Recent reviews by Ritra

I'm a long time STALKER fan and have grown up playing the original three games extensively, I cannot describe any other game that gives me the same vibe and feeling other than a STALKER game, and I'm happy to report here, that STALKER 2 Heart of Chornobyl delivers wholeheartedly on it's promises, the game has every bit of DNA that a STALKER game should have, and everything else that was a mere concept in previous titles is now more fleshed out and executed beautifully here.

I will say that my experience of the game running has been very smooth thus far, my game runs great at roughly 140-158 frames per second pretty consistently, and that's on a 4070 TI Super, so I imagine any future generation cards will handle the game no problem, I do however have a beefy system and I am playing on high or ultra, so I do understand lower end systems may have some trouble running this game, but the modding community has already created mods that help improve optimisation and the general performance of the game.

In terms of basic gameplay, you shouldn't expect anything drastically different from previous stalker games, there are pre-populated quests in the world, and randomly generated ones you can ask for at specific hub areas, but overall the experience is exactly what it should be, you are a loner stalker, who has broken into the Chornobyl exclusion zone for your own selfish purposes, and how you "conduct" yourself within the zone is entirely up to you, do you want to backstab and betray everyone you deal with? Shooting people in the back for their loot and weapons, or do you stick to yourself, wandering the zone and hunting for artefacts, the choice is yours, and I LOVE that about the game.

Freedom and exploration are really the focus here, you aren't told to go and check out all the landmarks on the map, you aren't told to go and check specific buildings out, you have to make the choices to brave those abandoned ruins in search of loot and swag, but beware, there could be any threat looming in the darkness, and your journey to the destination will be far from easy.

With all that being said, I love the gameplay, it feels fresh, engaging, thoughtful and challenging, and combat is no joke either, when you're fighting off 2 bloodsuckers at once, I can tell you now, that's what separates true stalkers from rookies that get lost to the zone.

I wanted to touch finally on the story, as well as the lore, world building and general vibe, the game almost feels like a re-release of Shadow of Chornobyl, however you are a different character, investigating the "tales of old" which was your actions in the previous 3 games as 3 different individuals, I won't and can't really spoil the story as there are branching paths everywhere depending on your choices, but so far, I love the story beats I've had and the reasons to go and do the things I am doing.

In terms of the art style, appearance and general look of the game, it looks incredible, damn near photo realistic at certain times of day and in certain lighting, playing on High graphics is absolutely ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ incredible, and everyone should get to experience it, but mainly, I just LOVE how the art style of the game retains it's identity from the previous titles, as well as expands upon it with the upgraded and new tech UE5 can bring, I also think that a REALLY nice touch is how the anomalies are equally as deadly if not more so than they used to be, and look a lot more stylised towards the Roadside Picnic novel, if you haven't read Roadside Picnic, I'd highly recommend it, and I'd also highly recommend looking up concept art of the Zone from that book, because STALKER 2 captures it's authenticity perfectly.

Overall, I cannot recommend this game enough, I've faced very little bugs and have only had about one or two crashes in the entire 39 first hours I've played.

I will say this, the game has a slower burn start, but you absolutely do hit a certain point where your gear is better, your weapons are more efficient and your supplies are moderate, and at this point, the game does not hold back and throws dangerous enemies at you in numbers, and at this very point, the game sort of clicks, and it's amazing.

To me, this is a masterpiece, and I will continue to play it for a very long time <3

I was hesitant to pick up TLOU on PC as I wasn't sure how it would have played being a Playstation port, not only that it didn't have the smoothest of launches. My main concerns were more that the skill aspect behind aiming your weapons might feel trivialised on PC where as on controller it feels more natural and authentic to miss shots, however I am happy to report that the combat and aiming itself feels very much balanced and corrected for the PC platform.

I've only run into some very minor bugs, essentially my crouch key not working and being unable to slow walk however a quick reload of my checkpoint fixed this. Graphically the game is very impressive and the game runs rather well once you've downloaded all your shaders.

For context, I have finished both Part 1 and 2 on Grounded Difficulty and have even done so on Permadeath difficulty, also earning the PS Platinum Trophies for both, I of course cannot recommend this game enough, and highly encourage anyone who wants a gritty, survival story driven narrative experience, with some pretty satisfying combat as well, to try it out.

I love these games, and I hope that in the future, Part 2 is brought to the PC platform as well, as I imagine the newer engine, and faster moveset that comes with playing Ellie/Abby would be incredible on modern PC systems where your framerate can go far higher than just the base 60.

Overall it's a must play in my opinion, even if you only play it once on a lower difficulty just for the story, this world that Naughty Dog has carefully crafted should be experienced by everyone.

However, I will say that if you have already played this before on PS4/PS5 I would advise you wait until this game goes on sale as paying the full triple A price for this from Steam for a game that you are licensing and DO NOT own, should be carefully considered.

Previously, my only exposure to Warhammer40k was through painting miniatures when I was a kid growing up, as well as some of the Dawn of War RTS games, mainly number 2 and it's subsequent expansions.

I hadn't even really played the first Space Marine, though I had watched a No Commentary Youtube playthrough to experience the story of the first game, which I'm happy to report, you don't need to necessarily play to be brought up to speed for this game.

That being said, I cannot recommend this game enough, it's a challenging, realistic and most importantly lore accurate Space Marine game, everything this game has done, they have done right, from the combat, to the environments, enemy design, Space Marine design and weapons feel, for not just the ranged bolter variants, but also all the melee weapons that all perform differently and feel powerful and great to use.

This game feels like a classic game that came out during the Xbox 360 era, a game you can just jump in and play with your friends and have fun, with a variety of modes, all of which are included with the base game.

The campaign for this game is excellent, and had various challenges and levels that felt very video gamey, without ruining the plot or breaking the immersion of what it means to be in the grimdark 40k setting.

Where you will get the most replayability in this game is the Operations Mode and the Eternal War Mode, essentially the PVE missions that tie into the main campaign, this sees you playing as a random Space Marine as part of the Ultramarines chapter assisting Titus with his main mission from alternative perspectives, these missions have scaling difficulty and a progression path of not only leveling up your Space Marine to get more talent points, but also to upgrade your weapons from Standard Issue bolters, to Artificer and Relic level bolters that have their own respective talent trees that make the weapons perform like how you would expect a legendary holy bolter to actually perform.

The Eternal War PVP mode is strictly a player vs player deathmatch, or objective capture game mode, which don't get me wrong, is very fun, but lacks some diversity in modes and maps, the maps are good, but feel really large for the fact the game is only a 6 vs 6, I hope this changes and we start seeing more maps, with either a higher player count, or a size that fits the player count for the match, the rewards also felt a bit lackluster with any armor you unlock being purely cosmetic, the currency you earn for wins or losses also felt a bit low, though these matches can be played back to back rather quickly, this may be why the rewards are a bit lesser than the higher difficulty operations as those take much longer and can be far more challenging,

Overall the game feels great to play, borrowing mechanics from other hugely successful and fun to play games like Doom Eternal's glory kill system that helps you heal and recover health, Left for Deads zombie rush/wave systems and the special infected enemy types showing up as different Tyranid or Chaos enemy types, this keeps you on your toes and forces you to think about how to engage each enemy type, or what tools to save for those specific enemy encounter types.

Overall, I think this game is a true love letter to fans of the first, and to 40k Space Marine fans in general, the customisation is unbelievable, and I cannot recall a time where a game's cosmetic only system kept me so engaged, something as simple as changing what chapter you are playing as, brings a whole breath of new life into the game, a common question my mate and I ask each other before we start a mission is "what chapter are we playing tonight?" which just makes us feel so much more invested in looking awesome whilst we purge the enemies of mankind.

I cannot recommend this game enough, it's excellent and extremely satisfying to play and get good at.

Now, for the elephant in the room, this game has been for some reason, compared heavily to Helldivers 2, the games do have some similarities, both have large hordes of enemies that are thrown at you as the player and loadout specific builds that you equip to start missions, but that is where these similarities end as Space Marine seperates itself entirely with it's combo focused melee, kill to survive mechanics and fight for a cause.

Personally, if you want an experience exactly like Helldivers, this isn't it, but if you want a really solid, PVE game set in the Warhammer40k universe, that makes you feel like a badass demi god wearing power armour, then you will really enjoy SM2.

I spent 300+ hours total playing this game, through all of the controversy that occurred with the Playstation account removal in 170 countries to the game breaking "balance" changes that made 90% of the Helldivers arsenal unusable against enemy types.

Overall, with the politics of publishers out of the way, the core of the game is brilliant, it's dumb, hilarious, and you will kill your friends accidentally, A LOT, and that should never change as it's what really makes the game what it is.

Helldivers cannonically get less than 20 minutes of basic training (of which a large percentage die during that training, which is also hilarious as the basic training has no regard for your life as an individual)

The game does what it intends to do, both thematically and game play wise, and it's hilarious how you can tell yourself you are going to do a "zero death run" only to die 3 seconds once your pod hits the ground, the game humbles you, and also gives you the tools and knowledge to succeed and that's what makes the loop rewarding to play.

I am disappointing with some of the decisions the developers decided to roll with, but I'm sure there's a lot about those angles I have no idea about, I can recommend this game, but I can also say that the content has left me feeling like something's missing from the game.

Don't get me wrong, it's cool how our world objectives influence whether we unlock certain strategems and stuff, but it sucks having to wait a super long time between content drops to get maybe 1 extra stratagem that is really fun, until it gets nerfed, the railgun nerf felt to me, like the ultimate direction where the game started to fixate on the wrong stuff, stuff is meant to be overpowered and fun, if players are killing too much stuff, just throw WAY too much stuff at them to deal with, and they'll figure out strategies to overcome those difficulties.

These balance issues have since been addressed by various patches, essentially undoing all the work the devs put in to "balance" the experience, which just ruined it in my opinion, currently, due to how these balance patches felt as a frequent player of the game and coming back to the game now, what makes me somewhat sad is the bad taste that has been left in my mouth from those times where the game felt at it's lowest, I really wish I could say I want to jump in and play this game all the time, with the same interest and investment I had in it to begin with, but frustratingly, I just can't bring myself to want to play it, the game just doesn't quite feel how I expected it would after all this time.

The other issue is the slow drip fed content the devs are releasing, they have since added a lot of quality of life updates like the galaxy map showing more information and also proving more context around how capturing planets in a sector helps you reach other planets controlled by opposing forces in that sector, this was a good change, but there is still a massive third of the galaxy map unclaimed by the supposed third enemy faction the illuminate, which have yet to even show themselves, at this rate, it feels like the game won't see the content drop it needs in time to keep it busy and thriving, and even so, players are slowly losing interest as the new guns and equipment being released are kind of average and don't necessarily feel as good to use.

I do recommend this game, for a dumb, good time with your mates, but I can't wholeheartedly endorse this game as a MUST have since sony screwed over players in all the countries where this game is no longer playable, for me, I have no desire to play further and I have experienced some really annoying performance issues with stuttering and lag the moment the game loads up, this can occur mid Helldive which REALLY ruins the experience as a player, and let me make it very clear, my PC rig is no slouch, so this is quite disheartening to experience, given that the game has run perfectly well before.

I'm not much of a Soulslike veteran or fan, I tried previous entries that were made by From Software and they never really appealed, but after hearing so much about Elden Ring I decided to give it a go, and I have had easily one of the most memorable gaming experiences of my life, I feel like this is a game I will continuously come back to when I need that fix for a Soulslike experience with an open world to explore, I would highly recommend this game to someone looking for a classic, challenging video game experience, just don't read too much into the story, it doesn't make a lot of sense anyway.

If you want an unmatched squad based experience where you NEED to work together in order to survive, then this is a great game to get, the story seems really interesting and the environments are super closed in and closed in, the game absolutely oozes atmosphere, a must buy for any survival horror coop fan.

Really gotta say this game surprised me, lots of fun, ideally played with 3 other friends but can absolutely seeing this game being a real blast when you need that top down tactical fix, can't wait for more content and maybe some more modern weapon updates, hopefully we see more of this soon!

A decent slower and more tactical experience with realistic weapon damage models and time to kill. The game has smaller maps which is noticeable so you wont be experiencing massive battlefield type matches. Overall there is a deep level of customisation as well as gun tweaking to make sure your weapons feel the way you want them to, if you want a more realistic shooter that is incredibly immersive and has excellent sound design give it a go.

A true return to form, Remedy absolutely nailed this game, the combat is fun and your abilities feel like they have weight behind them, the gun feels decent as well. The effects are pretty awesome too and the story is good enough, if you're a fan of SCP foundation then give this a go because it's very much in the same vein.

I remember when Tom Clancy games were heralded as the most realistic military shooters in the business, over the years they have been commercialised so much that they are a shadow of their former self.

Personally my experience with this game started out fun and faded over time, the more I played the more I understood how the game worked but also questioned everything that was done for the sake of "balance"

Gun-play: Easily the worst gun-play I've ever experienced in a game, all the guns feel floaty and weird, the recoil doesn't feel realistic at all as 50 calibre DMR's have slight kick and a 9mm sub machine gun kicks like a donkey, rediculous in my opinion.

Realism: Not too bad, a single bullet to the head from any gun will kill you, pretty realistic in that sense but then operators have all these really weird and wonderful gadgets that don't properly exist and that's fine, it is a video game after all but sometimes they just feel really out of place.

Modes + Maps: Feels like there are 4 maps and 1 mode, you get pretty tired of it pretty quickly.

Gameplay loop: Overall this game has a really high skill ceiling and you can easily invest a lot of time into it, I can easily see why some people go pro in this game and why they would play it but honestly I just don't see the appeal.

Closing thoughts: I'm not a terrible player, I don't consider myself a pro but I wouldn't say I am too bad either, I have won 1vs3 or 4 clutches and brought 2/0 loss games back to a 3/2 win, but honestly I just don't see the appeal to this game, it sucks in my opinion and the feedback for weapons, characters, gadgets just isn't there for me.