I have 246 hours in Stalker 2 as of now. It's buggy as fuck, runs like absolute shit, and I haven't played anything else since it released. I'm nearly finished with my second playthrough, exploring every part of the map.
@@del-qx4liI got 100h and feeling like im a noob that did not explored anything, i need more stalker 2, i never explored like 6 locations and just passed through em or even never been near em
@@del-qx4liIt's almost a month since the release. It is possible by playing all day, I've done similiar thing with The First Descendant by getting 120h in 2 weeks by playing whole weekends and ruining my sleeping schedule by sleeping 3-4 hours then work 8-10 hours and play the game for like 4-6
A long time Stalker fan here, been a fan since the release of Call of Pripyat, basically. I finished Stalker 2 with 120 hours played on my Steam counter, and it was a beautiful, sometimes insufferable, buggy mess of a broken masterpiece! There is so much good things under this clutter of technical problems that I can't even begin to number them! If this game gets Cyberpunk 2077 level of post-release treatment, we'll have a true gem on our hands, and probably one of the best games of this decade.
Been saying the exact same thing. Compared to the release Clear Sky I'd say they did pretty well. Funny enough I haven't been fully immersed into a game this much since Cyberpunk. Seems like they have big plans for this game and I can't wait to see more.
Bad performance, quest bugs, baffling design decisions, general jank. Now you truly got the same old school experience we got with Shadow of Chernobyl and Clear Sky at launch. Except a little less broken than that :) (Call of Pripyat was actually pretty solid on release already though). I love this game.
Yeah, S2 is SoC level of bugginess at launch (very rough estimation). Clear Sky was so much worse, it was unplayable, if you managed to pass couple of the fist few locations, your save file become broken on 3rd or 4th for example, it had day 1 patch that people had to download from the site, or in some cases just wait for a friend, cause here internet was still expensive. And Clear Sky was actually really decent at launch, yeah, it's still the most polished game of original trilogy, despite I prefer the atmoshere of other two.
Stalker 2 despite its many bugs and faults is the game that made me like open worlds again, the zone is so fun to just explore and fuck around that I lost time of how long I was in 1 area. Its a game that is just fun to play, no bullshit microtransactions no bullshit level requirements to use gear, no bullshit grinding, just a flawed but incrediblely fun game.
You mean that one where the old man gives you 1k kupons every time you talk to him but doesnt let you complete the mission? Yeah same shit happened to me On the bright side i made like 2 millions kuppons by spamming the shit out of the dialogue so at least i got something out of it
@ nah I meant where the monolith spawned inside the safe building where you can’t shoot into or grenade them making me lose the town due to not being able to protect them from attack
@@RileyNewcomb I solved it this way: Attacked monolith base (I believe it was at "Sphere" base, next to Ribs anomaly), then I aggroed a couple of monolithians and then I slowly dragged them all the way to Zalissa (eating medkits on my way and looking that they don't lose me and keep following) I dragged them just to that building with closed doors and killed them and then the door opened and I was able to fight other monolithians. I suppose it fixed the script somehow. And yes when you kill the first portion of monolithians don't run too far from Zalissa cuz there will be the second wave and Guffer will call you again via radio I suppose maybe you've already solved it or just gave up trying, but maybe it will be useful for some other people with the same bug.
extra cool point about the poppy field quest, if you give the picture to the guy that gives you a rifle you can just kill him and take the picture back at any point, effectively letting you do both endings to the quest even when it’s ‘complete’
There is also that same rife laying around somewhere. So doesn’t really matter what you do. Which ultimately breaks the emergent. There’s not a point to anything you do. When I saw the rife again at a location, it felt like there’s not point in caring about anything I do now.
@@NotSsteVven828Have you considered that the Stalker who hung out around the poppy field looting the corpses of the rookies who had wandered into the field may have been lying to you about the rarity of the weapon? The damn thing is broken as well.
@@NotSsteVven828i felt the opposite way, it make the world feel less game-y and gatekept. most other games would lock that reward away permanently but to fit the brutal nature of stalker you can play brutally and backstab quest givers so you end up on top
Both the nickname of the protagonist and ATGM actually refer to the Scythians, a nomadic people who lived on the territory of Ukraine before the Slavs emerged (the Slavs were mainly formed in Polissia, the Scythians lived closer to the Black Sea) Love the vid, but probably will watch the second half after finishing the game (just successfully defended Zalissia)
I think the Faust/Doctor swap thing in the 'don't shoot a kind regretful defenseless old man' ending is metaphorical. In a way it is also the Faust ending since he can see the noosphere and considers it sacred, so the Zone expanding freely means his divinity is freed and covers the entire world. It is also the only ending where 'you know more than I do, envoy of the Monolith' makes sense. Or maybe the Zone exchanged Faust for the Doctor in that big red super emission, or Faust took over the doctor, because his universal controller soldier abilities made him actually survive in the noosphere so he became Zone-Sauron. Anyway, I never wanted to step into that green gooey pod and do the Fallout 3 sacrifice, the game made me. I just wanted to go home and cry for killing Strelok & Scar..
or maybe doctor made some sort of deal with an interdimensional demon, would make sense since faust and stuff. i didnt play the game since its broken, ill wait a year or so. but the plot seems really good
9:37 so…my insane RNG was stepping on a barrel and being launched into the rafters above, and being able to avoid the fight with pseudo giant. Don’t step on chairs, barrels, or boxes, stalkers.
I've experienced the enemies spawning out of nowhere too, I went to the army warehouse to get some stash, when suddenly some bandits pop up out of nowhere, and then sparks, and then some bloodsucker while im still fighting the sparks, and after that whole shenaningan, theres just a pile of body covering the army warehouse.
One of the things they should take notes from are the mods. Now, to say the community knows best is kinda naive, but there are some things they added that seem like a no brainer. A couple of things I wish they would add is mutant loot pool, that way there is some way to get back some of the coupons you're gonna spend on killing them, and it would make some mutants even a prize for hunters which need even more coupons. Another thing I wish they add was Nightvision, because the flashlight barely lights up 10 feet in front of you, hell, even add some tiers of flashlights so that you progress from shitty flashlight to god like Nightvision. The game is pretty good, it's my first STALKER game and I've been loving it so far, the story is good so far. Everything is a little too metaphorical at times or too dramatic but I honestly can't complain too much about the dialogue when the game is this good.
One of the things that had me really pleasantly surprised with Stalker 2 is on my second playthrough, I discovered that making different choices in the main story gave me totally different story missions than my first playthrough. Between that, how open the game is (Especially if you manage to hop the fence to Prypiat way before you're supposed to be there), and how rewarding exploration is, this game is basically exactly what I wanted from a game for the last several years. Games like Starfield had me thinking that I might actually be burnt out on open world games and wandering them like I always have, but then came Stalker 2, totally reigniting my love of exploration.
I jumped into STALKER 2 a bit later as I was intially discouraged by bad out of box experience and very hard beginnings (similar to Clear Sky). However after mastering Lesser Zone and getting enough coupons to cover expenses + start upgrading stuff it got bearable. Now GOG reports I am at 85+ hours played since game release taking it very slowly and exploring areas up to each small detail. Most of the spent time is from last two weeks, which is in my commons supreme success. I love Zone in high quality, more opened world, soft gated access into new areas like too strong enemies, not having access into same camps like Malachite, etc. In theory if you have enough coupons nothing restricts you from getting for instance GP assault rifle when leaving Lesser Zone or better suit if you can find it or afford it. Immersion in this game is as good as I got many years ago when I first played Shadow of Chernobyl. However there is always something which will break the immersion like overkill NPC aiming skills (aimbot level and overkill shotgun long range accuracy), memory leaks + random crashes, not so rare bugs impacting side quests and campaign, lastly absent A-Life making many uncounters like lightning out of blue, sometimes up to level they spawn in already cleaned areas. So i also consider STALKER 2 as buggy mess right now, but with extremly good potential if after relaase continues update and modders will this up
All the bugs are lesser problem of stalker 2. The most annoying are - hidden reputation, broken economy, zero statistic of your progress and about zero impact of your secondary decisions.
Owen Kung aside, this game is very good with extremely prominent flaws especially with optimization (I have a 4060 + 16gb ram + decent cpu and had to download a mod to get it to run stably and it still doesn't). The exploration is fantastic and It's endlessly enjoyable to find new interesting locales and how detailed they are keeps them visually interesting. It captures a very unique vibe, one of average slavic existence, where you have to fight off invisible monsters and wind that can rip you to pieces before sitting down at a campfire and drowning yourself in vodka. I'm a big fan of the gunplay it's just a shame there isn't a little more variety in the weaponry, it would've been cool to have some melee weapons too. I don't really have many complains about the core gameplay or mechanics other than it being repetitive. I absolutely love the world, architecure, and unique setpieces they're able to show off and I can see unreal engine 5 becoming a real powerhouse after it gets refined.
The game can’t render multiple NPCs. The game should have the A-Live System that implements NPCs EVERYWHERE in the world. Just by knowing these two facts, I can imagine why ever freaking enemy is spawning 100m around you. It was literally the biggest and most empty world I ever experienced in a modern video game.
Original A-Life had an online and an offline system. Online distance was about 150 metres, and beyond that was where offline A-Life is being processed and what that means is basically, the NPCs aren't being rendered or simulated in real time. Offline A-Life updates per minute
I'd never call this world empty. There is something to find around every corner. I agree I'd like more NPC's roaming around but NPC's alone don't make for a fulfilling open world for me
The moss anomaly in gamma kinda reminds me of the shard anomaly in S2 cause is uses the same mechanic that if you just slow walk through it, it doesn’t hurt you
I had a side quest where I had to follow some clues about a missing guy and the moment I picked the PDA out of the inventory, I saw how a group of Mercs spawned behind a train, just popped into existence. I can't wait for the A-Life to be fixed and modders making a survival/simulator mod like Anomaly or GAMMA.
So, about those animations misfiring, what happens is that they can be cancelled. Sprinting or reloading will stop heals. Heals or sprints will stop reloads. The only thing to do is to check the heals or reloads completed before doing anything else.
my computer i built with all current gen parts can barely get a smooth 50 fps on medium settings. oh what a time to be on an amd gpu. this game is the reason why I'm buying a 4080 or 50 series equivalent in April and I'm saving this game till then
Nightvision should exist for dark segments, the dark is fine, it's how darkness should be, NVG's are the counter to this, just make it so enemy npcs can't see either.
47:55 Diadia Lenya. Diadia means uncle. Uncle Lenya. In fact, it's not even a family name. We usually use this word for elders when children address them. But adults often use it as well.
So i was reviewing the a life code as i played and could see the npc (ai) would activate in a radius as you got closer ( i guess it's some sort of pre built-in thing until they fix a life in full) but enemies can and will still spawn in
Definitely going to give it a good 6-8 months before I pick it up. By that point, It'll probably be unrecognizable compared to its launch. Here's hoping at least
Once they fix the bugs and AI, this blight become my favorite game ever. Even with the performance and bugs, the game is probably in my top 10. It’s the most immersive experience I’ve had playing a game and I’ve played thousands of games
Stalker 2 is buggy asf and i literally had to stop playing it because it kept crashing but it was SO GOOD it was one of those games that are so good you lose sleep over it I pulled multiple all-nighters and i haven’t done that since highschool, waiting for more patches first then im diving straight back in again
I didnt know they moved their studio into my country, But that is amazing i guess. Now we can proudly say that stalker 2 was.. Made in Czech Republic 🗿
I've just about finished my 1st play through with 75 hrs so far. Met a couple of game stopping main quest bugs, with required npc not talking to continue the quest. I modded in cheaper repairs, lower mutant health and, because I'm a pack rat, lower ammo/consumables weight plus the longer days and shorter nights mod.
>become unstoppable machine with unshakable will >manage keep your capacity for rationality, empathy and morals >either save the world or help a beautiful being express itself >still no GF checks out xD
Played 400 hrs and was thinking about this game these two months, when was working, when was going to sleep, when was awakening in the morning... Will wait for the bug fixes and play again, maybe with some mods/cheats - want to keep guns I earned during the first time and focus on side quests. Btw, completed Project Y as I thought it's the lesser evil. If you return to Doctor before receiving Strelok's mission to kill him you'll say in a talk with him that you as Skif found his home - it's the Zone
Stopping like 30 seconds in, I can’t wait until I beat this game so I can finally watch this video. This game has been what I’ve been looking for in video game in quite some time. And I’m glad this game came to be regardless of any backlash it has brought.
Everyone has issues with the swamp chimera. It has double health of a normal one. Your meant to keep running and dodge and spawn energy drink and run towards the base. Because you’ll either run out of ammo or time. Because of the emission. Don’t try hiding in the shack. Just keep going.
lot of people were complaining about the weight problems in stalker 2, but I played the other games and it's honestly way worse in them. People just need to learn that they don't need every bandage they find.
I am a vet of the Zone, and I can tell only 6 hours in that this is a proper Stalker title and somehow one that actually succeeds in attracting a wider audience without compromising on its vision. A miracle, like you said. The best thing I could say is that I wont just be sitting around waiting for a modpack. I was an Anomaly junkie and had concerns that i'd just wanna go back lol but this is the real deal as of 1.1.3. I wish the zone chat and hunting was back but those are small things mostly.
My 2024 GOTY... by far. Is it buggy? Hell yes... Did they nail the psychological horror aspect? HELL YES!!! This game made me love open world games where I search every corner for loot and weapons, just like im Fallout 3 and 4. Love every minute of it.
King kung talking bad about his stalker videos? Nonsense even if they are dated they are still some of my absolute favorites from you You playing the og games is what single handedly got me psyched for stalker 2 and despite dumping probably 70 hours in, i dont even think im halfway through the story I only just finished my first job for uncle sid This game is genuinely one of my absolute favorite games of the year if not of the last 5 years
The worst bugs ive encountered so far is random item spawning/duplication. Ill be walking around with my Lynx or Sledgehammer unique weapons, and get a duplicate regular SVD/Spas
Dude all these cutscenes he's playing that have flashbacks or something similar were straight up not in my game, I've gotten 2 endings and have never seen them
its a real shame they didnt go with ue4 instead of being beta testers to an autotune engine, at leats you can count on them fixing this thing up until its the way they want it to be.
Ngl I prefer the whole loading zone thing that the old games had going on, Meant that stuff didn't have to get unloaded in an area. Shit having to load in every 200 meters for us low/mid spec gamers is quite annoying to say the least.
11:45 There are actually indicators of which psidog is the real one. 1: Glowing Eyes 2: Blood splatters when shot 3: Usually the original keeps its distance and stays still, on the edge of the fighting. Run around until you find one hiding behind a box or a tree and that's likely the real one. Edit: Also, STOP SHOOTING MUTANTS WITH YOUR RIFLE. USE A SHOTGUN. Mutants don't need any sort of health nerf, you just need to understand which weapons are more effective against them vs. human enemies. Get a SPAS-12 or a Saiga and spray them down, and enemies like bloodsuckers and snorks go down in one magazine.
"Mutants don't need any sort of health nerf" lol. I just watched a vid of someone taking on the mutant with the lopsided arms... 20 full shotgun reloads dumped into its face (so, 100 shells), 12 grenades, and then finally ANOTHER 2 full shotty reloads before it went down. stop lying.
@ idk which one you mean by “the one with the lopsided arms” (the controller?) but the only mutant in this game that takes more than a single magazine of Saiga shots to the face is a chimera. And even those don’t take more than a couple.
I don't mind the smaller bugs, like glitching textures or NPC doing weird stuff etc, those are just anomalies and part of the "stalker" experience. Ofc I only got 36 hours in the game and I heard later game has game breaking glitches and bugs, so can't say about those. However the game is unstable and the performance problems are the real problems. Feels like the performance got worse after the updates and fixes. Stalker 2 cause my PC to hard crash several times, only restarting PC helped the problem, but last time my GPU didn't wanna boot after the hard crash. But it eventually started working again later on, don't know what the hell happened, no problem with other games though. So yea damn UE5 and unoptimization are real problems for sure.
Not sure if it was patched or your computer is Garbo But I have none of the issues you mentioned aside from sitting NPCs floating when you talk to them, dead NPCs popping in T posing and game freezing for a seconds when you get near any hub. I can run it 60fps + with I7 and 3090. As with stealth it works great if you follow the maps and one shot head shots. Imo currently main issues is the AI has a ducking X ray thermal vision when it comes to grass and bushes, and aside from AI trying to flank you and using grenades, it's pretty terrible in combat (never healing, reloading exposed, constantly just going towards you)
100+h and i never: Explored: Jupiter, Pripyat, 3 locations behind that big ass wall, Duga Never used: Gauss Never got all 4 or 3 (idk how much are there) endings Never used cheats for some fun things (but i want to at some point) Never collected all types of artifacts Never collected all archartifacts So i need more and more🙂
Before this dropped i had absolutely no idea what the stalker series was. Now after playing nearly halfway through the game i can confirm this has potential to be one of the best games of the decade, if we ignore launch bugs. Bravo to the dev team for creating this amazingly janky mess of fun
Dont even get me started on that fucking moose/stag thing that shit might aswell be imortal and the amount of enemies it spawned was honestly the only moment i actually raged while playing.
Was quite hyped, almost pre- ordered but I had to lower my expectations on release and for now i choose to get it for free. I like it but have installed alot of mods that go around blatand oversights GSC should have fixed before release. But If the game gets in a better state next year with all DLC iam happy to pay it :)
Got the game last week, and got my pc a day before that. That don't matter lol. What does is the fact that 2 pseudogiants happened to spawn in a town... and me being the dummy I am tried to fight them... Stuck in a house for a few minutes, guess the giants didn't like that, so they called for a double dinner date and got 2 buttsucker to flush me out... This "A-life" is very bad right now. All it is, is an inconvenience and a roadblock for the player. That 80% of the time shit just happens to you, and unless you still save scum there's no way around dealing with that bullish. And it's all fine and good, but when I'm going back from a loot run and nowhere near a building or location and things just spawn around me isn't believable. You don't just spawn stuff to have it wonder around till they despawn cause they're out of the players load distance. Guess the A in "A-Life" stands for aimless cause that's all the npc's do is Wounder aimlessly searching for the next loner to molest or get molested by, everyone is just a sub-faction of monolith now and apparently only belive in death to all and everything. And I cannot forgive that the tips in the loading screen say "sneaking around with your light on is a terrible idea. And to be fair ya it is. So we'll heck I better go get nightvison to help that problem right? Right? Well where the heck is it- oh...ya it's not even in the game... so why tell me to not sneak around the literal only way, and have the literal one thing ypu say not to do... be the only possible way to do it... like what the hell? Great game... still needs a lot of work. Much better then most modern launches tho.
40:50 tbh, I don't know why everyone is trying so hard to kill it, i think you meant to juat run away from monster and emission and i figured that after like 2 deaths
I think most people realize this and realize that this was a bad gameplay mechanic, so they didn’t want to run away when you see a monster. 😂 why make an enemy where you can’t even do anything to it other then run. So much fun 🤣
They don't explain the mechanics of it well at all, they tell you to drink an energy drink when you start to get tired but it seemingly just extends your time by 15 seconds before you start snoozing again
Yeah it’s an overrated quest like I’m a Canadian but quest was pretty boring 😂. It’s look good but is that where we at in modern game. Just as long as it’s look good, all you do is press the d pad left or right and running rounding, pick up some stuff, repeat then you hand it in. That’s it. Game honestly it’s just boring. Just as long as it look good though, right.
Seeing the absolute hell the developers went through just to get this game out while other AAA teams shit the bed dealing with no where near the same amount of hardship. Devs felt guilty for leaving Ukraine, some that stayed behind had to deal with not having internet and not knowing if they were going to die or if loved ones had survived. The game needs work but the foundation is strong which speaks volumes about the integrity of GSC
I have 246 hours in Stalker 2 as of now. It's buggy as fuck, runs like absolute shit, and I haven't played anything else since it released. I'm nearly finished with my second playthrough, exploring every part of the map.
Bro how do you have 246 hours I got 45 and I felt like I've played alot
@@del-qx4liI got 100h and feeling like im a noob that did not explored anything, i need more stalker 2, i never explored like 6 locations and just passed through em or even never been near em
@@del-qx4liIt's almost a month since the release. It is possible by playing all day, I've done similiar thing with The First Descendant by getting 120h in 2 weeks by playing whole weekends and ruining my sleeping schedule by sleeping 3-4 hours then work 8-10 hours and play the game for like 4-6
@@del-qx4li the zone tends to draw you in after being in it your entire childhood
@@del-qx4li I mean, I have 94 hours, and I haven't played at all for the last 6 days because I've been bedridden with the flu : /
A long time Stalker fan here, been a fan since the release of Call of Pripyat, basically. I finished Stalker 2 with 120 hours played on my Steam counter, and it was a beautiful, sometimes insufferable, buggy mess of a broken masterpiece! There is so much good things under this clutter of technical problems that I can't even begin to number them! If this game gets Cyberpunk 2077 level of post-release treatment, we'll have a true gem on our hands, and probably one of the best games of this decade.
Been saying the exact same thing. Compared to the release Clear Sky I'd say they did pretty well. Funny enough I haven't been fully immersed into a game this much since Cyberpunk. Seems like they have big plans for this game and I can't wait to see more.
@@JingMitsuyamaCH Nothin will ever eclipse the level of jank that clear sky has.
"When"!
They aren't bugs, it's just the zone playing with your head
Bad performance, quest bugs, baffling design decisions, general jank. Now you truly got the same old school experience we got with Shadow of Chernobyl and Clear Sky at launch. Except a little less broken than that :) (Call of Pripyat was actually pretty solid on release already though).
I love this game.
Yeah, S2 is SoC level of bugginess at launch (very rough estimation). Clear Sky was so much worse, it was unplayable, if you managed to pass couple of the fist few locations, your save file become broken on 3rd or 4th for example, it had day 1 patch that people had to download from the site, or in some cases just wait for a friend, cause here internet was still expensive. And Clear Sky was actually really decent at launch, yeah, it's still the most polished game of original trilogy, despite I prefer the atmoshere of other two.
Stalker 2 despite its many bugs and faults is the game that made me like open worlds again, the zone is so fun to just explore and fuck around that I lost time of how long I was in 1 area. Its a game that is just fun to play, no bullshit microtransactions no bullshit level requirements to use gear, no bullshit grinding, just a flawed but incrediblely fun game.
I’m 60 hours in and I’ve only run into the bug that stopped me from being able to save Zalissa
You mean that one where the old man gives you 1k kupons every time you talk to him but doesnt let you complete the mission? Yeah same shit happened to me
On the bright side i made like 2 millions kuppons by spamming the shit out of the dialogue so at least i got something out of it
@ nah I meant where the monolith spawned inside the safe building where you can’t shoot into or grenade them making me lose the town due to not being able to protect them from attack
@@RileyNewcomb
Oh
thats a diferent bug(?)
@@RileyNewcomb I solved it this way: Attacked monolith base (I believe it was at "Sphere" base, next to Ribs anomaly), then I aggroed a couple of monolithians and then I slowly dragged them all the way to Zalissa (eating medkits on my way and looking that they don't lose me and keep following)
I dragged them just to that building with closed doors and killed them and then the door opened and I was able to fight other monolithians. I suppose it fixed the script somehow.
And yes when you kill the first portion of monolithians don't run too far from Zalissa cuz there will be the second wave and Guffer will call you again via radio
I suppose maybe you've already solved it or just gave up trying, but maybe it will be useful for some other people with the same bug.
@ I’ll have to try on my 2nd play through, I’m like 75% through rn, hopefully the issue is gone when I go back for the achievement
The wish granter actually does all the og endings but you have to interact with the ghost again and again until they disappear
extra cool point about the poppy field quest, if you give the picture to the guy that gives you a rifle you can just kill him and take the picture back at any point, effectively letting you do both endings to the quest even when it’s ‘complete’
There is also that same rife laying around somewhere. So doesn’t really matter what you do. Which ultimately breaks the emergent. There’s not a point to anything you do. When I saw the rife again at a location, it felt like there’s not point in caring about anything I do now.
@@NotSsteVven828Have you considered that the Stalker who hung out around the poppy field looting the corpses of the rookies who had wandered into the field may have been lying to you about the rarity of the weapon? The damn thing is broken as well.
@@NotSsteVven828i felt the opposite way, it make the world feel less game-y and gatekept. most other games would lock that reward away permanently but to fit the brutal nature of stalker you can play brutally and backstab quest givers so you end up on top
The fucking call of Pripyat joke is back. Absolute peak vid as always
Both the nickname of the protagonist and ATGM actually refer to the Scythians, a nomadic people who lived on the territory of Ukraine before the Slavs emerged (the Slavs were mainly formed in Polissia, the Scythians lived closer to the Black Sea)
Love the vid, but probably will watch the second half after finishing the game (just successfully defended Zalissia)
we wuz steppe iranians n shieeeet
I think the Faust/Doctor swap thing in the 'don't shoot a kind regretful defenseless old man' ending is metaphorical. In a way it is also the Faust ending since he can see the noosphere and considers it sacred, so the Zone expanding freely means his divinity is freed and covers the entire world. It is also the only ending where 'you know more than I do, envoy of the Monolith' makes sense. Or maybe the Zone exchanged Faust for the Doctor in that big red super emission, or Faust took over the doctor, because his universal controller soldier abilities made him actually survive in the noosphere so he became Zone-Sauron. Anyway, I never wanted to step into that green gooey pod and do the Fallout 3 sacrifice, the game made me. I just wanted to go home and cry for killing Strelok & Scar..
or maybe doctor made some sort of deal with an interdimensional demon, would make sense since faust and stuff. i didnt play the game since its broken, ill wait a year or so. but the plot seems really good
Parker 2: Heart of Fitzgerald
Double the size of Soc? Actually it's like 8 times bigger than all 3 original games lol
Bigger, and way more lifeless
9 times actually.
whit less stuff in it lol
Let's hope GSC adds built-in night vision back into suits soon so nights can be easier to see
Not much of a point when the day night cycle is SO SHORT
Who up stalking Owen Kung? Wait… don’t actually do that
9:37 so…my insane RNG was stepping on a barrel and being launched into the rafters above, and being able to avoid the fight with pseudo giant.
Don’t step on chairs, barrels, or boxes, stalkers.
They always spin me right right round right round
I've experienced the enemies spawning out of nowhere too, I went to the army warehouse to get some stash, when suddenly some bandits pop up out of nowhere, and then sparks, and then some bloodsucker while im still fighting the sparks, and after that whole shenaningan, theres just a pile of body covering the army warehouse.
One of the things they should take notes from are the mods. Now, to say the community knows best is kinda naive, but there are some things they added that seem like a no brainer. A couple of things I wish they would add is mutant loot pool, that way there is some way to get back some of the coupons you're gonna spend on killing them, and it would make some mutants even a prize for hunters which need even more coupons. Another thing I wish they add was Nightvision, because the flashlight barely lights up 10 feet in front of you, hell, even add some tiers of flashlights so that you progress from shitty flashlight to god like Nightvision.
The game is pretty good, it's my first STALKER game and I've been loving it so far, the story is good so far. Everything is a little too metaphorical at times or too dramatic but I honestly can't complain too much about the dialogue when the game is this good.
this whole comment section is a freak off 💀
"Sweet looking Duga grid" - he said while looking at trees popping out of nowhere in the distance.
In the faust boss fight, I shit you not I had 10 fps, still a work of art
It got so bad I had to reload from the auto save after phase 1 cause I had a slideshow at like 5 fps.
One of the things that had me really pleasantly surprised with Stalker 2 is on my second playthrough, I discovered that making different choices in the main story gave me totally different story missions than my first playthrough.
Between that, how open the game is (Especially if you manage to hop the fence to Prypiat way before you're supposed to be there), and how rewarding exploration is, this game is basically exactly what I wanted from a game for the last several years.
Games like Starfield had me thinking that I might actually be burnt out on open world games and wandering them like I always have, but then came Stalker 2, totally reigniting my love of exploration.
I jumped into STALKER 2 a bit later as I was intially discouraged by bad out of box experience and very hard beginnings (similar to Clear Sky). However after mastering Lesser Zone and getting enough coupons to cover expenses + start upgrading stuff it got bearable.
Now GOG reports I am at 85+ hours played since game release taking it very slowly and exploring areas up to each small detail. Most of the spent time is from last two weeks, which is in my commons supreme success. I love Zone in high quality, more opened world, soft gated access into new areas like too strong enemies, not having access into same camps like Malachite, etc. In theory if you have enough coupons nothing restricts you from getting for instance GP assault rifle when leaving Lesser Zone or better suit if you can find it or afford it.
Immersion in this game is as good as I got many years ago when I first played Shadow of Chernobyl. However there is always something which will break the immersion like overkill NPC aiming skills (aimbot level and overkill shotgun long range accuracy), memory leaks + random crashes, not so rare bugs impacting side quests and campaign, lastly absent A-Life making many uncounters like lightning out of blue, sometimes up to level they spawn in already cleaned areas.
So i also consider STALKER 2 as buggy mess right now, but with extremly good potential if after relaase continues update and modders will this up
All the bugs are lesser problem of stalker 2. The most annoying are - hidden reputation, broken economy, zero statistic of your progress and about zero impact of your secondary decisions.
Owen Kung aside, this game is very good with extremely prominent flaws especially with optimization (I have a 4060 + 16gb ram + decent cpu and had to download a mod to get it to run stably and it still doesn't). The exploration is fantastic and It's endlessly enjoyable to find new interesting locales and how detailed they are keeps them visually interesting. It captures a very unique vibe, one of average slavic existence, where you have to fight off invisible monsters and wind that can rip you to pieces before sitting down at a campfire and drowning yourself in vodka.
I'm a big fan of the gunplay it's just a shame there isn't a little more variety in the weaponry, it would've been cool to have some melee weapons too. I don't really have many complains about the core gameplay or mechanics other than it being repetitive. I absolutely love the world, architecure, and unique setpieces they're able to show off and I can see unreal engine 5 becoming a real powerhouse after it gets refined.
Great video, lots of effort and humor that filled in my evening at work, cheers and good hunting stalker 😎
The game can’t render multiple NPCs. The game should have the A-Live System that implements NPCs EVERYWHERE in the world. Just by knowing these two facts, I can imagine why ever freaking enemy is spawning 100m around you. It was literally the biggest and most empty world I ever experienced in a modern video game.
Original A-Life had an online and an offline system. Online distance was about 150 metres, and beyond that was where offline A-Life is being processed and what that means is basically, the NPCs aren't being rendered or simulated in real time. Offline A-Life updates per minute
I'd never call this world empty. There is something to find around every corner. I agree I'd like more NPC's roaming around but NPC's alone don't make for a fulfilling open world for me
Texture flickering was fixed with first update, did you pirate the game? :)
caught in 4k
on release day it was trying to make the box half the screen size
Copium, a game like stalker 2 releasing the way it did day 1 is a bad precedent to how little to no playtesting was done before release
How is there no moon? Yet when you look in puddles you see moon reflection 😂
the "2" on STALKER 2 stands for the size of the exclusion zone, they kept spawning behind you.
The moss anomaly in gamma kinda reminds me of the shard anomaly in S2 cause is uses the same mechanic that if you just slow walk through it, it doesn’t hurt you
That was a feature since the OG trilogy
I had a side quest where I had to follow some clues about a missing guy and the moment I picked the PDA out of the inventory, I saw how a group of Mercs spawned behind a train, just popped into existence.
I can't wait for the A-Life to be fixed and modders making a survival/simulator mod like Anomaly or GAMMA.
I’m too broke to get a new pooter so at least I can see the story this way
So, about those animations misfiring, what happens is that they can be cancelled. Sprinting or reloading will stop heals. Heals or sprints will stop reloads. The only thing to do is to check the heals or reloads completed before doing anything else.
there is a mod that fixes this on nexus: responsive input
This is going straight into the "watch after playing the game" playlist. Loved the video on the original trilogy.
my computer i built with all current gen parts can barely get a smooth 50 fps on medium settings. oh what a time to be on an amd gpu. this game is the reason why I'm buying a 4080 or 50 series equivalent in April and I'm saving this game till then
I heard AMD plans to drop continuing to upgrade their gpus after the 4080.
Nightvision should exist for dark segments, the dark is fine, it's how darkness should be, NVG's are the counter to this, just make it so enemy npcs can't see either.
47:55 Diadia Lenya.
Diadia means uncle. Uncle Lenya. In fact, it's not even a family name.
We usually use this word for elders when children address them. But adults often use it as well.
7:42 they are zombies, that is why they don't hide
So i was reviewing the a life code as i played and could see the npc (ai) would activate in a radius as you got closer ( i guess it's some sort of pre built-in thing until they fix a life in full) but enemies can and will still spawn in
loved watching your streams dude, love the video too- and you've come a long way from the first videos, keep it up!
Definitely going to give it a good 6-8 months before I pick it up. By that point, It'll probably be unrecognizable compared to its launch. Here's hoping at least
The game can feel pretty goofy when Scar opens his mouth
man. this plotline is so convoluted it's like eating overcooked spaghetti.
I love the way this guy talks man I can’t describe it but it’s nice to listen to
Owen you are one of the funniest people on this platform. Love the videos bro
Once they fix the bugs and AI, this blight become my favorite game ever. Even with the performance and bugs, the game is probably in my top 10. It’s the most immersive experience I’ve had playing a game and I’ve played thousands of games
they should've done a "just leave" ending. When you basically leave the zone
The definitive Stalker 2 video
Stalker 2 is buggy asf and i literally had to stop playing it because it kept crashing but it was SO GOOD it was one of those games that are so good you lose sleep over it I pulled multiple all-nighters and i haven’t done that since highschool, waiting for more patches first then im diving straight back in again
enemies STILL can spot you from behind walls, and from miles away, other than that, and the broken spawns, great game
I didnt know they moved their studio into my country, But that is amazing i guess. Now we can proudly say that stalker 2 was.. Made in Czech Republic 🗿
I've just about finished my 1st play through with 75 hrs so far. Met a couple of game stopping main quest bugs, with required npc not talking to continue the quest. I modded in cheaper repairs, lower mutant health and, because I'm a pack rat, lower ammo/consumables weight plus the longer days and shorter nights mod.
I’m pretty sure the world wide ending is cannon and hope it is so we can go to new country’s
Chimeras are a bit too tanky, yes, but the Pseudo-giant is fine. I completed the game 3 times on veteran difficulty and had no problems with it.
No you didn't.
@@Rodentfiftysix and why is that?
glorious kungpload
Another Kung masterpiece. Really enjoyed the edits and political commentary on this one. Go Kung, go Bills ❤
>become unstoppable machine with unshakable will
>manage keep your capacity for rationality, empathy and morals
>either save the world or help a beautiful being express itself
>still no GF
checks out xD
I have not player Stalker 2 yet but dayum the story seems awesome
Played 400 hrs and was thinking about this game these two months, when was working, when was going to sleep, when was awakening in the morning...
Will wait for the bug fixes and play again, maybe with some mods/cheats - want to keep guns I earned during the first time and focus on side quests.
Btw, completed Project Y as I thought it's the lesser evil. If you return to Doctor before receiving Strelok's mission to kill him you'll say in a talk with him that you as Skif found his home - it's the Zone
that one room with the walkways above at the end you drop into was made by one evil troll bastard. yes im being vague so i dont spoil lol
Stopping like 30 seconds in, I can’t wait until I beat this game so I can finally watch this video. This game has been what I’ve been looking for in video game in quite some time. And I’m glad this game came to be regardless of any backlash it has brought.
Everyone has issues with the swamp chimera. It has double health of a normal one. Your meant to keep running and dodge and spawn energy drink and run towards the base. Because you’ll either run out of ammo or time. Because of the emission. Don’t try hiding in the shack. Just keep going.
Hide in the shack do it
lot of people were complaining about the weight problems in stalker 2, but I played the other games and it's honestly way worse in them. People just need to learn that they don't need every bandage they find.
I am a vet of the Zone, and I can tell only 6 hours in that this is a proper Stalker title and somehow one that actually succeeds in attracting a wider audience without compromising on its vision. A miracle, like you said.
The best thing I could say is that I wont just be sitting around waiting for a modpack. I was an Anomaly junkie and had concerns that i'd just wanna go back lol but this is the real deal as of 1.1.3.
I wish the zone chat and hunting was back but those are small things mostly.
she stalker on my kung till i owen
My 2024 GOTY... by far. Is it buggy? Hell yes... Did they nail the psychological horror aspect? HELL YES!!! This game made me love open world games where I search every corner for loot and weapons, just like im Fallout 3 and 4. Love every minute of it.
To be a AA studio. I think they do as well as triple A studios.
King kung talking bad about his stalker videos?
Nonsense even if they are dated they are still some of my absolute favorites from you
You playing the og games is what single handedly got me psyched for stalker 2 and despite dumping probably 70 hours in, i dont even think im halfway through the story
I only just finished my first job for uncle sid
This game is genuinely one of my absolute favorite games of the year if not of the last 5 years
The worst bugs ive encountered so far is random item spawning/duplication. Ill be walking around with my Lynx or Sledgehammer unique weapons, and get a duplicate regular SVD/Spas
Another bug but during the extraction for Professor Ozersky, enemy spawns are so broken. And the spark NPCs don't help defend
Dude all these cutscenes he's playing that have flashbacks or something similar were straight up not in my game, I've gotten 2 endings and have never seen them
590 hours in already........this is the best broken game in the world. And im hooked asf...
I play one steam deck from 30 to 45 fps and im so happy ot even works and it crashed less then my big boy pc crazy
I brought an RPG to a fight with granite unit... died 10--12 times but finally passed them
its a real shame they didnt go with ue4 instead of being beta testers to an autotune engine, at leats you can count on them fixing this thing up until its the way they want it to be.
As a long time stalker player who has countless hours in the original 3 games. If you can't kill a bloodsucker, or a psidog, it's a skill issue
This is the best game I’ve ever played
Parker 2: Owen of Fitzgerald
Ngl I prefer the whole loading zone thing that the old games had going on, Meant that stuff didn't have to get unloaded in an area.
Shit having to load in every 200 meters for us low/mid spec gamers is quite annoying to say the least.
11:45 There are actually indicators of which psidog is the real one.
1: Glowing Eyes
2: Blood splatters when shot
3: Usually the original keeps its distance and stays still, on the edge of the fighting. Run around until you find one hiding behind a box or a tree and that's likely the real one.
Edit: Also, STOP SHOOTING MUTANTS WITH YOUR RIFLE. USE A SHOTGUN.
Mutants don't need any sort of health nerf, you just need to understand which weapons are more effective against them vs. human enemies. Get a SPAS-12 or a Saiga and spray them down, and enemies like bloodsuckers and snorks go down in one magazine.
"Mutants don't need any sort of health nerf"
lol. I just watched a vid of someone taking on the mutant with the lopsided arms... 20 full shotgun reloads dumped into its face (so, 100 shells), 12 grenades, and then finally ANOTHER 2 full shotty reloads before it went down. stop lying.
@ idk which one you mean by “the one with the lopsided arms” (the controller?) but the only mutant in this game that takes more than a single magazine of Saiga shots to the face is a chimera. And even those don’t take more than a couple.
I think we fought pseudo-Faust in Duga.
I don't mind the smaller bugs, like glitching textures or NPC doing weird stuff etc, those are just anomalies and part of the "stalker" experience. Ofc I only got 36 hours in the game and I heard later game has game breaking glitches and bugs, so can't say about those. However the game is unstable and the performance problems are the real problems. Feels like the performance got worse after the updates and fixes. Stalker 2 cause my PC to hard crash several times, only restarting PC helped the problem, but last time my GPU didn't wanna boot after the hard crash. But it eventually started working again later on, don't know what the hell happened, no problem with other games though. So yea damn UE5 and unoptimization are real problems for sure.
Not sure if it was patched or your computer is Garbo
But I have none of the issues you mentioned aside from sitting NPCs floating when you talk to them, dead NPCs popping in T posing and game freezing for a seconds when you get near any hub.
I can run it 60fps + with I7 and 3090.
As with stealth it works great if you follow the maps and one shot head shots.
Imo currently main issues is the AI has a ducking X ray thermal vision when it comes to grass and bushes, and aside from AI trying to flank you and using grenades, it's pretty terrible in combat (never healing, reloading exposed, constantly just going towards you)
27:32 Skif's and the AT system's name come from scythians: nomadic tribes living on the territory of modern Ukraine over two thousand years ago
this is also their first open world game i believe (original stalker games were split into sections via load screens) so they get a pass on stability
It runs much better than I thought it would without load screens.
100+h and i never:
Explored: Jupiter, Pripyat, 3 locations behind that big ass wall, Duga
Never used: Gauss
Never got all 4 or 3 (idk how much are there) endings
Never used cheats for some fun things (but i want to at some point)
Never collected all types of artifacts
Never collected all archartifacts
So i need more and more🙂
Before this dropped i had absolutely no idea what the stalker series was. Now after playing nearly halfway through the game i can confirm this has potential to be one of the best games of the decade, if we ignore launch bugs. Bravo to the dev team for creating this amazingly janky mess of fun
Dont even get me started on that fucking moose/stag thing that shit might aswell be imortal and the amount of enemies it spawned was honestly the only moment i actually raged while playing.
Gonna buy Stalker 2 with my Fortnite FTC paycheck
Was quite hyped, almost pre- ordered but I had to lower my expectations on release and for now i choose to get it for free.
I like it but have installed alot of mods that go around blatand oversights GSC should have fixed before release.
But If the game gets in a better state next year with all DLC iam happy to pay it :)
Got the game last week, and got my pc a day before that. That don't matter lol. What does is the fact that 2 pseudogiants happened to spawn in a town... and me being the dummy I am tried to fight them... Stuck in a house for a few minutes, guess the giants didn't like that, so they called for a double dinner date and got 2 buttsucker to flush me out... This "A-life" is very bad right now. All it is, is an inconvenience and a roadblock for the player. That 80% of the time shit just happens to you, and unless you still save scum there's no way around dealing with that bullish. And it's all fine and good, but when I'm going back from a loot run and nowhere near a building or location and things just spawn around me isn't believable. You don't just spawn stuff to have it wonder around till they despawn cause they're out of the players load distance. Guess the A in "A-Life" stands for aimless cause that's all the npc's do is Wounder aimlessly searching for the next loner to molest or get molested by, everyone is just a sub-faction of monolith now and apparently only belive in death to all and everything. And I cannot forgive that the tips in the loading screen say "sneaking around with your light on is a terrible idea. And to be fair ya it is. So we'll heck I better go get nightvison to help that problem right? Right? Well where the heck is it- oh...ya it's not even in the game... so why tell me to not sneak around the literal only way, and have the literal one thing ypu say not to do... be the only possible way to do it... like what the hell? Great game... still needs a lot of work. Much better then most modern launches tho.
All you have to do is think that your in the zone playing stalker on a computer that’s a anomalies object
16:45 Bruh why you have 119 bandages
40:50 tbh, I don't know why everyone is trying so hard to kill it, i think you meant to juat run away from monster and emission and i figured that after like 2 deaths
I think most people realize this and realize that this was a bad gameplay mechanic, so they didn’t want to run away when you see a monster. 😂 why make an enemy where you can’t even do anything to it other then run. So much fun 🤣
the poppy field area is absolutely insufferable
Just Non-stop
They don't explain the mechanics of it well at all, they tell you to drink an energy drink when you start to get tired but it seemingly just extends your time by 15 seconds before you start snoozing again
they literally tell you to stock up on drinks
Yeah it’s an overrated quest like I’m a Canadian but quest was pretty boring 😂. It’s look good but is that where we at in modern game. Just as long as it’s look good, all you do is press the d pad left or right and running rounding, pick up some stuff, repeat then you hand it in. That’s it. Game honestly it’s just boring. Just as long as it look good though, right.
@@legend7951yes? You've explained it which means you get it ;)
Love this game.
As for me, just waiting for this to leave Early Access and be the best experience it can be.
hey vladmir pull up that owen kung for me
Seeing the absolute hell the developers went through just to get this game out while other AAA teams shit the bed dealing with no where near the same amount of hardship. Devs felt guilty for leaving Ukraine, some that stayed behind had to deal with not having internet and not knowing if they were going to die or if loved ones had survived. The game needs work but the foundation is strong which speaks volumes about the integrity of GSC
Absolute cinema 🙌
bro stole Boo’s AK 😭😭😭