Recent reviews by iMatrix7

Imagine a blend of GTA 1/2 and The Sims, wrapped in the cozy art style of Stardew Valley.

Glad this game came out.. it really filled a much-needed gap in the Steam catalogue. If you're tired of soulless "AAA" games... do yourself a favor and give these little gems a try!

Wishing all the best to Crytivo and Pixeduo Studio. Hope they keep improving the game! And thank you for not slapping a high price tag on it! <3

As soon as I saw this Steam page, I immediately bought the game. Got in love with the trailer, the colours, the music, everything. Even Matt, hey Matt??? I love you man! <3

BUT.... but then I opened the game, and my experience was totally different. Tone mapping is completely unbalanced. All colours go more to the white, the brightness is very high, and you cannot really distinguish all the tones of each colour. Also, the game isn't compatible with HDR, which is an essential feature for a game like this (at least for me).

So yeah, I didn't even last 20 minutes inside the scene, I couldn't resist. Such a shame. :(

I really hope you will fix it Matt, the idea is awesome. <3

After nearly five months of deliberation on whether to leave a positive or negative review, I’ve finally decided to give S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 a positive vote. My main reason? The game has rekindled the joy of returning to one of our most cherished worlds, even if its current state is a mixed bag.

There’s a unique thrill in stepping back into the zone after such a long hiatus. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 offers not only a sprawling world filled with both nostalgic and new landmarks but also revisits the classic gameplay mechanics that have long defined the series. For veterans like myself, exploring both familiar routes and undiscovered corners of Chornobyl creates a compelling blend of nostalgia and excitement. The essence of survival horror, atmospheric storytelling, and the relentless tension of the zone feels true to the series’ roots. It’s a reminder of why we fell in love with this franchise in the first place.

The game world is vast and varied, providing hundreds of hours of content. Even in its current state, the potential for growth is immense, especially with the promise of official mod support in the future. There’s a foundation here that, despite its imperfections, hints at even greater experiences in the long run.

However, no review would be complete without addressing the downsides. The game suffers from a number of technical issues. Many bugs have plagued the initial experience—some have already been resolved, but the sheer number and severity, including crashes and extreme lag (with some players reporting frame rates barely reaching 5 FPS), cannot be ignored (it took weeks to solve even the most simple bug causing those issues.. just because they decided to release enormous big patches with more that 1.000 fixes. Unacceptable to wait that much while there are people who couldn't play the game, just because it's cool to say "we fixed hundreds of bugs....). Additionally, still now, the graphical fidelity is noticeably below the quality displayed in the trailers, and key features such as A-Life 2.0 are still incomplete and bugged. These problems make it feel as though a full-priced Early Access version was released prematurely, leaving many players frustrated in the early months of its launch.

The Zone is like a radioactive miracle: it's fascinating, unique, alive... but every breath it takes can be lethal. And there you are, caught in the middle, wondering whether you're witnessing a new beginning or the antechamber of extinction.

Despite the setbacks, my overall vote is positive—not as a blanket endorsement of a fully polished product, but as a heartfelt encouragement to the developers. With the majority of bugs now addressed, the game is definitely moving in the right direction. I look forward to a definitive release soon—one with improved graphics, better optimization, a perfected A-Life system, and the minimum number of bugs possible. The passion behind the project and the commitment to continuous improvement have made all the difference. They have given us the opportunity to return to our favourite zone, a place of enduring memories and immense potential, and that in itself is reason enough to remain optimistic.

Ultimately, while S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 may not yet be flawless, its promise and dedication to refining the experience make it worthy of support and anticipation.

The restore of the backup of my savegames didn't work in any way. Also, updates of this new version are mainly for GTA online, with a non-necessary (for me) upgrade on visual details.

It shouldn't be a separate version, but hey. Such is life! I wasted more than 100GB on my disk (and the time to download it) to discover this. Meh.

The game itself isn't that bad. It's quite decent, compared to all the others similar games on the market, but it's obviously way worse than the previous one, which is absolutely AWESOME.

This game lost a lot of the beautiful mechanics implemented in the first chapter, implementing new stuff that are absolutely terrible. In the first one, combat feeling was so much better, and also exploration and vaulting were so much more satisfying than what we have here. But there are TWO things I absolutely HATE about this game:

1) Keybinding: atleast for MK players, almost each move you unlock in the skill tree, is binded to a different key, resulting in a nightmare to remember which key to press to perform them! After 100 hours spent in this game, I still can't remember how to use most of them, resulting in using almost the same moves all the time.

2) Agents and firearms: after months of complaining of the player fanbase, who was asking for firearms (already included in the first chapter), they decided to release an update to give us those, which is awesome, if not for the fact that if you want to unlock them, you're forced to play dozens of particular missions that not only are suggested to be completed with OTHER players, but they have to be completed multiple times.. resulting to force the players to extreme grinding for hours and hours... and for what? Just to unlock them. This is absolutely the worse thing I've ever seen for a game like this.

On top of this, on a technical level, the game doesn't have support for the most recent technologies, like latest version of DLSS and FSR, or Frame Generation.

Concluding, the game isn't that bad, and it may be worth it for a very discounted price, but if you haven't played the first one, please. Play that one, because it's so much better in almost EVERYTHING.

Same game, same dlcs, same PARADOX.

The game is reaaally good.
I can absolutely suggest it to those who want a relaxed experience with an adventure that doesn't require particular abilities or knowledge of any kind. The visuals are really good and supports all the modern technologies, there is dynamic weather and the framerate is really good. Also the music are well made and fit just perfectly with the scenario.

On the gameplay side, there is a good or bad side, based on what type of player you are.
Your main objective is to progress the story with your mach and restore to life an abandoned planet. This is made by completing a few basics quests and collecting several resources scattered trough the planet. The bad side on this (again, not for everyone) is that the game is a ONE SHOT experience. There is ZERO replayability. Once you finish the story, there is simply nothing that incentivate you to give it another shot. Not a single thing will be different. Everything is scripted to lead you to the same path.

So it's your choice to understand if this game is for you, but one thing is CLEAR. The journey is worth at least a shot. :)

I can only say that it fully deserves the "GOTY" title. Not perfect, but sooo good!

Infection Free Zone is a city builder, survival game in a post-apocalyptic world that permits you to establish a base of survivors in a world that is living a pandemic. The original aspect of this game, is that you can actually play in a real world map, with real cities and streets, with real buildings! So you can actually establish the HQ in your house and grow the base from that point!! From there, you just have to scavenge, collect and farm materials, do research, fight monsters and the virus itself!

At this time, the game is already playable with most of the mechanics that will be present in the final game. Unfortunately, a lot of content is still missing and there are several bugs, some of them are game breaking. But I do want to leave a positive review because the devs are working hard to fix those bugs and, at the same time, are implementing new features to the game.

With the hope that they will not abandon this game, and that they will keep the pace, I suggest you to put this game at least on your wishlist, because trust me, it's not the usual survival game! ;)

"Kill..
Loot..
Die..
REPEAT!!"

10/10 baby from STALKER and ESCAPE FROM TARKOV.