Recent reviews by Eclipse

65 Truck(at review) 140 liveries, and 130 race events and stunt events. By no means is this a small game!

it is GOAT Monster Truck Arcade Game.

Sincerely it has the same vibe as Monster Truck Madness.

Steel Titans was fun, but this is SO MUCH MORE FUN!

probably my favorite game

It's okay, and it should be Great.

The overwhelming amount of Recommend Reviews that are purposefully ignoring aspects of the game they also disliked, because they are simping for Ninja Theory is WILD!!!!

The artistic vision kind of lost its passion, and the schizophrenic voices become generically unrelated, cringe-edgelordness and tutorial based.

If they just toned down the schizophrenic voices in general, it would be more believable.

Hellblade 1 made sense because she was have a Manic Episode, usually in between the episodes the voices become more vague, but as she seemingly moved on the voices literally ramped up to be the most talkative VO's of any game imagined,

its monotone, uncreative, not based in science, and cringe.

sadly if you just turned down the Schizophrenic VO's to maybe 25-50% of the amount they are, the game would be improved IMMENSELY.

a project that got lost to creators that only create for a profit.

Pretty impressively bad for Bethesda.

Sum-Up
In-depth analysis further down.


🟩 Pros 🟥 Cons
• Compelling exploration that features a huge amount of handcrafted locations, many of which have unique puzzles, interactions and secrets.

• Adequately challenging even for franchise veterans on the highest difficulty: the Zone is as unforgiving as it should be.

• Exceptional graphics, paired with quality art direction and great sound design, ensure excellent immersion at all times. • Enormous amount of bugs, many of which can break quests, cause softlocks, and even prevent you from finishing the game.

• Unbalanced economy: artifacts sell for the cost of a rusted AK, quest rewards are miserable and you’re punished for using your gear due to outrageous repair fees.

• NPCs, except story-related ones, are copy-pasted dummies with always the same, broken crap as loot; gone are the days of excitement to see what you may find on a bested foe.

• The highly-advertised “A-Life 2.0” system is a broken mess, devolved to a glorified ‘time bubble’ around your character. The Zone never felt more lifeless, in the worst possible way.

• Many features have been cut or butchered compared to the previous games: no more mutant looting, night vision, locations changing faction control, or evolving trader stock based on rep.

🟨 Bugs & Issues 🔧 Specs


Do I recommend it? No. Aside from the crippling bugs and mediocre optimization, many of the gameplay systems either don’t work properly or have been casualized and butchered when compared to the previous games. It’s a straight downgrade from Call of Pripyat in many aspects, and it’s not worth your time.
Conclusion
The hype train spectacularly derailed, with GSC delivering a subpar, streamlined, unfinished product despite options such as Early Access or delaying it further.

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In-Depth
Writing & Worldbuilding
The vengeful path of Skif, our new voiced protagonist, is a decently-written one if anything. The events he’ll go through and the characters he’ll encounter fit into place, although none of them shows more depth than surface level at any point. The same can’t be said for Skif himself who, a far cry from the ‘Chad’ Marked One or the other STALKER protagonists, proves to be cringeworthy on more than a few occasions; yet another example of why voiced characters aren’t always a straight upgrade. This tale is definitely better, for what I could see at least, than Clear Sky or Call of Pripyat from a narrative standpoint, but miles behind Shadow of Chernobyl, which remains the unchallenged masterpiece.

The Zone in its new, shiny, next-gen vestige is a sight to behold; a place where beauty and utter terror intertwine in a perfect balance. Its realistic visual style feels appropriate, and doesn’t pull punches in showing how bleak and brutal a Stalker’s life really is, except for combat gore, which could be improved upon. At all times, you’ll feel immersed and captivated by the ambience, the stark difference between each biome and area contributing to not make your journeys feel stale. It’s faithful to the original vision and, if anything, improves upon it in this field.

Exploration & Secrets
You’ll explore the Zone on foot, wandering through all the locations of the previous STALKER games, this time crammed into a single environment. In time, you’ll unlock Guides, special NPCs allowing you to fast-travel between known settlements for a considerable fee based on distance. Your handy PDA and virtual compass will highlight custom markers and nearby undiscovered locations, a good quality of life addition that, however, detracts a bit from the true ‘Roadside Picnic’ feeling in favor of convenience.

While some optional locations do have unique weapons, armor or artifacts, most of them barely hold anything worth the risk: the increased amount of places trades off with content bloating. It’s not fun to go through an entire bunker infested with mutants to find a stash or safe, only to get a dozen ammo, a medkit and two sausages as a reward. The exploration, however, still feels varied and enjoyable, since many locations have unique puzzles, mini-stories and events unfolding in them, not necessarily related to any quest. The weight system is realistic, but slows you down an excessive amount, to the point you’ll have to walk for hours on end to haul the loot you desperately need to sell in order to not be constantly bankrupt, since the economy is broken.

Forget about the roaming, independent NPCs and herds of mutants; in STALKER 2, the Zone is completely empty except for static settlements and timed spawns around your character every X amount of time, or scripted ones in points of interest. This is a massive downgrade compared to the previous titles, and borderline false advertisement for how the devs have sold this new system as a main feature to delight the fans.

Combat System & Bosses
Fights play out in an FPS fashion, either against other humans or mutants. You’ll have access to a vast roster of weapons that range from pistols to heavy machine guns, all with different ammo types to suit various situations. At least, on paper; in reality, against humans, a headshot with any ammo will be your only viable approach, while against mutants nothing works better than a good old shotgun. I ended up using only scoped ARs and semi-auto shotguns simply because any other weapon is redundant, and doesn't have any unique feature to be worth using at all. The enemy AI is simplistic, which is fine for mutants but isn’t for humans, which feel like generic NPCs from a Unreal 5 asset flip in the way they move, shoot and behave in a fight. As far as I saw, there are no real bosses, except the more rare mutant variants that act as such, like Controllers or Chimeras.

Progression & Weapon Modding
Your progression is based on the gear, artifacts and weapons you’ll acquire. All weapons and armor can be upgraded and maintained at Technicians, although only some of them are expert enough to mod the more advanced ones, and for many upgrades, you’ll need to find Blueprints scattered all over the world. Artifacts bestow passive bonuses, but also emit radiation which can be offset by other artifacts or specific mods; however, very few of them are worth using at all, since the artifact system has been streamlined, adding more of them but making each less unique in their functioning, save for special ones, which are just a handful. The progression is satisfying, but also heavily bogged down by the economy balance which feels unrewarding at all times: your hard-earned loot you crawled miles to get to a trader most likely won’t cover repair costs used to get it — so what’s the point?

Absolutely AG racing G.O.A.T.

It is G.O.A.T.

Its Goat

Its Goat.

DDI did a great job with this one! Precisely what we're looking for, A virtua racer succesor, its honestly better than SEGA would do if they did it with a giant budget. Looking forward to GP addition! thanks