Yeah, like I mentioned earlier in this thread; this is the new Cyberpunk 2077. With some time and patching, it'll get a renaissance down the road and a second-wind in sales. Even now, its concurrent player count is approaching 120k, already beating Veilguard by around 30k for the first weekend. Personally, I already find it amazing, it really is what I hope it would be, and it can only improve from here on out.

I'm probably not going to get the game quite yet, especially considering the keybinding issues and lackluster performance, but once those are in a better state, I might just get this. I still have the older S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games to play (I've only played the first one a bit but haven't finished it), and I want to finish them before I get into this, but once the game is in a better state, I might get it anyway to support the developers in their unusually trying times. It also helps that the game is on GOG as well.

I bought it. It's pretty good, but I refunded it. I just personally don't feel comfortable spending 60 dollars on a game in not that interested in, I played for an hour and then went back to what I was already playing, so I just decided to refund it.

Here are a couple of screens from my time with the game so far. It's really gorgeous in many instances, but nighttime is a bit of a letdown due to my screen (a VA panel with too much light-bleed in HDR content). Models look good overall, and the environment is usually pretty and depressing, as it should be. Pretty depressing is what STALKER is all about for me. Details on weapons and gear, lamps, clutter and debris is amazing, and many textures are top notch. Reflections are hit & miss, mostly due to the innate parameters that Lumen uses, or so I'm told ("crawling" edges on reflections is a result of de-noise effects in Lumen, apparently). So far, I'm impressed by the game, especially given its immense size. I've seen perhaps 20% of it after 17-18 hours of play.

Edit; For reference, I'm running DLSS Quality (66%) from 4K, all settings on Epic or otherwise max, Frame Generation on (haven't noticed that much mouse-lag, to be honest, it doesn't affect gameplay even on Veteran). I'm getting a fairly stable 110-120fps (capped it at 120 for some stability, DF, among others, said that uncapped frame rates are not your friend in this). My CPU is taking the hardest beating of its life, especially in settlements during storms and Emissions.

Wait wait wait. It's Chornobyl? I was talking Chernobyl until today!

I wasn't very excited about this game, but I'm hearing positive things about it. I may check it out at a later date.

I think a lot of people will give it a quick try, realize it needs some work, and then leave it behind. I would recommend waiting unless you're a dedicated fan of the series and this type of game. There's also a considerable modding scene at play. Given a few patches, and with full features running, this will be quite the experience for those willing to game outside modern shooter conventions.

It was called chernobyl but they changed it to the Ukrainian spelling chornobyl after russia invaded Ukraine.

I will definitively pick it up, though I have no idea when I'll have actual time to play it - I don't mind about the jank, some of my all time favourites are full of it, and bugs will be ironed out. As someone said, bad game will be bad no matter how much it's polished on release date, good, but buggy game will get better with time and patches.

I haven't been able to play most of this week due to family sickness, but looks like that major patch did a LOT of good! Game went from 78% Mostly Positive to 83% Very Positive in 2 just days! Over 53K reviews too.

Haven't played post-patch myself, had 60 hours of work in 4 days, but I hear the same. 12GB of fixes should be great. I'm glad they re-balanced the repair cost and earnings; it was ridiculous how little money I made. For one hour of exploration, I was lucky to scrape together 7-8k by selling loot, but repairs would be 10-12k or more. I didn't make any money in about 12 hours of play-time.

The also changed some values on mutants, some of the health pools are verging on nonsense. I had my first properly terrifying situation when I was beset by 4 (!) Bloodsuckers at once in an underground location. I had 8 shotgun shells, no medkits and no bandages left, and perhaps 25% health, but I got the bastards! Otherwise, resources have been plenty. I think I have 150+ medkits and bandages, and thousand of rounds of ammunition in my stash, as well as several weapons I'm waiting for a technician to be able to upgrade. The whole scrounging aspect of the game seems to be less punishing than in previous games, I never feel like I'm running out of resources while out. The main challenge is managing weight!

So far, all in all, I', absolutely in love with the game, it's exactly what I hoped it would be. This is the only gaming experience this year that really delivered on most fronts.