S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

Update, post-completion: This is my favorite game EVER. Props to the devs. Can't wait to play it again in a year! OG review: I've managed to forgive the MASSIVE stick drift, and I just realized what's ruining this game for me - the game's economy. Yes, the combat is unbalanced, there are bugs galore, and the walking is tedious... I can forgive all that; it's a Stalker game after all. What I CAN'T forgive is the broken economy. It makes no sense to walk five minutes to a location, shoot through $1000 worth of ammo, take $6000 worth of damage to your guns and armor, use up all your medkits, limp back to town, and have the quest giver pay you $400. Even the smallest of missions are ridiculously resource intensive. I've decided to hang it up for now; I'll revisit after the game has been properly balanced. After twenty hours, it's no fun to slowly drown under the weight of the economy. I live in 2024 America; I experience enough of that in my day-to-day.

One star off for npc's with eagle eye x-ray psychic super vision where i peek around a corner through bushes and fog at night and some guy 100 yards i cant even see with a scope is suddenly landing consecutive head shots with an smg or even a shotgun. Gimme a fkn break. Still an amazing time.

Really loving this game despite the bugs and performance issues, but I must've screwed the spawning system up because I now have a rat swarm following me everywhere. They invade every shelter, scale every mountain, and cross the irradiated seas in an effort to kill me. Wherever I go, the squeaks will follow. They are my sheep, and I am their shepherd. Bless these freaks, for I am their God. We'll ride into the center of the Zone together.

No wait wrong game. Still they choose a great time to release Stalker 2, as we approach near the end of the year we will have something good to play and distract ourselves with.

Please add deadzone settings its impossible to play with controller