▼ Not recommended
1 hrs
Sum-Up
In-depth analysis further down.
[table]
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[th]🟩 Pros[/th]
[th]🟥 Cons[/th]
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[td]
- Decent soundtrack and effects.
- Good amount of interesting secrets / Easter eggs to find.
- Extremely low price point.
[/td]
[td]
- Severely dated visuals that have no place in a 2023 release, even for a mobile port. Yes, it’s a mobile port.
- Mediocre to awful English localization, with several dialogues or environment elements having no translation at all.
- No resolution selector and minimal graphical options, inadequate for a PC title.
- Horrendous animations and controls. The original Resident Evil plays smoothly compared to this game!
- The setting and story are a confusing mix of STALKER and Metro lore, that borderline plagiarizes both on numerous occasions and brings nothing original.
- Level layouts are tiny, often reuse assets excessively, and feel poorly cobbled together in a rush.
[/td]
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[/table]
[table]
[tr]
[th]🟨 Bugs & Issues[/th]
[th]🔧 Specs[/th]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]
- Subtitles may go out of the screen and result unreadable at times.
- Inaccurate collision models.
[/td]
[td]
- 3900X
- 2080Ti
- 32GB RAM
- SSD
- 1440p
[/td]
[/tr]
[/table]
[table]
[tr]
[td]Content & Replay Value:[/td]
[td]It took me 2 hours to complete TDZ3: Dark Way of Stalker, taking my time to explore each level accurately to find secrets, and also achieve a good ending. Apart from the good / bad finale, there’s no reason to replay once finished, as all the other content is linear. [/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]Is it worth buying?[/td]
[td]No. Even if the budget tag of 3,99€ is cheap enough, TDZ3 has too many issues, and a severe lack of quality content, to be worth your money or time.[/td]
[/tr]
[tr]
[td]
Verdict: Bad
Rating Chart Here[/td]
[td]An distasteful crock-pot that mashes together the lore of other popular post-apocalyptic franchises in the hopes of a quick buck from fans. Too bad it’s garbage.[/td]
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[/table]
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https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2955265620
In-Depth
Setting & Writing
With his only son affected by leukemia, and the cure costing far too much, a loving father resorts to the extreme measure of setting foot into the Zone in order to make things right. In this anomalous area plagued by mutants, anomalies and ghosts, whispers of a “Wish Granter” able to grant any desire became the stuff of legend - a legend you now have to pursue.
The rainy, foggy and bleak setting composed of ramshackle camps, devastated infrastructure and untamed forests is adequate to represent The Zone, a concept originally inspired by Roadside Picnic and 1979’s STALKER movie by Tarkovsky. However, the poor visual quality, a decade behind even Indie standards of nowadays, makes it much less atmospheric and enjoyable than it could be. Invisible walls and overly-recycled props that become repetitive not after long further detract from immersion; even if there are some genuinely good design ideas, these are too few to salvage the whole thing. In particular, the animations look comical, as if someone used Source Filmmaker (or even gmod…) for the first time in realizing them.
The narrative premise stems from desperation and bleakness, a recurrence in Russian literature and not bad per se, however the only sufficient voice acting and the dreadful English adaption of the originally Russian script don’t do it any favors, and plunge it far beyond the range of mediocrity. Oftentimes, the events at hand appear confusing at best, if not forced and nonsensical in how they play out. It’s unclear if this game wants to take itself seriously, or if it’s instead a parody.
Exploration & Secrets
You’ll traverse the various levels on foot, their layout is simple and small in size, with invisible walls displaying a message in broken English preventing you from straying too far most of the time. You’ll mainly be on the lookout for mission-critical items that you’ll need to progress, but also a good number of optional interactions (often tied to achievements) will be present, and reference STALKER lore, memes or other games. There’s nothing else of interest to find around, since no other missions apart from the main one are ever present. Sometimes you’ll need to pay attention to threats like anomalies or mutants in specific sections, otherwise there aren’t other factors to threaten your safety in general.
The developers failed to understand that one of the biggest incentives of a place like the Zone is the sense of exploration, mystery and discovery. Making such tiny levels, heavily streamlines and self-contained goes against the main appeal factor itself, and is a major blunder in how the game plays out.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2955265772
Puzzles
Above all, TDZ 3 is a puzzle game in practice. Each level will have you find items in a specific order to unlock doors, destroy obstacles and generally aid your progress. Highlighted by a blue aura most of the time, these objectives may be barred behind tests of skill, like avoiding anomalies, or simply be hidden around. Figuring out what goes where is the main ‘puzzle’ type, without possibility to use something in the wrong way since all interactions are scripted.
Overall the puzzles and item layouts are fairly straightforward: alongside your fellow Stalkers’ suggestions and dialogues, you’ll hardly be scratching your head on what to do next. Sure, getting some items may be frustrating nonetheless due to poor anomaly collisions killing you arbitrarily, or a borked stealth system that just doesn’t work for jack.
Combat & Action Sequences
To break the usual pacing, there are some scattered combat and action sequences consisting of QTEs. The fights won’t require much skill, as enemies will come from pre-determined spawns that don’t change, and you have unlimited ammo plus a fixed or on-rails firing position. There is no sight or ADS so figuring out the trajectory is quite annoying, making contact with an enemy will simply result in a game over, restarting from the latest checkpoint. The QTE sequences were clearly designed from mobile, having you click on the prompts that appear or press the corresponding key, with a UI that was clearly made for mobile and not PC gaming in mind. A single sequence will have you drive a car through anomalies and explosions, with a terrible physics model and uncomfortable handling. Overall these action sequences further highlight the poor quality of TDZ3 in general, and aren’t enjoyable.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2955728103
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