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

[ArchAngel]

Penetration is a poorly explained mechanic but it makes a huge difference against most mutants. A good deal of the beefy mutants effective HP comes from armor so it's recommended to get a high pen weapon if you expect bloodsuckers or w.e

I use AP ammo in all my weapons while roaming around and with snipers. With my SMG that I mostly use vs humans at close range I use normal ammo because I aim at heads anyways.

 

[Inec0rn]

Kodex Kensus is a bit unclear on this one, some think it's stalker some think its not. Too hard to judge.

Yes, I was thinking the same thing. The consensus on the game is unclear, but on Steam, it's mostly positive, so I can help you by finally playing it. Unfortunately, it's an unmitigated disaster.

First, you have to fiddle with the settings. To save others the trouble, here's the issue: frame generation, which is on by default, is broken. To enable HDR, you have to switch from windowed mode to fullscreen and then to fullscreen exclusive. Otherwise, the option stays grayed out. It took me 30 minutes to figure out what was wrong—checking my FPS meter and even wondering if I was out of VRAM—but no, it was just that frame generation option.

Then there’s the game itself. It’s dull. Avoiding side missions seems like the best approach since they reward you with nothing worthwhile—just worn-out guns and a bit of ammo. It’s so much fun playing an FPS where most of your shots cause the gun to jam! You can’t tinker with the weapons yourself by using parts from similar guns, as far as I can tell, and repairs cost a fortune.

So, you think stealth is the answer? Wrong. Enemies can spawn behind you—literally out of thin air. I did a quest in the poppy fields and was granted a special gun. Guess what? It was completely worn out, and repairing it drained all my cash. After a few encounters with bandits, it was jamming again. So much fun.

The game is riddled with jank everywhere. NPCs float above their beds, and there are tons of absurd glitches. For example, I did a mission with the Ward to assault a factory. After clearing it, a group of bandits suddenly spawned in front of me. I ran into the factory for cover, only to see Ward soldiers also popping out of nowhere to engage them. Moments later, mutant dogs appeared in waves, all within two minutes. After dealing with that mess, I got a radio message from the Ward colonel accusing me of being a traitor and shooting his men.

This game is a complete disaster.

hot damn, un-wishlisted the game. I'll just play the old x-ray engine games with mods, so the new game has improved graphics at the cost of stability and performance - but is then worse in every other possible way why would I buy this?

 

[Mercatroid]

hot damn, un-wishlisted the game. I'll just play the old x-ray engine games with mods, so the new game has improved graphics at the cost of stability and performance - but is then worse in every other possible way why would I buy this?

Agreed, I uninstalled it a couple days ago and I'm going to refund. Come join us in the Shadow of Chernobyl Mod Thread. It is The Way.

 

[Drakortha]

why would I buy this?

You should buy it because it's new and you want to support the devs through these difficult times. Who cares if the game is a scam?

 

[Mortmal]

Kodex Kensus is a bit unclear on this one, some think it's stalker some think its not. Too hard to judge.

Yes, I was thinking the same thing. The consensus on the game is unclear, but on Steam, it's mostly positive, so I can help you by finally playing it. Unfortunately, it's an unmitigated disaster.

First, you have to fiddle with the settings. To save others the trouble, here's the issue: frame generation, which is on by default, is broken. To enable HDR, you have to switch from windowed mode to fullscreen and then to fullscreen exclusive. Otherwise, the option stays grayed out. It took me 30 minutes to figure out what was wrong—checking my FPS meter and even wondering if I was out of VRAM—but no, it was just that frame generation option.

Then there’s the game itself. It’s dull. Avoiding side missions seems like the best approach since they reward you with nothing worthwhile—just worn-out guns and a bit of ammo. It’s so much fun playing an FPS where most of your shots cause the gun to jam! You can’t tinker with the weapons yourself by using parts from similar guns, as far as I can tell, and repairs cost a fortune.

So, you think stealth is the answer? Wrong. Enemies can spawn behind you—literally out of thin air. I did a quest in the poppy fields and was granted a special gun. Guess what? It was completely worn out, and repairing it drained all my cash. After a few encounters with bandits, it was jamming again. So much fun.

The game is riddled with jank everywhere. NPCs float above their beds, and there are tons of absurd glitches. For example, I did a mission with the Ward to assault a factory. After clearing it, a group of bandits suddenly spawned in front of me. I ran into the factory for cover, only to see Ward soldiers also popping out of nowhere to engage them. Moments later, mutant dogs appeared in waves, all within two minutes. After dealing with that mess, I got a radio message from the Ward colonel accusing me of being a traitor and shooting his men.

This game is a complete disaster.

hot damn, un-wishlisted the game. I'll just play the old x-ray engine games with mods, so the new game has improved graphics at the cost of stability and performance - but is then worse in every other possible way why would I buy this?

Improved graphics? Hardly. In some places, I just reached Icarus, and the wall textures are flickering—a well-known issue apparently caused by overlapping two variants of the textures. Some would say Stalker 2 isn't that bad, but everything keeps adding up, completely breaking immersion and making it unenjoyable.

 

[Mercatroid]

Improved graphics? Hardly. In some places, I just reached Icarus, and the wall textures are flickering—a well-known issue apparently caused by overlapping two variants of the textures. Some would say Stalker 2 isn't that bad, but everything keeps adding up, completely breaking immersion and making it unenjoyable.

"I'm eating this new ice cream and there are all these little chunks of shit in it that taste terrible and ruin the flavor. But other than that it's really good ice cream! I'm eating the ice cream too, guys!!!"

That's like 90% of the cope posts I have seen about Stalker 2 on youtube and elsewhere. Just because something is new doesn't mean it's any good. Stalker 2 is the "New Coke" of Stalker games.

 

[Harthwain]

Rather, modern russians are americanized and instead of seeing the human waves as a display of courage and determination, they see it as wasteful, because american military doctrine sees it as wasteful.

Throwing more bodies into the meat grinder was seen as wasteful since the world started reflecting on WW1, so this isn't an entirely new perspective or strictly an American one.

 

[Ol' Willy]

nexusmods is full on leftard led retardoland. And they full on drink the MSM propaganda.

Actually that was on GSC part, apparently

The most ironic part is that at least 30% of uruk-hai are primarily Russian speakers

Imagine being Russian speaking uruk-hai war refugee somewhere in poland and you can't play the game in the language you know

 

[Ol' Willy]

doesn't seem comparable, this is actual contemporary NATO propaganda

.... is what people were saying about Company of Heroes 2 when the commissar shoots retreating soldiers.

Which is true (in terms of producing a particular stereotype of the Red Army, same as with other negative tropes), but one's pop history and another's blatant propaganda pertaining to contemporary events.

The Red Army being wasteful of manpower isn't "NATO propaganda", its a pop culture phenomena that exists in the east too, independent of western narratives. It was romanticized by poets, talking about wave after wave, so determined and so many are we!
Rather, modern russians are americanized and instead of seeing the human waves as a display of courage and determination, they see it as wasteful, because american military doctrine sees it as wasteful. We're all living in Amerika, after all.

Because the game narrative is constructed like some 1980s "empire of evil" b-move a-la red dawn with a good dose of black propaganda. Even the main narrative driver, the story is told by an officer in gulag who would be executed soon. And then it goes with the stories like flaming the entire village with peasants inside because Khorn wills it. Make a game like this about any nation and they would go apeshit (except Germans, they are cucks now)

If you want to display the wastefulness and inhumanity of such war, you can do a good work with it.

The narrative driver is a guy in late 40s, veteran, telling the story of his war to a younger one - you would think his son. The guy and his brother were drafted and ended up together in the unit commanded by total asshole who wasted people like they're free - with nkvd officers preying on them too. He tells the story from battle to battle, the carnage and death all around, the inhumanity of their commander and other horrors of the war, while two brothers just tried to survive it all. It ends with one brother surviving, and other dying in his arms, and then it is revealed that the survivor is the younger guy uncle, while his father is the one who died.

Is it that hard to do?

 

[Brickfrog]

And then it goes with the stories like flaming the entire village with peasants inside because Khorn wills it. Make a game like this about any nation and they would go apeshit (except Germans, they are cucks now)

Who do you guys think would be the best studio to make a game out of the film "Come and See?"

 

[AlwaysBrotoMen]

Can anyone give a detailed review about this game of the year codex candidate?

 

[Brickfrog]

Can anyone give a detailed review about this game of the year codex candidate?

"Mods will fix it."

 

[anvi]

Can anyone give a detailed review about this game of the year codex candidate?

Infiltrated by commies like everything else.

 

[TheKing01]

Went into it with renewed optimism. Using the Ukraine VO.

World still feels dead. Maybe it's because I've spent too much time with Anomaly's monumentally better A-Life but it's just hard to look past. For all the things they obviously copied from superior modifications to their games (spoiler: the PDA is a worse version of the one from Anomaly's), not including the NPC simulation is an odd, and ultimately immersion-breaking choice.

 

[Gerrard]

Nigger what are you talking about, Anomaly is fucking empty unless you play with some stupid cranked up spawn rates. And the 3D PDA in Anomaly is utter trash with unreadable screen.
There should be an option to disable the animation in S2 as well, as it does nothing but add annoyance.

 

[TheKing01]

Nigger what are you talking about, Anomaly is fucking empty unless you play with some stupid cranked up spawn rates. And the 3D PDA in Anomaly is utter trash with unreadable screen.

CTE?

 

[baba is you]

After progressing to the latter half of the main quest, GSC's explanation is somewhat questionable.

Let me explain without spoilers, the conflict with the faction was scripted. Yes, the trilogy was like that too. However, the trilogy was basically set up with the faction moving around and fighting as A-life, but in this game, traces of that are only visible in the main quest script.

Is there really an A-life 2.0? As I progress through the main quest, my doubts are gradually turning into certainty.

 

[TheKing01]

After progressing to the latter half of the main quest, GSC's explanation is somewhat questionable.

Let me explain without spoilers, the conflict with the faction was scripted. Yes, the trilogy was like that too. However, the trilogy was basically set up with the faction moving around and fighting as A-life, but in this game, traces of that are only visible in the main quest script.

Is there really an A-life 2.0? As I progress through the main quest, my doubts are gradually turning into certainty.

Might be mistaken, but I'm convinced every encounter separate from the spawning is scripted.

Has there be any evidence to show actual persistence with the NPCs? Would be hard to test since random NPCs no longer have unique factions.

 

[ghardy]

Is there anything about the engine Unreal 5 that precludes such a thing as A-Life?

 

[TheKing01]

Not too many UE5 open-world games of the same ambition to compare it with.

I will say, giving them some modicum of slack, it is harder to do NPC persistence ect. when the world is not segmented. I'd imagine we really haven't come that far from the technical hurdles of Skyrim and it's flawed Open Cities mod.

Which would be excusable, if they hadn't advertised the game as something it's not. GSC really did kind of shot themselves in the foot making A-Life 2.0 one of it's biggest selling points (if not the actual biggest), because now it's going to always be the main point of scrutiny no matter what they do.

 

[Inec0rn]

not at all, braindead AI and heavily scripted events are one of the hallmarks of UE5. In most UE games the player can't even interactively open doors.. you hold X and watch some BS animation. Another thing missed by most gamers is just how piss modern AI is in FPS games, it really hasn't improved at all in decades and I don't think most games even reach F.E.A.R and HL2 level of AI which was smoke and mirrors but still a shit load of fun.

 

[Brickfrog]

I'll write a brief review cuz I can't sleep.

What I like:

• Environment/Graphics
  The zone looks how it's supposed to look to me (like shit, mostly). The graphics are comparable to what we've come to expect from big budget games. The anomalies and weather effects in particular really stood out for me, at least when the latter wasn't crashing my performance. It looks like a AAA game to me, which is all I expect.
• Sound Design
  The gunfire, anomalies, weather effects, atmospheric noise and ukrainian VO's sounded pretty good to me. I wasn't as impressed by the mutant sounds, and the English VO is ass. Also, I like the music that's found in camps. The songs you find playing on radios sounds exactly like the dogass europop that I hear when I watch streams from east europe. This was immersive to me but your mileage may vary.
• Combat
  Combat is... serviceable. A lot of people have praised the "feel" of the guns and I agree. The animations look good and the recoil feels right to me. There's some "weight" to the firearms and it feels closer to Tarkov than CoD. Many have mentioned that there are issues with the AI. But when the combat AI is working, it works. Enemies will take cover, flank, throw grenades, etc. Aside from whatever guns you bring in your two primary slots and single pistol slot, you also have grenades and consumables. The lack of variety in items here doesn't really give you a lot of tactical depth to work with. The gunfights in stalker 2 are fun for me when they're dangerous, but a few design decisions and bugs seem to get in the way of that. I'll talk about those issues more later.
• Exploration
  The map is big and there's a lot of stuff in it. Hunting anomalies is still fun. I had a good time just wandering around, seeing the sights and looking for better weapons/artifacts. The excellent environment and sound design did a lot to keep me engaged. There's some weird, cool looking stuff to find in the zone. The issue for me is that aside from weapons and artifacts, there isn't too much else to actually push you along in progression.

What I didn't like:

• Combat AI and Spawner Bugs
  The mutant AI seems fine. Human enemy AI will be silly and ineffective at times but works more often than not. What made me put down the game was the spawner issue that everyone reading this is probably already aware of. Enemies will spawn near the player on a timer. Some people seem to not care that much, some have installed some mods to try and work around the problem, but for me it destroyed immersion.
• Consumables
  There are four kinds of consumables from what I can tell: One each to recover Health, Stamina, Radiation, and Hunger. The problem is that the most basic versions of each one seems to be all you will ever need. The least expensive medpack will bring you close to full health in about 2 seconds. This can really trivialize combat and suck out a lot of the immersion of a survival game. Drinking an energy drink will only give you one bar of stamina back, but they're so plentiful that it hardly matters. Radiation and hunger are also a non-issue because the solutions are plentiful, inexpensive, and effective. Another funny thing is that there is a bleeding mechanic, but the basic bandage both ends the bleed *and* gives you like 50% health back in 2 seconds. There's basically nothing to think about here when it comes to the survival elements compared to the popular mods for stalker 1.
• Progression
  There are guns, upgrades for those guns, as well as upgraded ammo. There are also various armors and their associated upgrades, as well as artifacts and improved versions of your artifact detecting equipment. Without the more punishing survival elements that require you to scrounge for equipment or risk getting irradiated/dehydrated/starved/bledout/etc there just doesn't seem to be much threat. Consequently, I'm not feeling the "zero to hero" character progression.
• Loot Variety
  As I've already kvetched about, there isn't a whole lot of stuff to find aside from weapons, armor, and artifacts. If you're coming off a GAMMA playthrough to get in the mood for Stalker 2 then you might find the world full of rather meaningless loot.

To sum it up I think it's "fine" in it's current form. There's nothing really terribly wrong with it except the spawner imo. The questions that really matters to me are "how robust will the dev supported mod tools be" and "will stalker 2 have a mod community as active as the previous titles." If the answers are "good" and "yes," then I think we're gonna get a lot of value here in the long run. Modders have been posting homebrew "fixes" since day one, so that's a good sign to me. I'm looking forward to picking it back up when they've fixed the spawner, and then hopefully Stalker 2 GAMMA down the line.

 

[Brickfrog]

Not too many UE5 open-world games of the same ambition to compare it with.

I will say, giving them some modicum of slack, it is harder to do NPC persistence ect. when the world is not segmented. I'd imagine we really haven't come that far from the technical hurdles of Skyrim and it's flawed Open Cities mod.

Which would be excusable, if they hadn't advertised the game as something it's not. GSC really did kind of shot themselves in the foot making A-Life 2.0 one of it's biggest selling points (if not the actual biggest), because now it's going to always be the main point of scrutiny no matter what they do.

I was thinking about this. The original had the benefit of being level-based and didn't need to keep track of that many npcs. I don't know much about code but I assume that must simplify things a ton compared to an open world.

 

[Dedicated_Dark]

Not too many UE5 open-world games of the same ambition to compare it with.

I will say, giving them some modicum of slack, it is harder to do NPC persistence ect. when the world is not segmented. I'd imagine we really haven't come that far from the technical hurdles of Skyrim and it's flawed Open Cities mod.

Which would be excusable, if they hadn't advertised the game as something it's not. GSC really did kind of shot themselves in the foot making A-Life 2.0 one of it's biggest selling points (if not the actual biggest), because now it's going to always be the main point of scrutiny no matter what they do.

I was thinking about this. The original had the benefit of being level-based and didn't need to keep track of that many npcs. I don't know much about code but I assume that must simplify things a ton compared to an open world.

I don't know.. Unity allows additive Async scene loading, by that logic everything can be its own section. Unreal should have that too. There are already genuine loading pauses when moving from one area to another, so it's not like they are running the whole world..

I think it was a matter of priorities and this is a console game primarily.

 

[ArchAngel]

Is there anything about the engine Unreal 5 that precludes such a thing as A-Life?

Well there are mods already that turn on alife that is in the code and it seems to noticeable impact performance of the game