Ignore the negativity around this release in reviews from Critics, if you're a fan of the Original STALKER games you'll feel instantly at home here. Playing on Veteran difficulty this IMMEDIATELY feels like the true STALKER experience, Mutants are terrifying forces of nature that are hard to pin down and will kill you extremely quickly if you don't take them down fast enough, Anomalies are instant death, Radiation is killer. Human enemies go down extremely easily if you can get a headshot in, even with a starter pistol, but they are just as deadly against you so you gotta be careful with your approach / cover.

Basically, keep your finger on that Quicksave button, Stalker. Just like the originals.

Performance wise, I'm on a 4090 so I may be brute forcing my way through issues, but I really haven't seen many. There's a stutter here or there from being on UE5 but it hasn't been super noticeable so far, and honestly it feels familiar coming from the Originals which had their share of jank. The first settlement I noticed a marked decrease in performance even with my 4090 but I hear turning settings down from Epic to High can help without really any noticeable loss in graphics. I also hear capping it to 60fps can improve the experience so going to try that.

So far my only real annoyance has been HDR - there doesn't seem to be a way to calibrate settings for it within the settings menu so I've had to adjust it on the fly which is pretty annoying, and I can't tell if I like the settings where they're at since there's no easy way to compare and contrast. Also you need to have it set to Fullscreen [Exclusive] otherwise its disabled, which isn't communicated well at all.

TL;DR: This feels like a homecoming for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fans. If you have a strong enough rig to brute force your way through performance issues, absolutely grab it.

Ignore the negativity around this release in reviews from Critics, if you're a fan of the Original STALKER games you'll feel instantly at home here. Playing on Veteran difficulty this IMMEDIATELY feels like the true STALKER experience, Mutants are terrifying forces of nature that are hard to pin down and will kill you extremely quickly if you don't take them down fast enough, Anomalies are instant death, Radiation is killer. Human enemies go down extremely easily if you can get a headshot in, even with a starter pistol, but they are just as deadly against you so you gotta be careful with your approach / cover. Basically, keep your finger on that Quicksave button, Stalker. Just like the originals. Performance wise, I'm on a 4090 so I may be brute forcing my way through issues, but I really haven't seen many. There's a stutter here or there from being on UE5 but it hasn't been super noticeable so far, and honestly it feels familiar coming from the Originals which had their share of jank. The first settlement I noticed a marked decrease in performance even with my 4090 but I hear turning settings down from Epic to High can help without really any noticeable loss in graphics. I also hear capping it to 60fps can improve the experience so going to try that. So far my only real annoyance has been HDR - there doesn't seem to be a way to calibrate settings for it within the settings menu so I've had to adjust it on the fly which is pretty annoying, and I can't tell if I like the settings where they're at since there's no easy way to compare and contrast. Also you need to have it set to Fullscreen [Exclusive] otherwise its disabled, which isn't communicated well at all. TL;DR: This feels like a homecoming for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fans. If you have a strong enough rig to brute force your way through performance issues, absolutely grab it.