No way it’s got great potential but it’s to buggy for game of the year and the terrible “a life 2.0” doesn’t even work once all that is fixed then maybe.
Only been a fan since 2020. Watching this as I wait for the download to finish. All of the og stalker fans I salute you. Thanks for keeping this shit alive.
The only thing I’m disappointed so far is “A-Life” There is no “A-Life” in the game, only a simple enemy (or encounter) spawner that spawns random enemies or stalker ai’s close to you and sometimes in front of you I was expecting a more interesting a-life but so far we got just the spawner, npc’s do not exist in the zone, they only exist in a spawner folder that picks a random thing to throw at you This is my only problem ! Overall the game is great 9/10 game
@@donutwastaken718 i think its a issue , i had problems with that especially when i had to escape the sphere base , died 10 times only there , and enemy spawned and respawned , killed like over 30 soldiers lol
I’m new to stalker, having only played anomaly and gamma (was gonna play the trilogy but might do that later). Is this an issue that can be fixed through mods, or is implementation of A-life a permanent- non changeable thing?
The one streamer I wanna watch play Stalker, heck yeah. One who’s knows what he is talking about. Mine is installing overnight so get play it later on Thursday
i was so surprised with Skillup review, he sounded so negative, i was like damn...but than i watched the streams and stalker 2 looks absolutely amazing i've played all the stalker games on release and stalker 2 looks really like a true sequel and has everything i loved from older games alright just finished downloading, time to play !!!!
SkillUp's review was good, but some of his takes were misleading and its obvious it was more of a skill issue. Encumbrance was a big problem for him, but he was clearly playing like a kleptomaniac. Mutants are all the same for him, meanwhile he only lists off less than half of the mutant list in the game. Definitely not his best review, so take everything with a grain of salt.
Same I was so sad when I saw the Skill Up review title pop up... Thankfully all the Stalker fans I've seen talk about it are loving it, and that's what matters.
@@deetsitmeisterjd I think that's based on if you're a DA fan or not. Longtime DA fans tend to hate it for how much it strays from what made the previous games great, while newer ones dont mind it since they don't know the franchise too well. Either way, I wouldn't call it terrible, it's a solid six to seven.
@@deetsitmeisterjd yeah thats ok for you man, but i hated veilguard too. i love stalker though. honestly a lot of people bounced off of the original stalkers when it came out for these reasons too, its a niche series. i think we should just be counting our blessings that we are able to play a new stalker game after a decade of hoping.
As a fan myself, I’m sad to see the general complaining for mechanics that make this game what it is Glad someone else is also enjoying it It’s better than the trilogy in every way
Tommy, this is the happiest gamer day of my life! 14 years of waiting that finally came to an end. I don't have the most modern pc, I'm a humble worker who earns a low salary and with a lot of effort I built my pc with a ryzen 5 5600g, an rx 5700 xt and 16 ram. While the shaders were loading I talked to my machine like a schizophrenic, giving it a motivational talk and telling it that everything was going to be okay. When I realized that the game ran perfectly on medium graphics, I wanted to cry with joy and I felt like a 15 year old kid exploring the zone again. Long live to S.T.A.L.K.E.R and long live gsc!
The Stalker 2 is an experience, not just a game or just a product. Modern games don't feel like this, and it's a proof, that the industry has changed, they forgot how to do games, and GSC have reminded everyone now. I wish they had more time to make the game just perfect, but I guess we'll be seeing more patches for those bugs. With that said, I haven't felt this hyped or this happy with anything released in the past decade. My GOTY no matter what anyone says. And probably will stay like this for years to come. :D
Tommy, thank you for your position, for your support and your contribution to the popularization of the project and the stalker community! man, you're the best! :D
I'm so happy for you man, I rewatched your reaction to the e3 trailer many times. I'm waiting while downloading now, my internet speed is terrible here in Italy so I guess taht I'll play it tomorrow after work.. Damn I want to play it so bad.
Finally.. I were thinking where is the hell our Tommy. Looking forward for 4 hours stream. Very interesting. Will not play this gem.. But will watch everything you going to release. Keep up, mate. Бажаю удачі тобі! ❤
Good Copium. Defending a game that is unfinished, buggy, or lacks in features, just because you are trying to be a good fanboy will make devs feel less pressure to actually fix the issues, as devs will see fanboys will just lie to themselves that everything is ok.
Nothing you said makes any sense. Of course I want the developers to fix the bugs. Why wouldn't I? I want the best for the game too. I know the devs are already working on it. I'm just having a blast with the game despite the bugs. Lucky for me, I don't have a potato PC, so my performance is solid. As shown in this video and my streams of the game. The game is point blank the best S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game ever made. That's not blind fanboyism, I have a discord full of fans that feel the same way. Sorry it's not your cup of tea. It's still my Game of the Year
In 2007 we weren't fanboys of the Stalker project, we were just waiting for an interesting project from our studio. We became fans already after the game was released, despite the bugs and problems that have always haunted this project and have already become a meme. nobody says that we don't notice the problems, we see them and we talk about them directly to the developers, but we don't dump tons of shit on their heads because of it. I'll say more, no other studio could have finished the project under the conditions GSC employees were in. Today's developers go on strike when they have to go to the office twice a week, I can imagine what would happen to them if their country was in a state of full-scale war, etc.
Tommy, you can try to disable interface. It brings much more immersion to your game as you have to investigate and remember the environment. You still can check PDA and find all information there. You can see your health, blood drain, radiation status just in front of your eyes even without icons.
What i like the most is the fact there's lack of hand holding from the start of the game, i was pleasantly surprised when i started and get my ass handed to me because i wasn't paying attention to the game because it was the prologue mission
I get that you like the game but it's okay to admit to its shortcomings in its current state. This game runs smooth as balls, can't get any better'. Okay.
No binoculars No low crouch No conversation or event history in PDA Time is 1 hour per 1 day way too short! Weight limit is now 80k (from 50) White dots over loot and actionable items Controller drift Tutorial time never advances - always nighttime Inventory: "drop" versus "put down" - English translation error Light bloom when exiting PDA and backpack inventory UI When crouched Im guessing that the vignette effect is to indicate you are in a stealthy position but it makes screen even darker Encountered an enemy shooting at me from an "island" landlocked location that players are unable to get to. The area he was on is surrounded by radioactive deep water and a steep dirt wall on another side. Totally inaccessible by me. How did he get there? "Tips" aren't really tips like CoP - they are historical information, character references and philosophical musings. Tip #93 says you can "crawl out " of situations. No prone or crawling mechanics are available. No adjustable sleep time like CoP English voices are bad and jarring Lots of Xbox options but not enough Mutants and stalkers spawn out of nowhere right in front of me. Jarring and confusing. Makes tactical decisions impossible. Audio stutters every 3 seconds. Music stutters (soundtrack and combat) NPC random dialog loops and skips repeatedly My shadow is cartoony stiff and feels like an early 2000s render Shimmering effect when moving Combat music is out of sync and janky - sometimes spoiling a forthcoming event. I shot a mutant to help a friendly green stalker and once they hear my shot they came looking for me but weren't aggressive or red. How can I tell what faction a NPC is in? Are all bandits aggressive enemies like SoC or are they sometimes neutral like CoP or joinable like CS? No PiP weapon scope optics No option in PDA to see historical logs of events or past conversations? No at-a-glance thumbnails of saved games. All the icons and thumbnails are identical. No unique personalized POV shot like previous games. Lost items in a personal storage box near Richter. Threat indicators pop up on screen every time I unpause the game. Tip #89 mutants can smell you? When attacked in first cut scene placing scanner 3 one scripted enemy says "I'm detecting another stalker on my PDA!" But this is not a game mechanic in Stalker 2. Unrealistic jumping (height and distance)? No faction identification system? Lost/corrupted saved files (Xbox only?) No way to disable motion blur on Xbox. When crouching there is a POV vignette effect around screen edge. Implying stealth? Healing and eating animations are great. Simple fast but effective. Something the original 3 games never had. No subtitles for signs and environmental objects lite posters etc "Coupons" currency is odd since the outside world still has valuable currency from Ukraine Europe US Russia etc. Death screen + counter is cool but it should dynamically show who/what killed you - or at least rotate between various stalkers and mutants
Dude, you live in an alternate reality? Running smooth asf? This game is crazy CPU bound and is bugged as hell, sound issues are terrible. Don't get me wrong it's still great fun and I'm sure this'll all get fixed sooner or later, but you're wearing rose tinted glasses with some of your comments.
I recognize some folks are having issues. But i dont run a potato system either, even with 13700k im CPU bound but im still getting 120fps. 7O-80 without frame gen. The game isnt going to run maxed out on mid range specs. I have a 4080. The only sound issue i experience is sometimes ambient music cuts out. Everything else was fixed with the Day 1 patch. Reviewers keep talking about many things from before the Day 1 patch like gun audio cutting out. There's still some bugs. But it's not nearly as bad as some people would say. Dont believe me? Watch my twitch stream. Plays fine
@@itstommylovebro, 7800x3d is dropping below 60 sometimes what are you talking about? 🤣 The game is phenomenal, but optimization is almost cyberpunk level
@@lordreima The game is pretty CPU brutal. But the optimization is not CP2077 level. Sure, my 13700k is bottlenecked, but I'm still getting 120fps. You can see the performance in my video and twitch stream. I have a very strong PC, so it runs great. There's definitely room to improve for the mid range and potato PC's. And the devs are working on that. But that isn't my setup so it's not my problem right now. It runs great for me. And many others, hell the Series S runs this game insanely well with decent quality for what it is. Anybody can cherry pick examples.
Somehow, cp77 ran WAY better for me when it came out, I had absolutely no problem whatsoever. With Stalker2, well I can't really play that. Game will start off smooth as butter then will drop to single digit frames. Totally unplayable to me. Some have it better than others
Tommy, TGA is a business that offers PR, the devs pay extra and buy those awards, this is why there are so much asian anime because its devs can put some funds into that because it is profitable to do so if your game wins and becomes more selling on asian markets. This is why real deal games such as stalker won't make it there, they will put noname astros and 999 nominations for kojima and final fantasy because they've got extra cash.
It's got some issues. But I also have great hardware that helps with alot of stuff people struggle with. It's a totally kick ass game to play. I really don't care how that makes people feel. I love it.
1:11 Fleshpigs are evolving! Now that they have a lunge attack, an enterprising zoner could make a Zone Sportsmanship Challenge based around that. Maybe see if you can duck under their lunge attack like snorks in ShoC (or both snorks and chimeras in Oblivion Lost). A potential ZSC could focus on dodging their attacks (either to the side or by ducking if ducking actually works which it doesn't in Anomaly against leaping beast-creatures) and blasting them out of the air. A debug mode/spawn menu would allow you to create an entire horde of fleshpigs, then you can see how "Nimble" you can be at dodging them. 2:58 What's with these mag-ditching reload animations?! Who would ditch a mag with 37 rounds in it?! I know that's not really what's happening (unless a magazine mod was added, which would require revamped reload animations since ditching mags without recovering them is considered incompetent), but it looks like it is, and that's insulting to the player. Also, those are 45-round RPK-74 mags which would be treasured in the Zone. Yeah, yeah. Everyone thinks the Spetsnaz reload looks awesome, but what they don't think about is that it's a type of emergency reload. It's called that for a reason. It's not standard procedure. Ditching mags has never been standard procedure, and emergency reloads are an atypical technique. The Western counterpart is what's nowadays called "the Wick flick." Same principle applies. Emergency reloads are only done in emergency situations, and you're expected to scrounge your mags back up after the battle. 3:49 Ghost ring sights! Best sights for a combat shotgun. And I love that we're seeing chamber-load animations in more and more FPS games. That doesn't make up for the mag-ditching reload animations, but I can't help but praise what deserves praise and rebuke what deserves rebuke. It's only fair. 4:12 Chamber-load animation, good. Holding the gun cockeyed while loading with the shootin' hand, bad. That's considered rookie technique IRL. Also notice how many times Skif's support hand changes position. Again, that's considered a rookie tendency (because you make more unnecessary tedium for yourself when you do that). Yer 'sposed ta load using the support hand while using a shotgun for combat or D-FENS. The late but still great Paul Harrell would back me up on that. The only exception, the only time it's justified to reload "wrong-handed" (reloading with the shootin' hand instead of the support hand), is when you're using a front-heavy gun with no stock. Being front-heavy means it'll fatigue your shootin' arm holding it one-handed. Having no stock means nothing to brace under your shootin'-side shoulder. Note: The Soviet-style "wrong-handed" reload with AKs is considered obsolete (and has been since 1991). 4:28 Why does that shotgun only hold six rounds when it has a 20" barrel and a flush-fit mag tube? Should hold a total of eight or nine standard-length shells (including the one in the chamber). Then again, it might have an 18.5" barrel with a flush-fit mag tube, in which case, it would be a total of seven (again, including the one in the chamber). In either case, it's minus one if using Magnum rounds. 3" 12-gauge Magnum = 18.5x76mm in metric. 4:59 Once again, we have a gun being aimed with its muzzle(s) tilted up. Fortunately, they've gotten the sight pictures right with most of the weapons. From what I've seen, it's only the sporting-style shotguns that have that muzzle(s)-tilted-up issue. Still, the fact that it happens at all is irksome. We're too far into the 21st century for that to still be a thing. 7:49 GLaD to see these evolved fleshpigs are a respectable enemy. 9:39 No argument there. That's exactly why it hurts my soul that I have to levy rebukes regarding the "tacticool" mag-ditching reload animations (both the Wick flick and the Spetsnaz reload), upturned muzzles when aiming certain weapons, holding guns cockeyed while reloading "wrong-handed," etc.
I don ´ t know what to think. Most of the people, reviews say negative things about this game. You are saying the opposite. I am downloading the game right now to form my own opinion but I am worried because I really really wanted this game too be good
A lot of the negativity is coming from the performance issues. I'm on a 2080ti so I can't really complain since the card is old, but I'm struggling to hit 60fps on medium settings with dlss. Hopefully we get some patches soon to sort that out though.
The game itself is incredible. it has some bugs, and performance issues if you don't have high end hardware. If those aren't issues for you, Your likely going to have a terrific time.
@@carrotking8893Skill up has a beast rig and still ran like shit for him. Stop sucking the devs dick, They’re not paying you to shill for them, how pathetic.
@@carrotking8893makes my chest hurt reading this cause I got a 3060 32gb of ram and a i7 12700k and the game still runs bad for me what am I missing I understand the 3060 will bottleneck the cpu maybe
@@ryanrob-m2zmy is pretty close to that and I run fine on low but randomly my game starts going to like 2 frames and only stops rarely, so pretty much I can’t rly play
It's so wholesome to see how much you enjoy the game. I'm happy the company didn't disappoint and delivered the game that matched your expectations. Thanks for your love and support to a Ukrainian company in these though dark times.
I agree with a lot of your points. The map is amazing and the combat is everything I could hope for. I just don't think the game has wide enough appeal to be Game of The Year material. If you aren't willing to make your own fun exploring the map and hanging out by the fire listening to tunes, I don't think you'll be absorbed as much as we are. The game also has a ton of stutter and bugs for a lot of people.
My download was 5 min from being done, waited 2 hours and something went wrong and now i have to download 60% of it again and wait another hour, im at my limit
Is this cope? First of all there is no A life. Second, its a buggy as hell and eats my 3080 gpu bro, optimization is bad. Guys spawn shortly after you cleared an area out of nowhere. Fighting the bloodsucker is a CHORE, be hard yeah but it is a CHOOOORE, Flesh is the same oh my goooddduuhhh.
i can´t wait to play it. and once i'm finished with my playthtought, I. WILL. MOD. IT. MYSELF. for ref, i have no ide about modding, but i really want to help make this one of the best games in history (next to the og's and Anomaly)
Unplayable if you use a controller with stick drift. There are no deadzone settings and the default seems to be set to 0. This results in my camera constantly moving even if i dont want it to.
i hope they do some optimizing cuz the game is pretty unplayable for me even tho i have a pretty good pc, really hope so! i want to dive fully into the zone!
The game is solid, but it has its faults. First, let's address the elephant in the room: optimization. At launch, the game doesn't run as smoothly as I had hoped. Playing on a 4090, I've experienced a lot of stuttering, pop-ins, etc. Additionally, with frame generation enabled, the aiming feels significantly delayed. My second critique concerns A-life 2.0. It feels non-existent to me. I'm five hours into the game, so perhaps I haven't invested enough time to fully grasp it, but currently, it seems like AI enemies simply spawn within a certain proximity to perform random actions near me. I don't sense that the AI is independently active in the world. I'm not encountering any distant gunfights outside my line of sight, nor am I hearing ambient sounds of distant screams or other horrors. While I do hear mutants, which is a nice touch, I yearn for more of that experience. There are also a lot of audio bugs which kind of get annoying but this will most likely get addressed. I'm hopeful these issues will be addressed in future updates. I'm still enjoying the game, but it's missing a certain je ne sais quoi that I can't quite pinpoint.
Bought XSX 2 year's ago for this game. This is my first stalker game ever. Long story short haven't had such much fun witch a game since the lounch of Witcher 3.😁🎉
Alright so! I am a first time stalker player with this game and honestly its a damn unforgiving blast to play. I love early game struggles and having to scavenge for supplies only to get into a conflict and almost run out of all of said supplies. The only thing id want tweaked maybe is the enemy detection rate since I was hiding in a building while an emission (i think) was going on outside two fleshes were going by and all of a sudden they just gunned it for me. Other than that tue games f****** awesome
Im sorry....but how are you not acknowledging the fact that A-Life 2.0 is completely non-existent and instead we are now a beacon for random NPC spawns, sometimes right in front of you? This is a serious problem we have. A-life is what made the zone feel alive. It does not feel alive to me anymore....the devs need to address this and clear up rumors that are swirling. But right now I have to agree with them, after 6 hours in game last night the zone felt completely dead. I cleared and area only to have a squad of bandits literally spawn in right in front of me afterwards. Not to mention them removing all trace of A-Life 2.0 from the steam page.
Watch my Twitch stream and you will see A-Life 2.0 doing its thing. Especially in some of these intense firefights where they display complex behaviors. Devs are working to improve it further, But it kicks ass already, and it plays great for me
@@davidpielykh3996 They will be included in the planned hardware RT update would be my guess. Devs spoke of this in an interview. They mentioned moving to UE5.4
This video is the definition of "Sunk-cost fallacy". You've built your channel the last year hyping this game up to unrealistic levels, and now that its out, you literally cannot afford to say anything bad about it or you'll sink your entire channel.
That doesn't make any sense at all lol. STALKER 2 kicks ass, its an awesome game, you think a few bugs so far suddenly make it not worth it? This isn't a review, i haven't even played a majority of the game. I can't even comment on the entirety of the game because I haven't gotten through it yet. The full review is where deep diving and nitpicks / criticisms and improvement recommendations come in. This is a first impressions video, and my first impressions were STALKER 2 is the best STALKER game made in the series. No shit I'm riding high on the release of a great game after 14 years. I don't have time in my life for dick riding bad games. This is STALKER. Not Starfield.
@@itstommyloveyou do realise you just proved OP’s point? You don’t think it’s worth mentioning anything about the extremely dumbed down A-life compared to the OG games, downgraded graphics, broken AI or the atrocious HUD elements that make it look like a Ubislop game?? I don’t think any STALKER fan can truly appreciate any of those things… 🫤
@@thomasglenn4248 Your just wrong lol. The graphics are industry best, the HUD works fine, hell I disabled it for immersion and the screen effects let me know the character state at all times so the UI is doing it's job. It's well put together. Plenty of fans are appreciating the game. The steam ratings speaks for itself. I have had some A-life quirks but not as bad as others have. But it's being worked on. I need to finish the game before I do any sort of deeper analysis of the game. You sound like you forgot what the original STALKER games were.
@@thomasglenn4248 played 14 hours feels good. As a stalker fan I'm fully satisfied. I don't know what you found "atrocious" in minimalistic HUD, but it sounds like personal issue.
@@system-pn5qw I appreciate you can turn off the HUD, but I hate the detection indicators and compass at the top of the screen. It looks like Far Cry’s HUD. In fact, the whole game feels like Far Cry with a Stalker skin on it. The A-life is completely non-existent, it’s been replaced with spawn timers. And people keep glossing over that for some reason…
💥Sometimes ignorant people joke about the fact that some people watch reactions to something. Those people simply haven't seen Tommy's reviews and reactions. There's no point in writing a bunch of text - you're simply the best at this!💯 All the best and greetings from Ukraine!💛💙
I really like Stalker 2 and I know what are you doing here, but you shouldnt lie to audience in few things that are key elements in this game. This isnt Game of The Year yet. There is still a lot of things to fix or missing features from previous games. Enjoy the game but please dont share misinformation on the internet.
It's not misinformation or lies. The game is easily a GOTY contender. I have a very strong PC so I don't have performance issues. I had minor technical issues all that have been resolved with recent patches. That 84% positive rating on Steam is there for a reason. Many fans are thrilled with how good this game is. I'm about 70 hours in and it just keeps getting better. It still has some A-Life bugs, but it doesn't stop the game from being phenomenal in the meantime while we wait for it to be improved. I'm going to keep praising the game I have my playthrough of the game on my channel. Anyone can watch and see how good the game is for themselves.
@itstommylove Developers confirmed there is no A-Life, bcs it would perform much worse on consoles or midrange PCs. Prompts are still bugged. Drops FPS and memory leaks are still existing. UE5 crashes and bad economy were almost fixed with patches. I am glad that you didn't experience any of these serious issues. Environment and exploration is great. I enjoyed it also. But I missed mutant loot so I had mod it myself. This was feature in Shadow of Chernobyl, but ok. They cutted also NVGs(you can see it for yourself if you go to Technician) and there are no solid mods for that yet. We can't side with factions or at least help them more than just do few sidequests. I want my fresh bread privileges. :( GSC developers put lot of work in this game. I believe if it was delayed by 6 months or more, we would get key features that previous games did best. Faction wars, A-Life and PDA tabs with info. High rating and strong PC won't fix these issues or missin features. This game would be GOTY, but objectively it isn't. I have over 60 hours so I know I am talkin about. I experienced worst things that could happen to new players and that frustrates me. I wouldn't recommend this game anyone who wants buy this game, but rather buy or play through gamepass. I respect you for work and content you are providin to community. I wish there would be more players and people like you. I believe that community would be better place. Unfortunately we have gatekeepers and paid review bombers. I don't know any more if negative review is just copypasted **** or genuinely blatant hate. So if you are plannin on full review, please mention these serious issues and missin features, if there are gonna be still on board. I love environment, exploration, NPCs, story, parkour puzzles, guns animations, artifacts, upgrade system, sidequests, stashes. I wouldn't write this if I didn't care about game and its community. GSC firing patches and responding to us is gift that other corps doesn't do. Its very rare and we should be grateful. I am still gonna play this game and enjoy Luaghin cat after I die to bunch dogs.
@@ggjamescz1047 the developers did not say Alife was removed. The conference your referencing with Maria stated Alife broke during the final optimization phase. Its still present and functioning, but it has bugs causing offline alife and online systems to not talk correctly. They had to dial down some of the features to get performance up while they work to optimize the game to return those features. Despite all that, its still GOTY for me. I said before i have a full review coming. I havent finished the game, so i havent passed final judgments of the game. All my comments are on what ive experienced so far. And you can see Alife working in my playthrough. The system did not just dissapear. The game is perfectly playable as it is on Xbox and high end PCs. The lower end PCs are struggling, but thats kind of par for the course on UE5. It will get better over time. Especially with the planned 5.4 update
Dude I love the game but series s is killing it for me 30fps makes it super hard for me to get into but hopefully with that performance mode planned that will fix it I’m gonna play it a bunch either way
Compared to the original trilogy, this game is a huge step forward for the studio. I played on Xbox Series S for a bit, and the game was surprisingly smooth. The atmosphere of the original game is present. The audio is amazing, the location design is solid, and the story seems interesting. My only complaint for now is the AI and random spawns. It's not like there are many games with great AI, but since they emphasized that A-life system, it feels a bit disappointing.
Honestly, it seems to be non-existent. Game constantly spawns enemies close by and then they just show up out of nowhere, there doesn't seem to be anything going on in the distance.
Doesn't exist. Random things spawn in in a 150 to 200 meter radius outside your view. If it spawned mutants they will just hunt you down and you might hear them if the audio is working. If it spawns in other stalkers they start shooting to draw your attention. you run over, watch to try and figure out who is who. One side wins, looks friendly, then opens up on you. Run to cover, heal. take them out, loot. That is the only type of encounter outside of scripted/static ones that I have had at about 5 hrs in. They sacrificed a zone full of life just to be able to say that it was truly open world. Big mistake imo. I would rather have an active zone that feels alive but is chopped up into maps that have a 2 to 3 min load time between them.
I’m completely new to the series and I am hyped to try this out. Man what a get for GAME PASS. I have 1 question Do I need to play the original games before this one, Or can I jump right in? I do care about story and I will play them all eventually.
Great review, Stalker! I believe those haters in the comments are just russian supporters/bots who watch the russian reviews where there is only a bad focus for anything ukrainian. For sure they are not real fans (that is simply impossible). See you in the Zone!
Downloading the game right now! I think gameplay-wise I'm gonna like it really much, I'm just worried about gamebreaking bugs. Other reviews are really focusing their whole video about bugs, so lets see...
@@Piischmupp Yeah mine is mid range too I switched it to TAA and all but shadows medium and it seems better but off to bed so only tried for 5 minutes. My issue is I don't know what the upscaling and frame gen stuff is. That stuff just for high end rigs with like 1440p?
Ok, it's still requires optimisation, but it is a good game, and I'm not even a fan. Your love for the game, however, is invigorating and somewhat worrying 😅
If they don't allow it to compete for Game of the Year WE can DECLARE it Game of the Year. This is the year of independent journalism.
It can compete for 2025
@@LionDerWahre Yeah, but it stands no chance if GTA VI is not delayed.
Veilguard will be goty lol
Mate this is not even close to goty it’s rough af this game
@@2138Dude😂
Tommy, дякую за реакції, підтримку❤ Ну ось і дочекались S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2
Якось мене тех жёстко так потянуло на англомовні відоси по сталкеру)))
Цікаво, що йому дали ранній доступ з такою малою кількістю підписників.
@JameBlack мені взагалі здається, що ролик рекламний, він каже що сталкер оптимізований гарно)) Я щось такого на своїй 4070 не бачу))
@@iamiconofthestyle охоплення у нього маленьке, він просто фанат
@JameBlack Може й так
After 8 hours of livestream i can say: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is amazing.
GSC Gameworld really did it. They made the game of the year!
"Yeah I'll probably end the stream in like 15 minutes"
5 hours later...
No way it’s got great potential but it’s to buggy for game of the year and the terrible “a life 2.0” doesn’t even work once all that is fixed then maybe.
@@PCZONE1 check out my review mate - recorded for one hour without any larger issues
*Century.
@@AstoraNoble you are part of this 👀
Thanks so much for the review and support! I don't like to play first person game, so I'll go watch you play.
9:02 start speach made me cry. i hope they never lost they passion!! THANK YOU GSC TEAM!!! ( 1 Hungarian Hard Core Stalker fan)
Only been a fan since 2020. Watching this as I wait for the download to finish.
All of the og stalker fans I salute you. Thanks for keeping this shit alive.
The only thing I’m disappointed so far is “A-Life”
There is no “A-Life” in the game, only a simple enemy (or encounter) spawner that spawns random enemies or stalker ai’s close to you and sometimes in front of you
I was expecting a more interesting a-life but so far we got just the spawner, npc’s do not exist in the zone, they only exist in a spawner folder that picks a random thing to throw at you
This is my only problem !
Overall the game is great 9/10 game
Is this too immersion breaking or does it still give some type of a life feel or is it just Fr spawning?
Exactly, especially when u leave a second and go back and all of a sudden all the enemies respawn for no reason
@@bootybandit2257 It makes the zone feel dead.
@@donutwastaken718 i think its a issue , i had problems with that especially when i had to escape the sphere base , died 10 times only there , and enemy spawned and respawned , killed like over 30 soldiers lol
I’m new to stalker, having only played anomaly and gamma (was gonna play the trilogy but might do that later). Is this an issue that can be fixed through mods, or is implementation of A-life a permanent- non changeable thing?
The one streamer I wanna watch play Stalker, heck yeah. One who’s knows what he is talking about.
Mine is installing overnight so get play it later on Thursday
Hella true
Mine has been at 60% for an hour
I installed it before it released so I got to play immediately.
I need this video a true stalkers feeling the zone, Cheeki greetings stalker.
A true stalker high on copium and brain fried from radiation
i was so surprised with Skillup review, he sounded so negative, i was like damn...but than i watched the streams and stalker 2 looks absolutely amazing
i've played all the stalker games on release and stalker 2 looks really like a true sequel and has everything i loved from older games
alright just finished downloading, time to play !!!!
SkillUp's review was good, but some of his takes were misleading and its obvious it was more of a skill issue. Encumbrance was a big problem for him, but he was clearly playing like a kleptomaniac. Mutants are all the same for him, meanwhile he only lists off less than half of the mutant list in the game. Definitely not his best review, so take everything with a grain of salt.
Same I was so sad when I saw the Skill Up review title pop up... Thankfully all the Stalker fans I've seen talk about it are loving it, and that's what matters.
SkillUp said Veilguard was awful and I've almost finished it and had a blast.
I think it's time to ignore his opinions going forward.
@@deetsitmeisterjd I think that's based on if you're a DA fan or not. Longtime DA fans tend to hate it for how much it strays from what made the previous games great, while newer ones dont mind it since they don't know the franchise too well. Either way, I wouldn't call it terrible, it's a solid six to seven.
@@deetsitmeisterjd yeah thats ok for you man, but i hated veilguard too. i love stalker though. honestly a lot of people bounced off of the original stalkers when it came out for these reasons too, its a niche series. i think we should just be counting our blessings that we are able to play a new stalker game after a decade of hoping.
As a fan myself, I’m sad to see the general complaining for mechanics that make this game what it is
Glad someone else is also enjoying it
It’s better than the trilogy in every way
You’re on crack if you think this watered down far cry clone is any good
I love you for the no spoilers brother
Tommy, this is the happiest gamer day of my life! 14 years of waiting that finally came to an end. I don't have the most modern pc, I'm a humble worker who earns a low salary and with a lot of effort I built my pc with a ryzen 5 5600g, an rx 5700 xt and 16 ram. While the shaders were loading I talked to my machine like a schizophrenic, giving it a motivational talk and telling it that everything was going to be okay. When I realized that the game ran perfectly on medium graphics, I wanted to cry with joy and I felt like a 15 year old kid exploring the zone again.
Long live to S.T.A.L.K.E.R and long live gsc!
My friend told me that you’re good at Stalker, so I’m here now. Comment to support
You're not baked per chance? The shades, the "this is the best [fill in item here] ever". Lol
Ну, вдалого полювання, сталкере! =)
The Stalker 2 is an experience, not just a game or just a product.
Modern games don't feel like this, and it's a proof, that the industry has changed, they forgot how to do games, and GSC have reminded everyone now. I wish they had more time to make the game just perfect, but I guess we'll be seeing more patches for those bugs.
With that said, I haven't felt this hyped or this happy with anything released in the past decade.
My GOTY no matter what anyone says. And probably will stay like this for years to come. :D
Tommy, thank you for your position, for your support and your contribution to the popularization of the project and the stalker community!
man, you're the best! :D
thank you for no spoilers!
I'm so happy for you man, I rewatched your reaction to the e3 trailer many times. I'm waiting while downloading now, my internet speed is terrible here in Italy so I guess taht I'll play it tomorrow after work.. Damn I want to play it so bad.
Thanks for the video, you just got me 100x more excited to play tonight!
Finally.. I were thinking where is the hell our Tommy. Looking forward for 4 hours stream. Very interesting. Will not play this gem.. But will watch everything you going to release. Keep up, mate. Бажаю удачі тобі! ❤
We're finally home.
Good hunting, stalkers ❤
Hell yeah! this is a review. Anyone giving this game bad review is no true stalker, those guys should stay home eating tushonka.
Pathetic take
Keep sniffing that copium. Game is trash and is a watered down far cry clone.
@XmarcX92 stay home like a good boy and eat your tushonka.
@@XmarcX92 Stay home like a good boy and eat that tushonka.
Good Copium. Defending a game that is unfinished, buggy, or lacks in features, just because you are trying to be a good fanboy will make devs feel less pressure to actually fix the issues, as devs will see fanboys will just lie to themselves that everything is ok.
Nothing you said makes any sense. Of course I want the developers to fix the bugs. Why wouldn't I? I want the best for the game too. I know the devs are already working on it. I'm just having a blast with the game despite the bugs. Lucky for me, I don't have a potato PC, so my performance is solid. As shown in this video and my streams of the game. The game is point blank the best S.T.A.L.K.E.R. game ever made. That's not blind fanboyism, I have a discord full of fans that feel the same way.
Sorry it's not your cup of tea. It's still my Game of the Year
In 2007 we weren't fanboys of the Stalker project, we were just waiting for an interesting project from our studio.
We became fans already after the game was released, despite the bugs and problems that have always haunted this project and have already become a meme.
nobody says that we don't notice the problems, we see them and we talk about them directly to the developers, but we don't dump tons of shit on their heads because of it.
I'll say more, no other studio could have finished the project under the conditions GSC employees were in.
Today's developers go on strike when they have to go to the office twice a week, I can imagine what would happen to them if their country was in a state of full-scale war, etc.
Nice brainrot.
My game is bugged.
Enemies are not spawning outside the Mission Areas
Tommy, you can try to disable interface. It brings much more immersion to your game as you have to investigate and remember the environment. You still can check PDA and find all information there. You can see your health, blood drain, radiation status just in front of your eyes even without icons.
What i like the most is the fact there's lack of hand holding from the start of the game, i was pleasantly surprised when i started and get my ass handed to me because i wasn't paying attention to the game because it was the prologue mission
I get that you like the game but it's okay to admit to its shortcomings in its current state. This game runs smooth as balls, can't get any better'. Okay.
Great to see your reaction and love for the zone brother, can’t wait to try it for myself!
I asked other people and they said it's broken.
No binoculars
No low crouch
No conversation or event history in PDA
Time is 1 hour per 1 day way too short!
Weight limit is now 80k (from 50)
White dots over loot and actionable items
Controller drift
Tutorial time never advances - always nighttime
Inventory: "drop" versus "put down" - English translation error
Light bloom when exiting PDA and backpack inventory UI
When crouched Im guessing that the vignette effect is to indicate you are in a stealthy position but it makes screen even darker
Encountered an enemy shooting at me from an "island" landlocked location that players are unable to get to. The area he was on is surrounded by radioactive deep water and a steep dirt wall on another side. Totally inaccessible by me. How did he get there?
"Tips" aren't really tips like CoP - they are historical information, character references and philosophical musings.
Tip #93 says you can "crawl out " of situations. No prone or crawling mechanics are available.
No adjustable sleep time like CoP
English voices are bad and jarring
Lots of Xbox options but not enough
Mutants and stalkers spawn out of nowhere right in front of me. Jarring and confusing. Makes tactical decisions impossible.
Audio stutters every 3 seconds.
Music stutters (soundtrack and combat)
NPC random dialog loops and skips repeatedly
My shadow is cartoony stiff and feels like an early 2000s render
Shimmering effect when moving
Combat music is out of sync and janky - sometimes spoiling a forthcoming event.
I shot a mutant to help a friendly green stalker and once they hear my shot they came looking for me but weren't aggressive or red.
How can I tell what faction a NPC is in?
Are all bandits aggressive enemies like SoC or are they sometimes neutral like CoP or joinable like CS?
No PiP weapon scope optics
No option in PDA to see historical logs of events or past conversations?
No at-a-glance thumbnails of saved games. All the icons and thumbnails are identical. No unique personalized POV shot like previous games.
Lost items in a personal storage box near Richter.
Threat indicators pop up on screen every time I unpause the game.
Tip #89 mutants can smell you?
When attacked in first cut scene placing scanner 3 one scripted enemy says "I'm detecting another stalker on my PDA!" But this is not a game mechanic in Stalker 2.
Unrealistic jumping (height and distance)?
No faction identification system?
Lost/corrupted saved files (Xbox only?)
No way to disable motion blur on Xbox.
When crouching there is a POV vignette effect around screen edge. Implying stealth?
Healing and eating animations are great. Simple fast but effective. Something the original 3 games never had.
No subtitles for signs and environmental objects lite posters etc
"Coupons" currency is odd since the outside world still has valuable currency from Ukraine Europe US Russia etc.
Death screen + counter is cool but it should dynamically show who/what killed you - or at least rotate between various stalkers and mutants
I hope you returned it and never played it again 😅
Dude, you live in an alternate reality? Running smooth asf? This game is crazy CPU bound and is bugged as hell, sound issues are terrible.
Don't get me wrong it's still great fun and I'm sure this'll all get fixed sooner or later, but you're wearing rose tinted glasses with some of your comments.
I recognize some folks are having issues. But i dont run a potato system either, even with 13700k im CPU bound but im still getting 120fps. 7O-80 without frame gen. The game isnt going to run maxed out on mid range specs. I have a 4080.
The only sound issue i experience is sometimes ambient music cuts out. Everything else was fixed with the Day 1 patch. Reviewers keep talking about many things from before the Day 1 patch like gun audio cutting out. There's still some bugs. But it's not nearly as bad as some people would say. Dont believe me? Watch my twitch stream. Plays fine
Just because the sound goes out sometimes doesn't make it terrible, that's bullshit.
@@itstommylovebro, 7800x3d is dropping below 60 sometimes what are you talking about? 🤣
The game is phenomenal, but optimization is almost cyberpunk level
@@lordreima The game is pretty CPU brutal. But the optimization is not CP2077 level. Sure, my 13700k is bottlenecked, but I'm still getting 120fps. You can see the performance in my video and twitch stream. I have a very strong PC, so it runs great. There's definitely room to improve for the mid range and potato PC's. And the devs are working on that. But that isn't my setup so it's not my problem right now. It runs great for me. And many others, hell the Series S runs this game insanely well with decent quality for what it is. Anybody can cherry pick examples.
Somehow, cp77 ran WAY better for me when it came out, I had absolutely no problem whatsoever. With Stalker2, well I can't really play that. Game will start off smooth as butter then will drop to single digit frames. Totally unplayable to me. Some have it better than others
Tommy, TGA is a business that offers PR, the devs pay extra and buy those awards, this is why there are so much asian anime because its devs can put some funds into that because it is profitable to do so if your game wins and becomes more selling on asian markets. This is why real deal games such as stalker won't make it there, they will put noname astros and 999 nominations for kojima and final fantasy because they've got extra cash.
Blind fangirlism of the highest order. Game is pretty good, but there’s lots of problems meng.
It's got some issues. But I also have great hardware that helps with alot of stuff people struggle with. It's a totally kick ass game to play. I really don't care how that makes people feel. I love it.
1:11 Fleshpigs are evolving! Now that they have a lunge attack, an enterprising zoner could make a Zone Sportsmanship Challenge based around that. Maybe see if you can duck under their lunge attack like snorks in ShoC (or both snorks and chimeras in Oblivion Lost). A potential ZSC could focus on dodging their attacks (either to the side or by ducking if ducking actually works which it doesn't in Anomaly against leaping beast-creatures) and blasting them out of the air. A debug mode/spawn menu would allow you to create an entire horde of fleshpigs, then you can see how "Nimble" you can be at dodging them.
2:58 What's with these mag-ditching reload animations?! Who would ditch a mag with 37 rounds in it?! I know that's not really what's happening (unless a magazine mod was added, which would require revamped reload animations since ditching mags without recovering them is considered incompetent), but it looks like it is, and that's insulting to the player. Also, those are 45-round RPK-74 mags which would be treasured in the Zone. Yeah, yeah. Everyone thinks the Spetsnaz reload looks awesome, but what they don't think about is that it's a type of emergency reload. It's called that for a reason. It's not standard procedure. Ditching mags has never been standard procedure, and emergency reloads are an atypical technique. The Western counterpart is what's nowadays called "the Wick flick." Same principle applies. Emergency reloads are only done in emergency situations, and you're expected to scrounge your mags back up after the battle.
3:49 Ghost ring sights! Best sights for a combat shotgun. And I love that we're seeing chamber-load animations in more and more FPS games. That doesn't make up for the mag-ditching reload animations, but I can't help but praise what deserves praise and rebuke what deserves rebuke. It's only fair.
4:12 Chamber-load animation, good. Holding the gun cockeyed while loading with the shootin' hand, bad. That's considered rookie technique IRL. Also notice how many times Skif's support hand changes position. Again, that's considered a rookie tendency (because you make more unnecessary tedium for yourself when you do that). Yer 'sposed ta load using the support hand while using a shotgun for combat or D-FENS. The late but still great Paul Harrell would back me up on that. The only exception, the only time it's justified to reload "wrong-handed" (reloading with the shootin' hand instead of the support hand), is when you're using a front-heavy gun with no stock. Being front-heavy means it'll fatigue your shootin' arm holding it one-handed. Having no stock means nothing to brace under your shootin'-side shoulder.
Note: The Soviet-style "wrong-handed" reload with AKs is considered obsolete (and has been since 1991).
4:28 Why does that shotgun only hold six rounds when it has a 20" barrel and a flush-fit mag tube? Should hold a total of eight or nine standard-length shells (including the one in the chamber). Then again, it might have an 18.5" barrel with a flush-fit mag tube, in which case, it would be a total of seven (again, including the one in the chamber). In either case, it's minus one if using Magnum rounds. 3" 12-gauge Magnum = 18.5x76mm in metric.
4:59 Once again, we have a gun being aimed with its muzzle(s) tilted up. Fortunately, they've gotten the sight pictures right with most of the weapons. From what I've seen, it's only the sporting-style shotguns that have that muzzle(s)-tilted-up issue. Still, the fact that it happens at all is irksome. We're too far into the 21st century for that to still be a thing.
7:49 GLaD to see these evolved fleshpigs are a respectable enemy.
9:39 No argument there. That's exactly why it hurts my soul that I have to levy rebukes regarding the "tacticool" mag-ditching reload animations (both the Wick flick and the Spetsnaz reload), upturned muzzles when aiming certain weapons, holding guns cockeyed while reloading "wrong-handed," etc.
I don ´ t know what to think. Most of the people, reviews say negative things about this game. You are saying the opposite. I am downloading the game right now to form my own opinion but I am worried because I really really wanted this game too be good
Never let other people decide what you enjoy.
A lot of the negativity is coming from the performance issues. I'm on a 2080ti so I can't really complain since the card is old, but I'm struggling to hit 60fps on medium settings with dlss. Hopefully we get some patches soon to sort that out though.
@@RickC-lv2obthis
The game itself is incredible. it has some bugs, and performance issues if you don't have high end hardware. If those aren't issues for you, Your likely going to have a terrific time.
It's downloading for me atm...It's the longest day of my life!
I'm having performance issues and I don't know why. Lowered Shadows and screen reflections to low.
Because Unreal Engine 5 is too heavy, wait for a patch to fix some of these issues
i want whatever he's on
looks like a proper indica
The game has potential but it’s broken as hell atm and the most important feature “a life” doesn’t even work
@PCZONE1 it's broken if your rig is shit. Sorry to say man
@@carrotking8893Skill up has a beast rig and still ran like shit for him. Stop sucking the devs dick, They’re not paying you to shill for them, how pathetic.
@@carrotking8893makes my chest hurt reading this cause I got a 3060 32gb of ram and a i7 12700k and the game still runs bad for me what am I missing I understand the 3060 will bottleneck the cpu maybe
Finally off work, gonna go check to see if that day 1 patch was auto downloaded, and get right into the zone.
I woke exactly at 7:55 to press download when it was available and I’m not watchin this vid till I try stalker, pray my pc will run it lmao
its recommended a 3070ti / 4070 for 1440p high settings 60fps WITH ddls and 32gb ram. let me know how it goes and what your specs are
@@ryanrob-m2zmy is pretty close to that and I run fine on low but randomly my game starts going to like 2 frames and only stops rarely, so pretty much I can’t rly play
@@Jaden-sv5ei, overheat maybe?
Never got to play the original so I’m excited to jump into it now! Can’t wait
It's so wholesome to see how much you enjoy the game. I'm happy the company didn't disappoint and delivered the game that matched your expectations. Thanks for your love and support to a Ukrainian company in these though dark times.
I agree with a lot of your points. The map is amazing and the combat is everything I could hope for. I just don't think the game has wide enough appeal to be Game of The Year material. If you aren't willing to make your own fun exploring the map and hanging out by the fire listening to tunes, I don't think you'll be absorbed as much as we are. The game also has a ton of stutter and bugs for a lot of people.
Well, I can at least appreciate his passion.
My download was 5 min from being done, waited 2 hours and something went wrong and now i have to download 60% of it again and wait another hour, im at my limit
Thank you for good review
Is this cope? First of all there is no A life. Second, its a buggy as hell and eats my 3080 gpu bro, optimization is bad. Guys spawn shortly after you cleared an area out of nowhere.
Fighting the bloodsucker is a CHORE, be hard yeah but it is a CHOOOORE, Flesh is the same oh my goooddduuhhh.
I havnt seen anyone talk about it but this should be playable in VR with uevr
Sick video, dude!
You look like Strelok in the intro :D
Hell yeah brother!
The atmosphere and detail is just so incredible. I'm loving it so far.
i can´t wait to play it. and once i'm finished with my playthtought, I. WILL. MOD. IT. MYSELF. for ref, i have no ide about modding, but i really want to help make this one of the best games in history (next to the og's and Anomaly)
Unplayable if you use a controller with stick drift.
There are no deadzone settings and the default seems to be set to 0.
This results in my camera constantly moving even if i dont want it to.
Too much vodka)
Fix for this is coming soon. M+K is the way to go for now
i hope they do some optimizing cuz the game is pretty unplayable for me even tho i have a pretty good pc, really hope so! i want to dive fully into the zone!
7:05 interesting why did they put ejection on the left side? Mp5 has it on the right.
Not orderring it yet, as we may get to play it in real life.
This game is peace of Art!
first night down i got 6 hours in and man this game is utterly amazing im blown away!
I honestly still don't feel like my brain has fully processed the fact that this game is actually OUT. It still feels unreal somehow
same lol
The game is solid, but it has its faults. First, let's address the elephant in the room: optimization. At launch, the game doesn't run as smoothly as I had hoped. Playing on a 4090, I've experienced a lot of stuttering, pop-ins, etc. Additionally, with frame generation enabled, the aiming feels significantly delayed.
My second critique concerns A-life 2.0. It feels non-existent to me. I'm five hours into the game, so perhaps I haven't invested enough time to fully grasp it, but currently, it seems like AI enemies simply spawn within a certain proximity to perform random actions near me. I don't sense that the AI is independently active in the world. I'm not encountering any distant gunfights outside my line of sight, nor am I hearing ambient sounds of distant screams or other horrors. While I do hear mutants, which is a nice touch, I yearn for more of that experience. There are also a lot of audio bugs which kind of get annoying but this will most likely get addressed.
I'm hopeful these issues will be addressed in future updates. I'm still enjoying the game, but it's missing a certain je ne sais quoi that I can't quite pinpoint.
I can smell the artifacts, good hunting stalker 🎉
Bought XSX 2 year's ago for this game. This is my first stalker game ever. Long story short haven't had such much fun witch a game since the lounch of Witcher 3.😁🎉
Alright so! I am a first time stalker player with this game and honestly its a damn unforgiving blast to play. I love early game struggles and having to scavenge for supplies only to get into a conflict and almost run out of all of said supplies. The only thing id want tweaked maybe is the enemy detection rate since I was hiding in a building while an emission (i think) was going on outside two fleshes were going by and all of a sudden they just gunned it for me. Other than that tue games f****** awesome
Is this satire?
Coool bro!
Im sorry....but how are you not acknowledging the fact that A-Life 2.0 is completely non-existent and instead we are now a beacon for random NPC spawns, sometimes right in front of you? This is a serious problem we have. A-life is what made the zone feel alive. It does not feel alive to me anymore....the devs need to address this and clear up rumors that are swirling. But right now I have to agree with them, after 6 hours in game last night the zone felt completely dead. I cleared and area only to have a squad of bandits literally spawn in right in front of me afterwards. Not to mention them removing all trace of A-Life 2.0 from the steam page.
Watch my Twitch stream and you will see A-Life 2.0 doing its thing. Especially in some of these intense firefights where they display complex behaviors. Devs are working to improve it further, But it kicks ass already, and it plays great for me
get out of here, worse than bugs and issues in Stalker are only whining little cunts like you in the community
@itstommylove how about the lack of dynamic shadows? That was something I didn't expect as stalker 1 was so good in it
@@davidpielykh3996 They will be included in the planned hardware RT update would be my guess. Devs spoke of this in an interview. They mentioned moving to UE5.4
@itstommylove thx! Hopefully
One of most hardcore shills
You used MO's Cope for the opening music? Instant sub and pat on the back. ILY.
Never played it. I just bought it £89.99 so I get the dlc.
Thank you sir
The only thing i wish now is that days and nights to be longer in the zone , so sleep could be even more important , but im sure mods will solve that
Are we gonna get a walkthrough from you? Or is on Twitch?
Controls on pc feel off. Can’t even rebind half the keys. Love the game it definitely is missing some features
I wish i could rebind flashlight. Devs confirmed rebinds are coming soon.
❤❤❤ starting my one trip into the Zone
Is a pack of 8 dogs supposed to be spawning every 20 feet I walk
I FUCKING LOVE THIS GAME AND THERE ENDLESS POTENTIAL WITH EXPANSIONS AND MODS IM COOMINGGGGGGGGGG
This video is the definition of "Sunk-cost fallacy". You've built your channel the last year hyping this game up to unrealistic levels, and now that its out, you literally cannot afford to say anything bad about it or you'll sink your entire channel.
That doesn't make any sense at all lol. STALKER 2 kicks ass, its an awesome game, you think a few bugs so far suddenly make it not worth it? This isn't a review, i haven't even played a majority of the game. I can't even comment on the entirety of the game because I haven't gotten through it yet. The full review is where deep diving and nitpicks / criticisms and improvement recommendations come in. This is a first impressions video, and my first impressions were STALKER 2 is the best STALKER game made in the series. No shit I'm riding high on the release of a great game after 14 years. I don't have time in my life for dick riding bad games. This is STALKER. Not Starfield.
@@itstommyloveyou do realise you just proved OP’s point?
You don’t think it’s worth mentioning anything about the extremely dumbed down A-life compared to the OG games, downgraded graphics, broken AI or the atrocious HUD elements that make it look like a Ubislop game??
I don’t think any STALKER fan can truly appreciate any of those things… 🫤
@@thomasglenn4248 Your just wrong lol. The graphics are industry best, the HUD works fine, hell I disabled it for immersion and the screen effects let me know the character state at all times so the UI is doing it's job. It's well put together. Plenty of fans are appreciating the game. The steam ratings speaks for itself. I have had some A-life quirks but not as bad as others have. But it's being worked on. I need to finish the game before I do any sort of deeper analysis of the game. You sound like you forgot what the original STALKER games were.
@@thomasglenn4248 played 14 hours feels good. As a stalker fan I'm fully satisfied. I don't know what you found "atrocious" in minimalistic HUD, but it sounds like personal issue.
@@system-pn5qw I appreciate you can turn off the HUD, but I hate the detection indicators and compass at the top of the screen. It looks like Far Cry’s HUD. In fact, the whole game feels like Far Cry with a Stalker skin on it.
The A-life is completely non-existent, it’s been replaced with spawn timers. And people keep glossing over that for some reason…
💥Sometimes ignorant people joke about the fact that some people watch reactions to something. Those people simply haven't seen Tommy's reviews and reactions. There's no point in writing a bunch of text - you're simply the best at this!💯 All the best and greetings from Ukraine!💛💙
Game of the year for me
Yes! Finally someone who love the new Stalker just like I do! I really enjoy this vid.
I really like Stalker 2 and I know what are you doing here, but you shouldnt lie to audience in few things that are key elements in this game. This isnt Game of The Year yet. There is still a lot of things to fix or missing features from previous games. Enjoy the game but please dont share misinformation on the internet.
It's not misinformation or lies. The game is easily a GOTY contender. I have a very strong PC so I don't have performance issues. I had minor technical issues all that have been resolved with recent patches. That 84% positive rating on Steam is there for a reason. Many fans are thrilled with how good this game is. I'm about 70 hours in and it just keeps getting better. It still has some A-Life bugs, but it doesn't stop the game from being phenomenal in the meantime while we wait for it to be improved. I'm going to keep praising the game I have my playthrough of the game on my channel. Anyone can watch and see how good the game is for themselves.
@itstommylove Developers confirmed there is no A-Life, bcs it would perform much worse on consoles or midrange PCs. Prompts are still bugged. Drops FPS and memory leaks are still existing. UE5 crashes and bad economy were almost fixed with patches. I am glad that you didn't experience any of these serious issues. Environment and exploration is great. I enjoyed it also. But I missed mutant loot so I had mod it myself. This was feature in Shadow of Chernobyl, but ok. They cutted also NVGs(you can see it for yourself if you go to Technician) and there are no solid mods for that yet. We can't side with factions or at least help them more than just do few sidequests. I want my fresh bread privileges. :(
GSC developers put lot of work in this game. I believe if it was delayed by 6 months or more, we would get key features that previous games did best. Faction wars, A-Life and PDA tabs with info.
High rating and strong PC won't fix these issues or missin features.
This game would be GOTY, but objectively it isn't. I have over 60 hours so I know I am talkin about. I experienced worst things that could happen to new players and that frustrates me. I wouldn't recommend this game anyone who wants buy this game, but rather buy or play through gamepass.
I respect you for work and content you are providin to community. I wish there would be more players and people like you. I believe that community would be better place. Unfortunately we have gatekeepers and paid review bombers. I don't know any more if negative review is just copypasted **** or genuinely blatant hate. So if you are plannin on full review, please mention these serious issues and missin features, if there are gonna be still on board.
I love environment, exploration, NPCs, story, parkour puzzles, guns animations, artifacts, upgrade system, sidequests, stashes. I wouldn't write this if I didn't care about game and its community. GSC firing patches and responding to us is gift that other corps doesn't do. Its very rare and we should be grateful. I am still gonna play this game and enjoy Luaghin cat after I die to bunch dogs.
@@ggjamescz1047 the developers did not say Alife was removed. The conference your referencing with Maria stated Alife broke during the final optimization phase. Its still present and functioning, but it has bugs causing offline alife and online systems to not talk correctly. They had to dial down some of the features to get performance up while they work to optimize the game to return those features.
Despite all that, its still GOTY for me. I said before i have a full review coming. I havent finished the game, so i havent passed final judgments of the game. All my comments are on what ive experienced so far. And you can see Alife working in my playthrough. The system did not just dissapear. The game is perfectly playable as it is on Xbox and high end PCs. The lower end PCs are struggling, but thats kind of par for the course on UE5. It will get better over time. Especially with the planned 5.4 update
Dude I love the game but series s is killing it for me 30fps makes it super hard for me to get into but hopefully with that performance mode planned that will fix it I’m gonna play it a bunch either way
Compared to the original trilogy, this game is a huge step forward for the studio. I played on Xbox Series S for a bit, and the game was surprisingly smooth. The atmosphere of the original game is present. The audio is amazing, the location design is solid, and the story seems interesting. My only complaint for now is the AI and random spawns. It's not like there are many games with great AI, but since they emphasized that A-life system, it feels a bit disappointing.
on series x is disasther...
Ugly blurry and horrible frame rate
Tommy it's here man!!! Enjoy! I'm going dark 😂😂
Безперечно одна з найкращих ігор року! Повністю розумію твої емоції, друже! Вітаю і обіймаю з України!
A-life removed.
Dumb ai.
Terrible performance.
Access youtubers glazing.
2024.
Go away.
hows the A-life? I've seen some people have some negative experiences
Honestly, it seems to be non-existent. Game constantly spawns enemies close by and then they just show up out of nowhere, there doesn't seem to be anything going on in the distance.
Doesn't exist. Random things spawn in in a 150 to 200 meter radius outside your view. If it spawned mutants they will just hunt you down and you might hear them if the audio is working. If it spawns in other stalkers they start shooting to draw your attention. you run over, watch to try and figure out who is who. One side wins, looks friendly, then opens up on you. Run to cover, heal. take them out, loot. That is the only type of encounter outside of scripted/static ones that I have had at about 5 hrs in. They sacrificed a zone full of life just to be able to say that it was truly open world. Big mistake imo. I would rather have an active zone that feels alive but is chopped up into maps that have a 2 to 3 min load time between them.
Still downloading, 2:30 hours remaining 😢
46 hours left on the download for me...
This game is so fun
I’m completely new to the series and I am hyped to try this out. Man what a get for GAME PASS.
I have 1 question
Do I need to play the original games before this one, Or can I jump right in? I do care about story and I will play them all eventually.
Just watch a few TH-cam videos and it’ll make sense definitely check out the originals if your a fan though
@ thanks, I bought the trilogy last night, playing shadow of Chornobyl right now.
Great review, Stalker! I believe those haters in the comments are just russian supporters/bots who watch the russian reviews where there is only a bad focus for anything ukrainian. For sure they are not real fans (that is simply impossible). See you in the Zone!
Downloading the game right now!
I think gameplay-wise I'm gonna like it really much, I'm just worried about gamebreaking bugs. Other reviews are really focusing their whole video about bugs, so lets see...
I have had one crash but my main issue so far is performance issues FPS going up and down for no reason.
@pablopablo3834 interesting, so there is no frame lock option ?
My go to method with unstable games in the past
@@Piischmupp It has V-sync it just drops frames quite often and I have all setting on medium and shadows on low.
@@pablopablo3834 alright thx
Let's see how it performs on my (midrange) setup
@@Piischmupp Yeah mine is mid range too I switched it to TAA and all but shadows medium and it seems better but off to bed so only tried for 5 minutes. My issue is I don't know what the upscaling and frame gen stuff is. That stuff just for high end rigs with like 1440p?
Ok, it's still requires optimisation, but it is a good game, and I'm not even a fan. Your love for the game, however, is invigorating and somewhat worrying 😅
beautiful!
God bless Ukrain!
God bless you!
THX MAN!!!
Greetings from Ukraine, dude and good hunting!
"I'm having so much fun, best game ever" -completely dead and emotionless expression during gameplay.-
I'm just totally locked in to the game lol
Can you join factions?