S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

[Vic]

Some post launch PR talk

"love letter to Ukraine"

 

[Necrensha]

I cannot wait until the game is fixed by 2031

 

[Morgoth]

That's not a bug, that's a feature an anomaly.

 

[Konjad]

 

[MasPingon]

JustWorkGodDamnIt = false

 

[Inec0rn]

I was willing to do jank, stutter, crashes but broken and crap AI is a skip for now. Looks like a farcry game at present fuck that.

 

[Herumor]

I pirated the game, tried it out for a few hours, crashes way too much and has these random drops in framerate. I feel like with a 4080 Super, 7800X3D and 32GB of RAM on 4k with all the DLSS bullshit it shouldn't be tanking to 15-20fps when random NPCs pop up near you. It's not constant, it happens randomly - the first time it happened was when I rescued that one guy from the bandits in the beginning. The second time I was talking with the tech in the village, then I met a group of friendly stalkers after coming out of a cave, they were fighting some mutants and the mutants did have numbers on their side, but again, the framerate only tanked when the NPCs were in front of me.

Honestly, it's just better to wait a year or so until patches either fix this shit or mods do. Definitely not worth the price at release.

 

[Dark Souls II]

I cannot wait until the game is fixed by 2031

Average hohol male less than 24 hours after being caught by Zelenskyyyyy's jewsquads and sent into the trenches*.

* - trenches not included due to lack of funding

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

i just saw a video (and have been confirmed it's a common behaviour) of a group of bandits being shot at and they all walked in the same direction, forming "the train", waiting to be killed one after another. enemies in the first stalker would had instantly scattered to encircle the player. it was also plagued by bugs and performance issues, but the game itself was flawless and ai its shiniest diamond. this is unacceptable.

 

[ArchAngel]

I've played it for 3-4 hours yesterday on Xbox Series X (with M&K), on performance mode (that one comes as default, didn't try to change to other one) and so far I am enjoying it. I've done the prologue, the stalker rescue mission (where they blew him up with a grenade while also fighting me..) and the guy that owes money mission (where I used shotgun to one shot kill two bandits at same time while they expected me to go grab the guy's stash), I guess even less friendly AI does not care if you aim a weapon at their heads :D

Graphics are not the prettiest (which is expected for Xbox Performance mode) but game seems to run well. I do not have a FPS counter on screen but by feel I would say it ran 60 fps or something similar most of the time.

The 1st encounter with invisible monster was kind of tough but once I retreated to the bunker hallway I could kill the dude. I hate that they force you to fight at night the whole prologue, I could not see shit.

I left FoV on default 90, not sure if some other FoV is better for this game.

I didn't notice any bugs and I so far I do not have any real complaints.

 

[kangaxx]

I switched on a streamer to see what it looks like... the game looks a bit consoley, are these fears unfounded?

 

[ArchAngel]

I switched on a streamer to see what it looks like... the game looks a bit consoley, are these fears unfounded?

You can turn off most UI elements that make it look more modern.

 

[Drakortha]

I switched on a streamer to see what it looks like... the game looks a bit consoley, are these fears unfounded?

That wasn't actually STALKER 2 that you watched. It's a popular STALKER themed mod for Fallout 4. Real STALKER 2 doesn't exist.

 

[Terenty]

The first Stalker didn't have any a-life either, just some random npcs roaming the maps and stumbling into other random npcs, monsters etc

I remember when the game came out it was ridiculed and laughed at here in Russia after all the hype and promises about a living, breathing zone. Space Rangers had come out a few years prior and Stalker just paled in comparison when it came to AI.

So not having any proper simulation is par for the course for this series

 

[deuxhero]

I wasn't sure if this was just a horribly bugged mess that will be playable in a year or Thi4f tier console shit. Then I became aware there's forced mouse smoothing you can only disable via .ini editting.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

 

[Iucounu]

People on reddit are seriously believeing the first three games had working A-Life system right from the release without any mods. Fucking reddit

A-Life was there from the start, official patches fixed most of the bugs. Mods have nothing to do with it.

 

[Iucounu]

It is exactly like SotC and it's baffling to me that people here refuse to accept this and still bitch about it.
No A-Life, stupid NPCs, respawning enemies and shit - all of this was in the first game and it became a cult classic still. Bitching about lack of A-Life is also a classic pastime on gaming forums

So essentially almost 20 years later gaming still hasn't progressed. More demanding graphics and effects but besides that nothing has improved. I cannot understand why anyone would bitch about that, either!

You're also conveniently forgetting that A-Life was a listed feature up until the FINAL day before release. They blatantly lied to everyone.

https://www.stalker2.com/ still mentions it: "A-Life 2.0 life-simulating system builds a holistic live environment where player's actions have an impact on the world of the Zone." (have they forgotten to remove it?). In practice it could mean anything, of course, it's not exactly a legally well-defined term.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

 

[Brickfrog]

Played for about four hours after work yesterday. Performance on default settings was pretty bad but not quite unplayable on my 3070. After some tuning I was able to get 90-150fps with only occasional stutters. No obvious bugs so far.

I think there must be at least some simulated life taking place. I heard a firefight break out as I approached an early game bandit camp . When I arrived, the camp was empty with the exception of a unique-named miniboss character that seemed to be scripted to hold his ground. I didn't realize that the area was supposed to be filled with bandits until I looked up the location online later. I can only assume that the bandits were drawn out of the camp by something that aggroed them.

AI combat intelligence seems to be extremely hit-and-miss. Sometimes humans will take cover and peek appropriately, flank you, use grenades, etc. Sometimes they run out of cover looking towards nothing in particular during a firefight.
Mutant AI seems to be functioning properly. Bloodsuckers in particular are fun because they use their invis to flank you as much as possible. On the other hand, mutant dogs will do the "video game animal" thing where they run up to bite you once or twice, and then back off to run in a random direction for a few seconds before returning. I would prefer if they just stayed on you as a real animal would, but that would probably be quite frustrating for a lot of players so this is more of a personal opinion. At least the AI seems to be functioning as intended in that regard.

My biggest gripe so far is with the health system. The basic medpack is plentiful, light, and can heal you to basically full health in a matter of seconds. This is what I would expect an expensive late-game medpack to provide. I would have much preferred for early game medpacks to be heavier and apply a slow heal over time so that they cant be spammed to trivialize combat. Most other consumables seem to operate on similar principles. This means you don't have to put a lot of thought into what you're bringing on your next expedition besides weapons and ammo. Hopefully this changes in the mid game as more items become available and different threats need to be accounted for. If not, someone will probably make a mod to satisfy me eventually.

In spite of all that, the exploration is good. The combat is good when the AI isn't being silly. The economy balance seems fine so far, I like that most bullets are actually scarce and will chew through your earnings if you aren't efficient in combat. This might change by mid-late game if its too easy to become rich. It should also be mentioned that the environment is phenomenal.

Overall the release is choppy but the core game seems fun. I would say that its a day one purchase for fans of the series and everyone else should check back in 2-3 months. I expect future patches will fix most of the main complaints, and if this game is as moddable as others then we'll probably get a lot of content in the long run.

 

[ArchAngel]

It certainly seems way less buggy than games made by some other eastern region devs that like Owls and cats.

 

[Brickfrog]

Day 1 Owlcat enjoyers will not give a shit about the bugs in this release. Of that I am certain.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Day 1 Owlcat enjoyers will not give a shit about the bugs in this release. Of that I am certain.

Owlcat enjoyers when comes to bugs

 

[Readher]

i dont get why people keep treating anomaly as some kind of benchmark for what stalker should be. sure it looks nice and is mechanically impressive but otherwise it's literally just endless fedex quests

It's a nice sandbox, and while they tend to have lower highs, their nature means you can spend long time with the game and really immerse yourself in the world. Playing Anomaly and just being one of the many Stalkers that do their thing is a nice change of pace compared to being the hero and center of attention as usual. It's also why I really liked some of the older WW2 games like CoD1, CoD2 and MoH Airborne - it always felt like you were just a cog in the machine instead of hero of the country, even if your ally NPCs mostly fired blanks.

 

[Stavrophore]