Recent reviews by Alek Michael

AMAZING soundtrack, fun story, and all around upgrade to FFXIII's battle systems. PC port is shot and crashes a lot but with patches the game is stable.

Note: I played on Veteran with no mods. I was fully invested from the start and sunk weeks into playing. I've only played the first title SoC (Shadow of Chernobyl) which is one of my favorite games.

World is huge and each location varies greatly. Anomaly areas are BADASS and I really wish they went balls to the wall and had more than 5 or 6 locations. Atmosphere is top notch (with combat music off; it sucks.) Story is kind of eh, the English voice acting is cheesy and character motivations don't really make sense throughout the story (especially Skif who straight up questions actions he chose to do???) I was never bored throughout the story and some scenes are very entertaining both in a bad and good way.

The weapon variety is really sad it feels like there's about the same amount of gear as the first game which is kind of pathetic. If you're addicted to looting and don't really care about variety of loot then this game will be your jam.

Combat could use some work. Human enemies spam grenades with perfect accuracy which is really annoying and the mutants are not fun to fight because of how tanky they are. You either need to jump on a car and shoot them a million times or constantly peek around a wall to shoot them a billion times. Getting to late game helps make the mutant fights a little better but the AI isn't as interactive with the environment as I wish they were.

Anomalies are really cool but I also wish the devs took time to make them interact with the world more. I kept expecting puzzles, combat moments, or destructive objects that involve them but they're 95% just a hazard like the first game.

The weight of items is absurd. Be ready to not have full running speed for most the game until you get an exoskeleton or good artifacts. Upgrades are a really cool idea on paper but they don't really change your equipment that much besides being able to slot artifacts for free. Repair costs are absurd and you will struggle with money unless you walk back to base A LOT to sell guns you find. I only started making a lot of money late late game. To be fair, there's not much else to buy since enemies dump med kits, food, and ammo.

Although you will need to walk A LOT back and forth locations, I never had that long of walk back to base. Maybe the worst walk I had was like 5-7 minutes because I didn't want to pay guides to fast travel. There's also always new buildings/locations to explore and artifacts to find on trips so if you plan things out traveling around the map can be pretty engaging.

Animations in general take too long. It's not fun to have to wait for Skif to pull out his bag or use items. Gun jams are fun to spice up battles but it takes Skif forever to fix his guns. (Why do you need to check the chamber after clearing the jam???)

Overall, I like SoC a little more since it doesn't feel like AI improved in HoC and the mechanics feel snappier in SoC due to no long ass animations. However, this is still a wonderful title and I truly believe with some mods and tweaking HoC can easily outclass the first game in every department.

Totally worth your time and if you're invested in STALKER already or love exploring/looting desolate areas. Fights can be tense but expect the AI to be stupid and easy to cheese. The vast majority of my deaths were due to hazards or falling to my death. I was truly addicted playing and only wanted to move on to another game during the end which lasts way too long and focuses completely on combat.

Also, the radio is fantastic. I never heard the same song twice from it and it's a shame there's no way to listen to the radio outside of being next to one.

Gives you plenty of fun toys to kill orcs (the best fantasy race) and the nemesis system is genius. The stealth feels snappy and the combat is chaotic and entertaining even if there's some repeating animations in the executions. There's SO MUCH unique dialog for the orcs I don't think I ever heard repeating dialog throughout my 19 hour playthrough. The main missions are a bit lackluster (especially the last two missions) and the story doesn't bring a lot to the table if you don't really care about lord of the rings lore. However, these missions are short and most the time you're just killing orcs. All in all I give this a 7/10 definitely worth the pickup. I got this for like $3 on cdkeys which is more than a satisfactory price.

I played this on steam deck and it ran great running on medium

Great game! Extremely janky full of bugs but the world and NPC interactions is constantly entertaining. I would NOT recommend going for 100% for your first playthrough. Waiting for classes to start and finish is a drag but you can probably just get away with doing your two classes a day and then a mission until you have all the classes complete. Combat is totally broken since the slingshot is so OP but it's still satisfying.

PC controls are totally wack and you need a patch to get 60FPS. Totally worth it for this charming gem!

I had no idea what was going on throughout the entire playthrough and I LOVED it! The escape rooms, although not as difficult as VLR's rooms, were very Intricate and satisfying to solve. I was sort of surprised by the smallish amount of rooms but the story is so insane that I didn't really notice. I love all the character dynamics and crazy logic the game pulls. It's hard to find a good mystery that answers every question and this game definitely does! My favorite character is without a doubt Carlos. He's always like :)

About every 10 or 20 minutes the games will turn you upside down, shake all that you thought you knew, and make you question everyone including the protaginists. Do the characters talk like wikipedia articles? Yes, but the stuff they talk about is beyond interesting. You will be glued to every twist and turn the games throw at you!

The music is awesome, I love the art/style, and the escape rooms are extremely satisfying to figure out! If you want a good 60 hour mystery then buy now!

a true fart game for dooky enthusiasts alike... i need a life

Taokaka

My computer can’t run this game

Although I really do enjoy playing this game, the latest update has caused to have to write a negative review.

AC has always been very generous and now they expect players to get 200 megabucks, which would cause years of actual gameplay to accomplish, and expect players to get that to play mars and get only about 1% of that cost back.

Mars does not hand out that many megabucks, and is really short in comparison to the other planets to finish completely.

I would say that although I reccomend the game if you want to idle, that this move SUCKS.

Please, devs, dont turn this into something stupid.

I love this game and this only disappoints me.