The people in charge of the shooting, looting and running away with the artifact simulator known as S.T.A.L.K.E.R. released an entertaining piece of entertainment for the game’s players—the Zone Bingo card that features everything—in a nutshell—that the players go through in the game being one of the many different spoofy events. The drop of loot that destroys your day, and the fear of an unknown mutant, what else could it be but part of the bingo? Isn’t this bingo sheet sort of a love and hate thing between the players and the zone and what they have been through? They’re like nothing else at all.
So, what is your opinion on this bingo? The official S.T.A.L.K.E.R. account released a bingo card that had items such as “Overloaded with loot,” “Scared by a random mutant,” and “Tried to hide from emission.” They asked the community which of the quests or activities the players have already done and, wow, were they responsive. The feedback was almost as a playlist of the can only be found in the Zone chaotic situations.
To kick off, the first thing we will tell you about the number of users already yelling “bingo.” Seriously. One user, Vladyslav Supruniuk, exclaimed that he had gotten “literally everything for 300 hours.” A user named Xandr_sad said that during the 150 hours of gameplay, they ran into every single item on the bingo card. That’s a lot of mishap in quite a short time period, which really makes sense in the context of the known S.T.A.L.K.E.R.’s unpredictable nature.
Nevertheless, game destressing is not the only thing that the players get from the negative side of the game, as some of the players’ comments reveal the imperfections of the game that the development team is still fixing. The performance problems are the most common, it seems. The user milo17442766 gave a very straightforward example when he said, “Game runs like sh on xbox series (s) especially in some quests.” Ouch. tEnzolinZanatta was the next one with the “Insane fps drop in places full of npcs!” issue. And then there was nnblogger who just noted in a very calm way, “Crashed three times this morning” as if it was just another day in the Zone. Wow.
AngryScot was a bit more…direct and with a straightforward, “I don’t see piss-poor optimized game on that” bingo card as well. It’s totally fair to say that for some players, this could even be the free space on their card. Another truly annoying case was rated as “The loading screen is too annoying and lengthy every time after dying, it makes you wait for a long time,” by Samialharthy99. Waiting…nothing but waiting. The Zone itself is apparently testing not only your mutant- and anomaly-encounter patience but mostly your waiting patience.
After that, there are still those situations that are so gaming, like the ones that every gamer community member would nod their head to. Tdopassion was commenting on the “Found 2 bandages and ‘Cossacks’ in a stash” square, “I open stash and like ‘Are you serious? Only these things?'” Well, that was really us, hoping for something grand and of course, bandages were it. On the other hand, Quelsie Cosplay came up with the “fallen to your death after miscalculation with a jump”, which to be honest, how is that not on the bingo card already? The times I’ve been so sure about the distance of a stride only to realize I made another suicide jump… it’s become a sort of an initiation for me.
One of the player’s stories, CptSummer, shared the following in Ukrainian (roughly translated): “I had a situation where fleshes attacked a burer and bandits. 2 bloodsuckers in the pit on Yantar were fighting with tushkanos. Stalkers walked next to sleeping bloodsuckers.” The Zone just decides, man, it ain’t about you, and creates these wild, and not scripted moments that are beyond imagination.
And then there was the song that got cut out of the game. Corvin_leon said that they had seen and done everything on the bingo card during more than 600 hours of playing, except for the one thing they couldn’t do, which was to find the song “Ukrainian Fury” by Khrystyna Soloviy. It seemed like such a small detail, although it still remains a big deal for the highly passionate players, don’t you think?
The developers even went one step further by offering the gamers a chance to make and upload their own bingos through the template they provided. It’s quite cool that the community is still very much involved in a creative way and also shares their wild and crazy experiences. To a great extent, it can be said that every player’s experience in the Zone is unique, with the random chaos factor and the loot that is not even worth picking up, being there at the same time.
Nevertheless, the game bringers up, the players should be ready for the technical stuff before all this could be called one big happy family. Hip_dp asked a riveting question, whether there would be a possibility of the PS5 having keyboard and mouse… That’s a tricky one. No developer reply was given, but for the players who require that precision in their gaming, it’s actually a very good question indeed.
Well, in the end, this Zone Bingo is not only a fun community post but, as well, a small time part that depicts not only the peculiarity of S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but also its bothersome side. The combination of the element of surprise, the bugs and the player blunders which become hilarious… is what I believe makes the whole package appealing. The players are still sharing the game’s misadventures and even though the game crashes and the loading takes forever, the experience is still what the Zone is all about; we are going to be in for it, the bingo sheet is in the ready, waiting for the next emission to force us to sprint for our lives. Or, the game will crash once more. Either way, it’s gaming.
