Recent reviews by soft rodvt

full disclosure up top: i'm friends with the developers and am thanked in the credits. i did not receive the game for free.

Chiaroscuro Imago is a delightfully dense and surgically wordy (not verbose, wordy) playable film, where you are (distantly, mockingly) guided through a chilling and thought provoking body horror that touches on themes of economic depression, religion, and the lengths people will go in desperation to maintain a premise. Highly recommended.

runs great on steam deck, just be sure to use the 13ag widescreen fix https://fusionfix.io/wfp#scpt and follow the steps on protonDB to install proton tkg (fixes the red spotlight issue) https://www.protondb.com/app/3929740#PzG1vl2cpZ

💚💚💚

an incredible immersive sim. not too big, not too small, lots of goofy moments, really liking it as a big dx1 and lgs fan. may update review when finished

redoing my review now that i've completed STALKER 2 Heart Of Chornobyl. spoilers!!!!!!



my playthrough on Stalker difficulty took over 100 hours. i went for the Spark path until the ending choice, where I went for the Strelok ending. the game was incredible, it felt like that bit in ratatouille where the food critic guy gets nostalgic and becomes happy for the first time in years. the gameplay did get a bit rough at times, but that's on brand for STALKER. (right down the the gauntlet of exo wearing monolith w/ gauss rifles in tight corridors right before the C-Consciousness tube room, goodness we've been here before haven't we?) A-Life, even after patches, does unfortunately feel like a step down from the classic games. i really missed being able to track other stalkers on the map + the leaderboard of every other stalker in the zone. there is also a dearth of side quests in the end game, which was disappointing after a number of really strong side quests in Zalissya. each other zone feels like it only gets one real "authored" quest at best, with repeatable artifact hunt quests being good sources of money after. that said, what few sidequests there are tend to be quite good: i especially loved the Zaton sidequest chain involving Beard, Sultan, and Sonya. that as well as the early on "find the sensors" quest in Zalissya felt like they could've been in fallout new vegas. the main story was also quite compelling, elevated by great character performances that really got me to care for characters. i especially loved richter and strider and their relationships with skif, scar was electrifying on screen in both english and ukranian, faust is hot as hell and tragic, strelok and kaymanov were really great getting exposition dumps from, korshunov would look great being pegged. unfortunately, maybe this is because i didn't do the Ward path or try out the other endings yet, but other characters like Hermann and Ozersky and Degtyaryev and Agatha just leave the story almost as quickly as they're introduced (or in Hermann's case, reintroduced during SIRCAA) which is a damn shame. it was really satisfying having longstanding questions from STALKERs ShoC, CS, and CoP (like Doctor's real name, the results of the Caribbean Experiment, what happened to Strelok after leaving the zone, if the Generators are even real or not, if C-Consciousness truly still exists, what the ♥♥♥♥ Strelok was showing Doctor in a flashback in ShoC, what happened to Monolith + The Wish Granter, etc). i really hope the untied threads get expanded upon in patches and dlc, because ultimately even though i liked it i still feel a gaping hole in my being. really can't wait to actually visit the generators' exterior in an official capacity without mods!!!!

7.75/10

very interesting game, not sure i fully understood, will amend after 2nd playthru

Cannot recommend for multiplayer. The 30fps cap for multiplayer is still there, making network play a nauseating experience. Not that you can even connect to any of the THREE dedicated servers.

in space... nobody can hear you kiss girls

Homophobic and Transphobic devs. Cancel culture isn't real, but it should be.

halo