I decided to start up S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 today. I had played a few minutes of the intro previously and felt that I needed to be in the right mindset for it before I played more. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is intense in the intro, I died about 4 times, just exploring. Which isn’t a bad thing it never felt unfair it just felt like I wasn’t prepared.

Today, I decided to give it another try, and I finally made it past the intro and into the full game. It really captures one of the feelings I love in early Fallout games. At the start of those games, you are purely scavenging, you have nothing, and every little item you find helps. There’s this anxious feeling when you come across a new building and you’re going through desks, lockers, boxes, anything you can to find more ammo for your gun that’s almost empty or food to eat. The problem is that, eventually, that feeling goes away. You have more ammo than you’ll ever need, and anything you find just ends up being trash to leave behind it’s not even worth grabbing to sell at the nearest town.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 heighens that feeling so far. Every gun fight has felt intense, although there were a couple of times that I felt it took a little too long to bring someone down. But after the dust settles, I’m getting that feeling of really needing to get their gear, compare, unload all their guns to make sure I have ammo, and hope they have medkit on them. The game also doesn’t pause while you’re in the map or your inventory, so I also feel like I need to make sure I’m well hidden before I go through and assess what I’ve got. Fallout games, at least the later ones, can break this immersion because once you go into your Pip-Boy to heal or take stock of your inventory, the world gets put on hold for you. Sometimes that’s nice, so you can reasses, but S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 feels dangerous at all times because the game doesn’t pause for you.

Overall, it really surprised me how quickly I was sucked in. I’m not sure how often it’ll be in my rotation, but I enjoyed my time today nonetheless.