I bought it but got a refund. I was a huge fan of the first game and enjoyed CoP well enough, though it felt like a completely different game that only shared aesthetics with the SoC.
I think I played for about an hour and in that time it felt like I was being led by the nose through the "quests". I don't know if the world opened up after that a linear "curated" experience isn't what draws me to that game. The first anomaly you went through had an obvious path so you didn't have to throw bolts, (I'm not sure that was even in the game unless I just missed it).
I'm a tard who plays PC games with a controller and there didn't appear to be aim assist which I know is lame but is also standard at this point when you use a controller in FPS (or it is there and I just suck terribly). Also the inventory interface was rough with the controller with some seriously counter-intuitive control scheme decisions.
The game was pretty enough and ran fine but just felt kind of cheaply slapped together compared to the obviously lovingly crafted first one.
And really minor complaint that there was no Russian voice available. I know there us Ukranian voice and its close enough to Russian that it doesn't matter for atmosphere, but it feels unnecessarily petty considering you know everyone who worked on the game probably spoke both.
I watched a friend stream it (my PC can't run it lol) and what really bothered me is how they fucked with the story.
In the prologue they establish that the anomalous artifacts found in the zone lose their anomalous energy if taken outside the zone, and that basically means that stalkers shouldn't exist, period.
The entire reason that stalkers exist is because of the artifacts, people try to sneak past the military cordon to get into the zone to retrieve the artifacts to sell to the outside because the artifacts have all kinds of extremely useful properties. Just think of how useful an item that purges radiation from the body or heals wounds rapidly might be.
If artifacts become useless outside the zone then they would have rapidly depreciating value and there would be very few stalkers going into the zone outside of government, scientific and military stalkers. It undermines the entire setting on a fundamental level.
And to make things even more absurd, Stalker 2 establishes that scientists were trying to figure out how to recharge artifacts and the project got canned due to safety reasons, despite the massive benefits of such a project.
The game opens up after you get through the prologue, the presentation is great and I could accept the game's flaws and lack of A-Life (devs said it isn't working yet) but I can't forgive the bad writing and worldbuilding.
It's pretty clear that the game was made by a different team with different ideas and their ideas are not better than their predecessors.
Whaaat. I saw a few reviews that said the game was super busted but that is somehow even more dumb. Yes, if artifacts are useless outside the zone, no one pays for them, and thus no one hunts for them.
Thankfully you can just play Anomaly.
I thought I was going crazy because no one was talking about this. Not even the negative reviews on Steam mentioned it, even though story and worldbuilding is a core part of the Stalker series. And it's stuff you learn in the first couple of hours of gameplay too.
Some reviewers even praised the story as being great which I can't understand in any capacity. Did these people even play the previous Stalker games or are they just tourists? Or are people just willing to accept slop so long as it has the right brand?
If the story and worldbuilding wasn't there then the Stalker series would have been nothing more than fancy boomer shooters with environmental hazards and no one would have gotten so invested in the series.
I honestly wouldn't call the story* the main selling point of these games, though I watch the ending of the original Stalker now and then because it still gives me chills.
*Story as in the narrative of the character you are playing and what happens to him during the game. As opposed to "Story" in the big picture sense of just being a lone adventurer in a harsh and unforgiving land, which is very well done.
But yeah that's a horrible retcon and it basically ruins the setting. Yikes.
Maybe it's not the main selling point but it is what's keeping the series from being Generic Post-Apocalyptic Shooter #532.
If you removed all the story and worldbuilding and just left in the environments and core gameplay would you have something interesting? I'd say it wouldn't be near as interesting.
I might be biased though since I'm very interested in media writing and worldbuilding which is also how I notice the kind of ridiculous changes they make.
Or Chernobylite.
Why do they always have to fundamentally ruin a story with a sequel? I don't understand it. There are so many ways to tell a new story without changing the one that came before.
Modern writers don't seem to be able to really look at the big picture and understand why things are the way they are. They have to retcon story and worldbuilding aspects to insert their own ideas even if it ruins what came before.
The worst part is that none of this was even necessary. The writers wanted protagonist man to get a special artifact outside the Zone and go into it to uncover its mysteries (which is pretty much what happens in the current story) and they could have kept this story with some minor alterations to avoid damaging the worldbuilding.
I'm about 25% of the way through the story so I don't know the full details. Is it possible that artifacts lost their charge since the Wish Granter disappeared and that's why they loose their energy outside the zone?
That shouldn't really have anything to do with the artifacts. Let me give you some background lore on why the Zone exists.
After the Chernobyl NPP melted down and the exclusion zone was set up, scientists set up secret labs in the Zone to do secret research.
Part of this research is the C-Consciousness project, which attempted to fix humanity's flaws (eliminating greed, cruelty, anger, etc) by attempting to alter the noosphere (an invisible field affected by and affecting human cognition).
They did an experiment to attempt to alter the noosphere which backfired horribly and ended up damaging it, and that is what resulted in the creation of the Zone and the anomalies within it.
Even after C-Con is destroyed due to Strelok's actions in SoC the Zone remains as the damage to the noosphere appears to be permanent.
The Wish Granter is not directly related to the anomalous phenomena inside the Zone, it's a trap built by C-Con to deal with intruders.
Oh come the fuck on.
Whelp, that just killed any remaining urge I had to get the damn thing. I'll stick with the original, thanks.