Reviews - StarFury2

In a word, probably the best S.T.A.L.K.E.R. experience I have ever had. This is one polished mod created with a lot of dedication and attention to detail.

Graphics is vastly improved, thanks to use of ENB, Atmosfear, Absolute Nature, Texture packs etc. The game gives you a different color palette, dominating by yellowish-brownish autumn tones, that evoke strong feeling of melancholy and fit the STALKER setting perfectly. Absolute nature vegetation gives you overgrown zone, and the sights are just breathtaking at times, even compared to most modern games. One downside is frequent fog weather, with a bad graphic filter that makes fog present indoors as well.

Terrible original sounds of walking, holstering, weapon fire, and pretty much everything else are replaced with much more pleasant ones of higher quality (many inventory sounds seem borrowed from MISERY). Spoken language is Russian, with English subs. This is by far the best combination in my opinion, nut just for being more realistic, but because Russian actors did their voice acting job way better. By the way, the sound of bottoming a bottle of low-quality vodka is hilarious :)

But by far the most incredible part of this mod is its fantastic gunplay! It is incredibly realistic and polished. What you aim - you kill. Makarov can be as effective as G36 if aimed well and used on proper enemies. Enemies are not bullet sponges, but neither are you. Everything you can do to the enemy, such as distant shooting, flanking, peak-firing, head shooting, enemy also does very effectively to you too! Both sides can go down in just one bullet based on aiming and reflexes. This may seem harsh, but somehow works very well - I've completed the game on master difficulty, died many times but not a single time I felt that the game is unfair. It was either I plan my assault badly and got outnumbered, or flanked, or too slow in my reaction. Because of this, Arena missions are very satisfying. The only exception is frustrating endgame difficulty due to enemy snipers popping out and ambushing you from the rooftops, but this is original design.

Finally, there are many concerns about stability of the game, that pops out in google searches. I have to say that in 100+ hours of gameplay I only encountered ONE single X-ray crash (and it was when there was a lot of crap happening on the screen at the same time) making this actually the most stable stalker mod I've played!
The only thing I paid attention to is to always try keep number of active quests in my PDA low (usually less than 4), as instructed by the developers.

To summarize:

+ Polished vanilla experience
+ Amazing graphics and sounds
+ Perfect gunplay
+ Weapon redesign and feel
+ Spoken Russian (Eng. subs)
+ Good performance

- Endgame difficulty (on Master)
- fog effect
- Some weapon statistics inconsistencies (AK74 and FN FAL have same stats accuracy, but in reality they are way different)
- ... no idea, maybe missing blowouts?

Warm recommendation to everyone!