Posted on: December 29, 2024

zolarius

Games: 434 Reviews: 1

It needs TLC

I want to give this game a good review; sadly I cannot. Technical: The biggest issue is the optimization. I am running this game on a RTX 3090 with a R7 5800X3D and 64G RAM. At 1080P Medium settings, I am lucky if I can hit 60 FPS. Frame rates constantly dip to 30FPS with 1% lows of 8FPS....at 1080P Medium! I would love to run this game at 4K, but then it only gets 30ishFPS highs. While you may think the card and/or the processor are under max load....you would be wrong. At these settings, my GPU doesn't cross 70% utilization and the CPU doesn't hit 50%. Gameplay: This is a lot like the other S.T.A.L.K.E.R installments, though a little easier in my opinion. For fans of the franchise, it will scratch the itch. Storyline is good and different paths are available dependent on the choices you make. The voice acting does leave a little to be desired. The world is "empty" in that there are not events, NPCs, enemies, and hidden secrets around every corner. This is the exclusion zone and only the crazies and desperate come here. There are a lot of POIs, but they are empty locations with the same loot of food, drinks, and ammo; once you've cleared one, you know what to mostly expect from the others. The other POIs are stalker stashes, with mostly the same loot, sometimes a broken weapon, and there are a huge amount of these. The best locations aren't typically seen on the map, the anomaly clusters with an artifact, or 2, hidden in them. Gunplay is good, though some of the attachments and upgrades need to be addressed; EX the laser light upgrade for the Buk is not centered on the crosshairs, therefore is useless for visual targeting. Conclusion: This is a good game for the average player, a better game for fans. The optimization is holding it back, as well as many bugs. Hopefully this will be fixed in time and I can edit this review to reflect that.

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Posted on: February 15, 2025

jasonkilanski

Verified owner

Games: 56 Reviews: 6

Currently unplayable for me

After an almost 120gb update the other day, and then another almost 8gb update right after, the game is currently unplayable for me. Since the updates were so large, I decided it would be best to start a new fresh game. Immediately in the first cinematic, it was stuttering using the graphics settings that were working before. When I finally got to a place where I could access the menu, I lowered all of the graphics settings to "low" or "off". Even then, I'm getting stuttering and lag. The game used to work fine before the mid-February updates. I'm using a Nvidia 3060 Ti, so it's not the latest and best, but it should be more than capable of handling this game set at the lowest settings. Despite the poor optimization, I don't regret buying the game. I just hope they finally fix it to where I can play it again.

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Posted on: November 25, 2024

DirtyZ123

Verified owner

Games: 44 Reviews: 1

Performance Kills All Enjoyment

If there is a good game experience to be had here, it has been destroyed by awful optimization. Having to wait for 5 minutes every time you start the game to compile shaders should be a crime. Every time you load a save it takes over a minute and you still enter the world with only 25% of the assets being loaded. Coming into an area with multiple NPCs makes the game lag out for 30+ seconds. I'm running on a Ryzen 7 5800X and a 7800 XT. While not being top tier, they're better than "average" and I can't see my hardware being to blame for this bad of an experience. To add to all of this, the enemy AI in the game amounts to aimbots that can pop in on a moments notice. Even when in cover they will spot you 100+ yards away instantly and take you down in a couple head shots. The invisible mutants will attack you before you have a chance to react and by the time you can heal yourself, they're knocking you down to start the cycle over again. If you do get some shots off it won't matter because it's going to take 6+ point blank shotgun blasts to (maybe) take them out. Then you get to wait for over a minute while a save loads and think about how you'll just get wiped again and repeat the process. Not sure I could really recommend the game in its current state.

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Edited on: September 19, 2025

Posted on: June 2, 2025

Clutchman11

Verified owner

Games: 156 Reviews: 2

Nostalgic, keeps the atmosphere - fixed

NOTE: See review update at bottom, after the indicated line The game has the atmosphere of the original Stalker games, including the bugs by the looks of it. I would love to be able to play decently it for once. The most annoying bug is not being able to compile/unpack shaders, which means that for every 5 minutes of play you spend 25+ minutes restarting the game and hoping you get further than the startup screens. Once into the game, if you manage to actually start, then it is a waiting to see if the game will crash after walking 5 meters, 50 meters, or if you're very lucky, you just might get halfway to your destination before the game crashes due to not being able to unpack shaders (?!?!?). And that is with patch 1.4.2 If you do manage to get in to a fire fight, expect to have to play through that fight atleast 15+ times. Because you can't save without enemies nearby, and the game crashing every 2-3 kills due to shader issues, a 2-5 minute fire fight may take 3 days to actually get to a state where you can save. If the developers actually manage to fix that issue, then the game may just start to become worth the €€€ I spent. ---- UPDATE ---- Updating/changing my review. Once I got frustrated with all the updates seemingly making my game experience worse, I started looking at other possible causes. One possible cause that I found was a bug in intel CPU's which could damage the CPU itself (caught that in time with a FW fix), unfortunately this fix didn't help. The other possible issue was with the Intel Turbo Boost Technology being activated in the BIOS. Turning this off, has resulted in just 2 crashes in the past 3 months! Which is an enormous step forward from crashing every 5-10 minutes (sometimes on startup). Not all bugs have been fixed, a really big issue is dead NPCs disappearing under the ground. Especially when it is a key NPC whom you need to open a door/stash. For example in the Concrete Forest, where you need to jump down the tower and retrieve the key from a dead NPC at the bottom. This NPC is underground, as the icon (v1.15+) shows, but no way to interact with as it's too far away. Hoping to see these fixed in upcoming patches, as well as looking forward to the upcoming DLCs, considering I bought the Ultimate Version.

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Posted on: December 16, 2024

Herr_Karn

Games: 33 Reviews: 5

FarCry: Stalkerpunk 2077

a ton of missing features. a ton of gamebreaking bugs. a ton of very questinable decisions. overall it feels like a massive downgrade. sure. graphics pretty. ty unreal engine.

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