Stalker 2

[Tombstone]

Early reviews are a bit average

To be fair, the guy in that who gives it 60/100, says "But if you’re a fan of games like Fallout: New Vegas, or you enjoyed past Stalker games,then this one is worth following up on "

Which seems an odd thing to say, being like Stalker 1 and Fallout New Vegas are only good things imo !

 

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im gonna let it "cook" till 4pm

Likewise lol

 

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Average review score has dropped from 77 to 72...

Fine with me, if its in the 70s on there , for some of the reasons that those people have given (I didnt like Stalker 1...well duh, not a surprise that you dont like Stalker 2 Mr Einstein reviewer), then its probably in the 80s for me

 

[Tombstone]

For me it looks like something to pick up next Xmas.

I gave Cyberpunk a year before I played it.

Thats fair, not a surprise really as you've said as much throughout the thread and didnt like the previous Stalker so makes sense that you'd wait a year or so before considering getting it, sensible decision for you.

 

[Tombstone]

All I'm getting from these comments is that yes, it is in fact a STALKER game.

Do you remember playing SoC without the fan patches?

Yup, I'm watching Cohh play it at the moment and it looks exactly like what I expected (and wanted) from a Stalker 2 so far.

 

[Tombstone]

I bet a lot of the bad reviews are because they don't like these types of games

lol, that sort of thing reminds me of IGN who had a reviewer review a Total War game, cant remember which one it was) who confessed in the review that he really disliked turn based games...not a surprise when he then gave it a bad review. Made you wonder why on earth you would give that person a turn based game to review in the first place

 

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That's enough for reviews skimming, time to see it for myself at 4PM. I did play half of Cyberpunk after launch...

The cyber half or the punk half?

 

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It's so common place now to expect a mess on release it's almost got to the point of being accepted. Should be really good, in six months.

Not sure its that its accepted, I think its probably more that peoples definition of a "mess" varies. A game has to be in a pretty bad way for me to call it a mess.

 

[Tombstone]

All the people preordering don't help with the state of game releases. Just saying...

I remember bad games even before the days of pre-ordering

 

[Tombstone]

It's looking as though this day zero/one patch, plus probably a hotfix shortly to be released for critical/important issues is more like the build that reviewers should have ideally been testing. From there, it's probably another large update away from being considered acceptable/good to I'd guess most people outside of fans of Stalker. All in, that's probably at minimum a month away.

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I'd rather the game be delayed.

You may not be in the minority, especially just before Christmas month when money is tight for a lot of people. I guess the thing with bugs etc is that its a very personal thing and varies from one player to another as to what their tolerance level for bugs is. If a game is fun to play then I have a higher tolerance for its bugs (example being something like Space Marine 2) than if a game isnt fun to play (example being something like Gollum)

 

[Tombstone]

Never played a stalker game. What's it like?

Sort of like a single player, escape to Tarkov, but not an extraction game

 

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Unforgiving, harsh, lonely, intense, brutal, be aware of your surroundings, throw a lot of bolts, but if you get it-rewarding.

Essentially a game version of being married to Amber Heard

 

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So why did it release an hour early?

Was always supposed to be 4pm wasnt it?

 

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I cant seem to turn HDR on. All options greyed out even though it's turned on in windows.

HDR is working ok on mine, looks quite snazzy in the darker areas too, dont know if thats predominantly due to the HDR or my OLED though

 

[Tombstone]

MARKED ONES! I have good news...

Alright so first impressions, I am 87 mins in just past the 3rd scanning point, done that bit and watched the cutscene and now on the way to the next waypoint. So far I've done some combat, roaming around, indoors/outdoors, anomalies, monsters, looting - Classic Zone shenanigans.... Zero stutters, hell even at 4K with DLAA I can get 45-55fps but there's no reason to use DLAA on this as per previous comments since it is UE5 and works best with an upscaler.

DLSS Quality is perfectly fine but then DLSS Performance looks the same so no reason not to use that for the extra fps. I can see up to 91fps average without Frame gen here and averaging 77fps. With Frame Gen it's 100fps+ mostly. Frametimes seems smooth. The game defaults to Epic settings and there's no way to turn off motion blur only set it to low so an Engine/ini tweak may be needed as is usual for UE5.

Not encountered any bugs yet either so am assuming all of these reviews saying bugs and stutters/fps drops were exactly as I assumed earlier today, that they were played and recorded pre-patch.

the audio is awesome, the cinematic quality of the cutscenes and general action and mechanics I am enjoying more than the OG trilogy. The controls need some getting used to but that's fine.

Mouse sensitivity by default is way too low, 12%?! I whacked that uyp to 60~ and aim sense was also too low, now 35.

Full screen vs Windowed Fullscreen vs Windowed is glitchy though. Fort some reason in Windowed Fullscreen the game renders are a pseudo resolution (3072x1728), but put it into Windowed mode or Exclusive Fullscreen and it is at normal 4K - Weird.

The black levels are perfectly black even in SDR mode, and I can see there being room to tweak this to near perfection though I have not played with the settings for brightness/gamma yet. Everything feels nice and polished in-game though.

So far it has beaten the expectations I had after seeing the first reviews pop up earlier today. Let this be a lesson to all that reviews aren't exactly to be fully trusted and I think this is why they enforced the tight review window because if the reviews came out a week ago, a whole load of people would have cancelled their orders no doubt, at least 2 hours beforehand people can try it out and refund if needed, but as it turns out, that is not needed for the most part.

Excellent stuff.

Regarding Frame Gen, FSR 3.1 Frame Gen is not as performance+ as DLSS Frame Gen. I clocked the game fps just below 100fps with FSR FG, but well over 100fps with DLSS FG.

For ref I am running a 12700KF, 64GB DDR4, 4090 and 4K 240Hz OLED. I watched all the reviews earlier today of reviewers with 4090s stating all the performance issues and bugs, and fully expected this too but hey, here we are with none of those issues lol.


There are invisible monsters that chuck stuff at you, the first encounter is in that building you scuff through to get to the other side. Just run away

How dare you go around being positive about a new release, dont you know the gamer agenda is to slate every new release !

 

[Tombstone]

I've seen a couple of oddities in the way that the NPCs/Ambient life is working, in some situations it seems to spawn things in a different manner when you load back saves.

First time was when I snook into what looked like a deserted base, I climbed some guard towers to kill the people up there, came back down and got ambushed by a pack of rats that killed me. Upon reloading a quick save the base was suddenly teeming with enemies, all the entrances now guarded by 4-5 people. That took some work to get out of, every time I reloaded the save the enemy positions seemed to change.

The second was I'd quick saved when approaching some loners at a campfire, shortly after which they were ambushed by bandits that killed us all. Reload, this time it's a pack of boars that arrived. Reload, now it's a bloodsucker.

That sounds like a positive thing to be fair, means a person cant just go back to a previous save and have ESP like advantage of knowing exactly what/where all the enemies are.