So far, I've had a blast playing. I feel immersed in the horrific and deadly world of The Zone. I meet the recommended settings to play on High, but I've lowered the preset to Medium. I still get an occasional drop in FPS or stutter however. Hopefully, a patch that fixes this game's performance will be released in the near future. Once performance gets fixed, I think this game will be worth 5 stars.
Overall the setting, the vibe, the atmosphere is true to Stalker universe.
Visuals are really, really good.
But game is not fully ready. This is mainly seen with game's poor optimization and A-life 2.0 being no existent.
Game requires a serius optimzation work. A-life is not there, enemy just spawns behind you ~50 meters away. You clear the area of some enemies, you start looting, the game spawns them again, you kill them and again game spawns them after a few minutes. Same as cops were in Cyberpunk 2077, you turn away and AI spawns behind you...
If they continue working on the game, then optimization will be improved over the time.
But for A-Life 2.0 part, it requires a serious work on it. AI seems like a placehoder here.
As of writing this. The game is more raw than ready. Needs much more work.
And I did again, same with Cyberpunk.
This game looks nice, I have just 3 hours in STALKER 2 but it is annoying.
What I like:
- graphics look OK, nothing that's WOW 2024! It is not huge jump in quality.
- new STALKER
What I don't like:
- shaders loading every time you start the game
- keybind not workin, you can't change melee (V) and flashlight (L). They are not changable, why?! If you put L in something else you turn on/off lamp aswell
- hit indication and threat indicator. Do we really need this, even on Veteran? I disabled it just to have more realistic approach.
- prolog cutscene by the tower, I was thinking I'll do something but not.
- bloodsucker at the start of the game, what the h is that? It is so hard to kill, and it needs just to hits to kill me. You have to jump somewhere and spend few minutes sniping to get it killed. And it is just few minutes into the game
- day/night cycle. So in prolog is non stop 1:00. Why? It is so stupid. There is nothing what is gonna destroy the prolog if it was like normal day/night. And then in normal game time is going so fast. One minute is like 2 seconds. And is always dark. Fighting with someone 12:00 pm and suddenly it is 17:00. Hope for the mods.
- AI sees you from miles even at night crouching
- I think everything is spawning on me. It is not like in old 3 stalkers - there is everything there and YOU go into stuff, not the other way around
- GAME CRASHED after 3 times trying today. So I was just walking and suddenly everything stopped, and POOF windows desktop
- NPC eating PDA in his hand, objects flying above the ground, enemies flying like crazy after death (CYBERPUNK VIBE, yeah! Please all release your games half done)
- Walking through wall one time. Just went into the wall and then into the room, wtf
I don't know, I was waiting for this and right now it is the same Cyberpunk 2077 - rush the game, release it and then patch it for next 2 years. 150GB with this damn OFFLINE GOG bug all the time is nightmare.
I love STALKER, big fan, been playing since SoC, but this game plays like an early access release, full of bugs and there's no gameplay balance to speak of. If you were expecting something polished like Call of Pripyat, this game ain't it (right now). Only buy if you can put up with bullshit a la Clear Sky.
Here is the TLDR: If you were expecting something like Call of Pryipyat you will be disaponted with the "intro" to the game. In fact I'm going to play that again while I wait for this game to be finished.
You cannot Keybind everything, like the quick melee attack is PERMA bound to V, your headlight is perma bound with L. So if you bind "Select Fire Mode" to V or L, you will also attempt to turn off your headlamp or do a Knife Attack whenever you switch fireing modes.
I'm using reccomended SPECS and I'm still getting stuttering and variable frame rates on MEDIUM default settings.
I don't think Quick Access items are working correctly? In the other stalker games F1 F2 F3 F4 would be individual items. I like to rebind first aid kits to H and Bandages on F2 so I try to rebind my keys but now its only one button? Like the game just randomly decides which item would be better for me when I hit H and it wont let me rebind Quick Access Item 2 to F2.
Inventory doesn't feel as fluid to me as say Call Of Pryipyat's Inventory, super don't like that I can't move while its open.
Radial menu seems like a good idea, but again I don't know if its working correctly. Like you can't turn your headlamp on using the Radial Menu unless you pull your gun out first.
Honestly I feel like its been VERY consoleifyed/made to cater to controllers (not the mutants). If I had enough willpower I would have waited a year/until the first expansion came out. They'll probs have fixes or mod fixes by then.
Of course, this was made on launch day and the game was partially developed into a Warzone so I understand at a certain point you need to release the game to recoup losses. Just Fu*king sucks this is the gameing world we live in today. Buy the game at launch but you still have to wait for it to we "playable".
I am giving it a 1 because I SUPER don't think you should buy it until fixes or mod fixes are pushed out. Then buy the Ultimate Edition.
