I mean, it really fits me. It's got everything: it's a sandbox, it's huge, it's in space and the music, scenery and all-around atmosphere is just phenomenal.
I'm the kind of player who spent months and months running around in the zone, discovering and doing whatever I wanted, where I wanted, in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. I'm also the kind of player who never finished ANY Grand Theft Auto or Saints Row game. Just because I just unlock the maps and the fun stuff, then I just roam around. Same with Just Cause - except there you kind of progress by roaming around and blowing things up.
Also, having put it in borderless instead of fullscreen, turned off V- and G-sync and put FPS at Max on my PC, it runs great. Occasional stuttering admittedly, but they're few and far between. I guess I was lucky, or I did the right thing - anyway, no crashes, no game breaking bugs, no excessive stuttering and while I haven't looked at my FPS count with any software, I can say it runs just fine enough for me to enjoy. Fluid and smooth.
I have a i5 4690K, GTX 970, 16 gigs of RAM, for those of you who are interested in my hardware. Bought it from GOG.com.
The athmosphere is great. Eerie, beautiful, immersive. I feel alone on the planets, I feel like I'm a looong way from home. I feel the jitters whenever I see new plants or animals. I just left a planet with beautiful flying whale kinds of animals in grey - I named themDementors. The music is just right - calming, soothing, unnerving when needed and when something happens it ramps up just tastefully to let me know that "Uh-oh, something's up!". The idea of the gameplay is suited for players like me: I just fly and run around, discover new things all the time, going from planet to planet whenever I see fit - sometimes I return to a planet just because it's beautiful or scary.. in order to get those butterflies in my stomach.
The words I have come to associate it with are: Zen, meditative, immersion, loneliness, calm.
There is room for improvement, sure. All new games have them. That's why I have no, literally NONE, game that hasn't been patched or updated in any way. I'd like to get rid of the occasional, but rare, stuttering. I'd like for the textures to be a little more detailed. I'd like to see some changes in how the HUD works and the inventory management. Most of all I would like to avoid having to hold down my mouse button for a second to use something or to make a change - I can see why this is so for now, but I hope they patch it for a better PC experience.
But as a game, with the technical bits aside, this is just my kind of game. I really love it.
One of my absolute favorites.
