for a large portion of the map. Eventually it can recover, however when mine did, it had invincible hostile guards outside that attacked me and once I shot back, made the vendors inside hostile for attacking their 'allies' (who had just committed a hostile takeover of their base).

Progression is very straight forward and linear, with your choices being rather obvious. Almost all guns are viable for a majority of the game but eventually you will find guns that are just objectively better, forcing you to swap to them to keep up with your foes. Mentioning foes, there are many, and they hurt. The second most downloaded mod on the STALKER 2 Nexus is "Grok's Modular Mutant Health" and there's a reason. Mutants are bullet sponges with no payoff. It is often in your best interest to just run away because when 4-5 blood suckers rush you at once, you're going to be stun locked until you die. With a 50% reduction in their health, it still took 5 HP-12 ga. slugs (anti-mutant ammo per its desc). The game more than once throws (verified) invincible enemies at you for the sake of forcing story elements, leading to you fruitlessly dumping hundreds of rounds of ammo into them until you die or get the message its a pointless battle.

STALKER 2 is a game that obviously has a lot of work involved with it but still has a lot of work to go. There's many issues, many bugs, and many core design p issues. There's more I didn't get into in this review such as watered down survival mechanics, mutant bullet sponges, and emissions, but the game just isn't where it needs to be for the money. Once you clear act 1, the content drops hard, the bugs skyrocket, and the cracks in the game become gaps that you can't overlook any longer. In the coming months I hope this will be rectified but many are core design issues that I'm not sure can be fixed.

Also: For those wondering about the "multiplayer" mentioned in the store description, it is currently not out yet and on release will be a PvP Team Deathmatch mode, not co-op campaign. The devs have confirmed this and said co-op is not coming.

Took 1.7 hours to complete. Not bad for $8 I guess and wish I could put a middle-of-the-road option but it just wrapped up very quick and that's with restarting the LIDAR level multiple times.

Ghosts of Tsushima is an open world action RPG in the same gameplay loop as many recent titles such as Assassins Creed and Far Cry. However at its heart is a phenomenal and truly unique game with an amazing story.

I wont get long winded in this as there is no need, the game's review score on Steam and abroad speaks for itself.
There are not many titles I can recommend the asking price for, especially AAA costs. GoT is one of those titles however. It is worth every dollar spent and is one of the best game's I've had the pleasure of playing.

Immerse yourself in the beautifully recreated and represented Kamakura peroid of Japan and enjoy what has become one of my favorite games.

And choke on a rice ball Kenji.

The 0.2 "content" update has still not dropped since being teased back before my last update and does not have a release date. The AI bugs still aren't fixed, they will still hip fire you from across the map, and they will still eat an entire mag whether through desync, ammo not dealing damage, or because they simply will into existence.
Per the devs own admission, they're sitting on tens of millions of dollars (1 mil copies sold + 450k DLC sold). They've got the money to never work again and may simply not. My original review and first update has aged poorly lol.

Save your money, go elsewhere.


Figured I'd come back to update once again. Bad performance and buggy AI are still a massive issue leading to overall negative experience. Being killed during microstutters and multi-frame freezes isn't fun gameplay.
AI being bullet sponges is also still a massive persistent issue that causes many problems. Putting 12-13 rounds of expensive high end 5.56 into a guy wearing a t-shirt is ridiculous.


After a couple hotfixes I've come back to update my review.

This game is the prime example of Early Access. Great bones, engaging gameplay, buggy, and actively developed. It needs some love and if you're interested in getting it for $35, I would say do! But be ready for the state its in. Read the other reviews, check the subreddit, be understanding that this is not a v1.0 released title.

If you're ok with some jank, eventual wipes, feedback to devs, and balancing changes, you will be good to go.

As for the game:
High quality looter shooter with a focus on questing and teamwork over grinding out being broke PMC op doing knife runs like Tarkov.
The devs have taken a different approach to loot in this game as mentioned where in-game, you're an operator for a well funded private military company. You're not broke, you're not scavenging for candy bars. You're well funded, well trained, and it should be reflected in game.
The game utilizes difficult via enemy count, enemy variety, and enemy skill to keep you engaged as you get better gear, delve deeper into the jungles, and take on harder threats. Tactical decisions matter but this game is not uber-realism to the point of being frustrating and paints a slightly more casual gameloop opposed to Tarkov where the average person can enjoy it after a day of work instead of being worried about try-hards.

General Pros:
- Unique open-persistent world. You never 'leave' the raid as much as return to base. Same lobby though, same people, and you can walk/fly in/out anytime you want. The world is constantly alive.
- Strong loot pools to prevent you from ever being 'gear poor'. There's always ways to get some vests, an assault rifle, and a backpack rather easily. The town outside of every faction's HQ provides this.
- Teamwork. Easily hookup and work with team mates in your faction using VOIP and a working party system.

General Cons:
- Not a big one, but quests are similar to Tarkov. If you dont enjoy "go here for X", "Investigate X", "Deposit X" then you may not like the current quests
- Game is prone to crashes, server disconnects, etc. So far after 5 crashes, I've still never lost my kit, its preserved every time, however I know thats not the case for everyone.
- Desync hit registration issues. This clip[streamable.com] is a good example of what I mean. This is an egregious example and the devs confirmed specifically 7.62x39mm ammo is bugged in this regard somehow, but the behavior has been observed with other things, especially pistols. 5.56 works like a charm

All in all, if youre good with some jank and want to support the devs continuing to work on the game. Its worth the $35. Just dont get mad when you get an early access title.



Come back in a couple months.

There is bones here for a really fun, quality coop PvE experience with unique mechanics in its open world. But as it stands right now, its too buggy and too bogged down by bad performance to recommend.

Main bugs as of right now, writing on 5/4/24

• Server crashes count as a 'unsafe' exit from the AO, wiping your inventory as if you died.
  
• Really bad performance. Running on medium w/ FSR set to performance (causes horrible artifacting) to get 60 FPS stable. PC Specs below
  
• Constantly T-Posing corpses float in the air. Ability to loot them is hit or miss.
  
• Unable to loot or interact with anything bug happened more than once. Required me to alt-f4, resulting in another 'unsafe exit'
  
• Biggest of all: Extremely bad hit registration. I was given this clip[streamable.com]by a user on the Grayzone subreddit after asking for other's feedback regarding the hit reg for the game. It shows more than I could ever explain. This type of behavior routinely occurs.

If these things were addressed, I would happily recommend this game, but in its current state, you're better off installing SPT + FIKA for Tarkov.

PC Specs:
GPU: Nvidia RTX 3080ti
CPU: Intel i7-9700k @ 3.6GHz
RAM: 32GB DDR4 @ 3000MHz
Game installed on a Samsung 860 Evo

Sony officially reversed their decision about PSN required for gameplay. Source

As promised, this review has been changed back to positive. I will keep the old version for archival sake.

I'll change this immediately the moment Sony's dumbass decision is reverted.

They took a beloved game with nothing but positive feedback and a dedicated dev team, and completely ruined the goodfaith they built.

Sony has been dishonest, had their data stolen routinely, does not provide their mandatory service to 100+ countries and sells their data to aggregators. This was given as a 3-day heads up for new players, and a 4 week notice for existing players.

Yes, this was how it was day 1, I registered with PlayStation as a result. However, this was then made optional, with no date for the "grace period" ending, and PSN's network stated it was optional and they changed the data on the website after this all blew up and they realized their contradiction.

Sony changed the terms of the deal 3 months after launch. I hope Steam sees that as reason to accept refunds for those who wish to get one.

Fantastic expansion that released upon with a fantastic update. The DLC is so seamlessly integrated into the game it doesnt feel like an addition at all and has already entrenched itself as 'must-play' content every single time I go through this game.

Dogtown, Hanson, Reed, El-Capitan and his damn cars, its all an absolutely fantastic addition to the game.

I wanted to wait to write a review until I replayed the game a second time after an initial playthrough the day it released. 2.0/Phantom Liberty was a perfect time for that.

After a 96 hours replay of the game, there's not much I can say that encapsulates my thoughts better than: This is one of the greatest video games that has ever been made. Is it absolutely perfect without flaw? No, it has some issues here and there, but the world, the writing, the characters, the actors (VA & Mocap), the level of detail, and the atmosphere are some of the best I've seen. I look forward to playing it again and if you decide to buy, make sure you get Phantom Liberty too.

Mike Pondsmith and CDPR, you outdid yourselves.

[Game was bought on Steam sale for ~60% off]

This game is a love letter to the original Terminator movies in many ways while offering a solid gameplay experience to boot. I went into it a bit unsure about what I was going to get for a relatively quietly released FPS from 4 years ago but I was pleasantly surprised.

Terminator Resistance had a fun campaign that nicely tied into the movies, a unique plot that fit well into the universe of Terminator (specifically during the war) and a enjoyable cast of characters. Nothing over stayed its welcome, you regularly progressed, unlocked new gear, and got introduced to new metals. Gameplay was intuitive and nothing was confusing or had me looking things up.

I experienced no bugs my entire playthrough of the campaign which lasted about 12 hours (main story + all side missions) and I got what I would call the "good" ending which had choices which mattered the entire game.

Pros:
- Quality in-universe storyline that directly ties with the plot of the movies
- Assortment of guns and gear that regularly upgrades so nothing feels stagnated
- Open level design where you enter a region with a main objective + any relevant side objectives
- Good cast of characters, there wasn't anyone I was annoyed to speak with
- Choices effect the outcome of the game
- Perks really matter. You wont have enough points for every skill w/o finding journals so plan ahead or really start looking around

Cons:
- Noise makers seemed useless. The noise-maker is introduced as a tool to avoid silverfish, an explosive kamikaze style robot that takes 1 hit to go down. I unlocked them in mission 2(?) and never used them beyond the little tutorial because a) silverfish just arent very dangerous and b) Its easier to just sneak past them w/o using a tool you bought or crafted.
- Using explosives to open shipping containers & walls was heavily used in the first couple levels to show alternative ways to get gear and enter difficult spaces, however completely vanished after said levels?

Other Points:
- One playthrough to 100% the game lasted about 12 hours and could've been done faster but I'm a loot hoarder
- I bought it on sale. For current playtime, its worth it, however I still have a DLC and extra gamemode to play so the value will get closer to original price for sure.

I've yet to play the DLC yet at the time of this review or try the other modes present in the game such as Infiltrator mode, but based on just the main story, this game is a solid, enjoyable, experience. Its a little rough around the edges at times such as facial animations for the NPC's, but it has a special charm.

If this game is comparable in quality to Teyon's newest release, RoboCop, I can't wait to grab that too.

Absolutely fantastic experience to play with friends. Get a crew you work well with and can communicate well with.