Just to be clear about the rebinding as some people seem to think I don't know how to rebind the keys or climb a ladder lol The problem with the game is you can not climb the ladder unless you use WSAD, I use TGFH so when I walk up to a ladder it automatically mounts the bottom rung but will not climb, I have to press W in order to climb up the ladder. I also try to bind J and Y but they are still bound to their default setting, there are many other keys that simply won't bind. I hope this clears it up.
That’s how I play all my games now, I wait for 2-3 years when all the bugs are fixed, DLCs are out and it’s all on 75% discount on steam. I am in no rush.
Considering how many great games we all have to sit and replay, the people who buy brand new games now are in the same boat as the meatheads that buy new cars.
The game is free on console. We are practically forced to bundle game pass. The company released a love letter to STALKER fans under invasion. The first patch came within 5 days of release. Everyone needs to calm their shit 😂 look at the state of COD/EA titles with infinite cash and manpower and they're dog shit.
Meh. Depends on the rigs , some people are having a blast some people are having a bunch of performance issues. I'm not waiting that long , I'll be getting it next week. I got a 7800x3d and 4090 with ddr5 ram. So I'm good to go
It's just UE5. Until the engine matures you're gonna have bad overall. UE5 games have improved, but I'm happy that my 4080/13700k was a good investment for UE5. I have the occasional crash but other than that I'm having an absolute blast
Same. The original one was kind of janky on release too but became an utter classic after they fixed things up. Being easily moddable helped out a lot too I guess lol.
While I am more of a casual gamer these days, I'm also an old school gamer. And while I can usually get passed most inadequacies in games like glitches, bad story \ voice acting \ graphics etc. it's pretty difficult to get passed bad gameplay. The spawning system Mac describes with enemies popping into existence out of thin air is indeed a MAJOR sin (and also a major red flag for the dev team) for a game that is supposed to have a huge element of realism. Just as a concrete example, in the situation Mac showed, the pop-in type of spawning eliminated the tactical possibility of taking out the enemies from the tower. That option just ... doesn't exist. This "my way or the highway" approach to game design makes the game less of the sandbox it's supposed to be and more of a story-driven game with specific encounters that are supposed to be scripted in a certain way. In essence you don't make up your own stories by playing the game and using your own wits to survive, you play the stories the devs envisioned and react to scripted scenarios. And if those stories are bad or just mediocre then you end up with a bad or mediocre experience. What I'm describing is basic game design philosophy and so I'm afraid that because they went with decisions like this (and putting out an almost finished game) that they have at least some young devs on their team that are there just for a paycheck and don't really care about the product. Or they are too incompetent to do anything about it (a sad situation I've seen more and more in the past 20 years, not just with games). The worst case is if they are being micro-managed into this by people whose only experience of gaming is playing a bit of Candy Crush here and there. Thank you Mac for putting out honest reviews! I've played the game up till the point the guy hits you in the face. I thought that was going to be a one off experience but this review showed me I should wait for some patches and mods.
For sure the greatest disappointment of the year. I expected a buggy launch, since it still is a Stalker game, but there are just so many other issues with the game. Though the worst part is that the biggest issues aren't even (easily) fixable. Bugs can be fixed, either by the developer or a fanmade patch down the road. But the writing and atmosphere and such? That's hard to replace unless fans are really dedicated. Plus real life politics might be in the way of the game, not only have they put a greater focus on "diversity" where it didn't need any and the whole Ukraine vs. Russia thing. The first 3 Stalker games were oozing with atmosphere and had this Ukrianian-Russian blend that worked so well.
Are there any references to the real-life conflict in the game itself? I haven't played it yet, but I was wondering if they would shoehorn something in like that.
@@TonyMcCrea Not that I am aware of. I didn't have a chance to play it myself yet (but will on the weekend), but I watched some streams and from what I've seen that blend of Ukraina-Russian culture from the original trilogy is just kind of gone. The english dub seems to have most characters speak with either british or american accent and the dialogue is just really basic.
@@Dionysus24779 Well, if it's bland and basic then I personally think it's better than to have the game reference the conflict in the game. It would sort of nullify the point of that universe in the first place, given that in the eyes of the government they're ALL trespassers and deserve to be either put in jail or killed. They're all criminals, technically, that escaped the real world and devoted their life to the zone. Doesn't matter if you're Duty or Freedom, or Loner. Plus, it wouldn't make sense for them to take any side of the conflict. Everybody's got enough on their hands with anomalies and monsters and radiation.
Sad trend that shows no signs of slowing; early access games parading as fully finished (and full priced) releases. Looking forward to playing it in maybe 6 months from now.
This is why I just use gamepass. Don't feel like I lost anything having tried the game out. I'm still enjoying it even though it definitely needs some work.
The original STALKER is one of my favorite games of all time because of its amazing atmosphere. If that game had featured re-spawning enemies, I never would have bothered with it.
I am sure the original A-life did have respawning enemies, it's just that they did not spawn at any conceivable vicinity of the player. As far as I remember, they had these "spawn areas" called "gulags" in the game script files, and apparently mobs were bound to these gulags (could not leave them either), and did respawn there but only if you weren't around.
@@niavellir7408 How can you even believe that? lol And that's not "their" games. You can be sure 1% of the team stayed the same. Probably the main boss btw.
@@Jimoshi1 unfortunately I’d like to disagree but yea….. I went back to Anomaly Gamma . This is such a disappointment. I was expecting Starfield and Cyberpunk letdowns, not this one. Visual and render issues I can deal with but a shitty spawning system basically kills the franchise.
I think it had something to do with those (((games journalists))) complaining how they'd failed a quest because the quest giver had died in some situation half the world away. So the system obviously ~was working at some point, because that's the kind of unexpected thing you'd expect.
@@jestemlegendom games journalists complaining about quest givers dying on the other side of the map (welcome to the zone, mfers), and the fact theyre trying to make this run on the Airfryer SeriesX
@@JimmyWelds Series X isn't the problem. Because there are no loading screens anymore the AI isn't working as intended & wondering into places it wasn't meant to.
Its not working properly at the moment..devs have a pinned post from the q&a section on their discord where they say that a-life is not working as it should be
I'm ngl it was pretty funny to kill an entire squad of like eight soldiers only to have a squad of five loners spawn when I looked away, say, "We really fucked them up," walk straight into an anomaly field and all die the most brutal deaths possible.
@@raskolnikov6443They rolled out 5 patches in 8 days during early access so I am optimistic. They are really active on discord and have been listening to the community
Mack you can remux MKV files! MKV is better than MP4 because if your PC crashes it will still keep what was recorded up until the crash. While MP4 files will be corrupted by a crash. In OBS go to file > remux and then add MKV's and it converts to MP4
he doesnt care. the default in OBS is MKV because they are better for this exact reason. hes been slacking for the last few months padding videos with random gameplay to "showcase the bugs" or whatever. cheap excuse to lengthen the vids.
This game is so frustrating. The enemy spawns 50 feet away and doesn't exist outside that. You clear an area, walk 50 feet away and new enemies spawn in . Guns are consumable items that have a shorter lifespan than a mayonnaise packet. Enemy humans have unlimited ammo but when you kill them they never have more than a few measly rounds on them. Etc etc The developers are bad at what they do and need to get a job at a fast food joint. The only way for this cancerous business model of game companies releasing broken, incomplete games to be corrected is for it to be made illegal. For them to suffer series penalties in tune with false advertising and even fraud. We have all had enough of this shit.
@spike178 always do but I gotta give the developers a break. They're going through some serious shit. The fact that they even made a game right now is legend.
@@snowpaletehdog I tried to and it didn't work lol. It's only on ladders and breakable boards in stashes so it's not as immersion breaking as you would think.
I have to agree, i was looking forward to this game. I suppose i could wait until some of the issues are fixed. Before those who ask, yes i do own the original both on steam and CD if i remember correctly and i am not sure if it would work on my Wins 11..
vanilla stalker is a good game. there are some bug patches that are quite desired but its still a good game. i hope this is a similar issue with stalker 2.
When you said the footage was lost, I just closed my eyes after a long day of work and listened to the wonderful rant so it worked out 👍 I'll check back on the game in a year, thanks Mack! Gives me another shot at playing the original games too...
You can just press L for the light, you can even change it in the bindings. There's no need to use the wheel, its optional. Also the yellow paint is to make games more disabilty friendly to color blind people that's why its added. There are laws in the US requiring video games to be accessible to people with disabilities. It would be good if they added an option to remove it.
hi mac. for reference. if you recorde as MKV again in the future. you can just run the following command in CMD. ffmpeg -i input.mkv -c copy output.mp4 takes a minute or 2 and does not re-encode the file but just remuxes it into the MP4 format. cheers mate
Thank you Mack! Almost all other "reviewers" (shame on them) are just Marketers who run Advertisements everytime a new game comes out. I'll wait a few months then I will revisit buying and playing this game.
As a left-handed dude I'm disappointed to hear you can't rebind all the keys. This same garbage was in the Metro games as well. I can't play with WASD. Console-first attitude is trash and these guys should know better.
As someone who played Stalker back when it first came out back i the 2000s, the sequel is so dissapointing. I am not talking about bugs or spec/performance issues I am talking about the gameplay. First about the enemies All Enemies just have wallhack/autoaim on your ass. Its so obvious when you have an "encounter" in a heavy foilage or forrested area, the ai is nonexistent, pure lock on autoaim if they have guns, and that includes the supposed flanking...the mutants also just perfectly lock on you and rush.... but what about mutants...MY GOOD THEY ARE BULLET SPONGES, breaks every and any immersion....Bloodsuckers eat 10 plus shotgun shots to the face , or over 90 rounds of basic AK ammo ,they simply dont care, they dotn stagger, they dont react , all you can do is bunny jump and strafe like its fuken unreal tournament retard..so bad...its not even that hard, its jsut so lazy and boring...oh yay here comes thje 15th bloodsucker in your starting area called "lesser zone"....no the last part isnt a hyperbole the game jsut loves to spam them plus at least 4 you will encoutner during main and side quests and the one at the very start because fuck it. Even human enemies are bullet sponges, unless you go for the head, even those rouge camo military looking guys can easily eat 10 plus rounds of AKs unless you headshot them, again they dont care and if they fire you lose HP and fast... The spawns and A life Nonexistent... its just a spawn that is randomly generated roughly a 100 meters away, with an enemy autolock/rush towards you. I wont go "into details" because there is nothing to talk about , its that sad and basic. The economy, the mission rewards, weapon/gear upgrades.... all is either basic, outdated for 2024 or a lazy way to increase difficulty...missions dont give you any money, my biggest income are enemy weapons, guns are made out of chinese plastic because durability goes down faster than you say blyat, and are OFC SUPER expensive to repair...its all about creating stupid money sinks for the player and then hoping fanboys and copers will call you out to "git gud" and gaslight you...thats all it is to it. Ofc weapons with sub 30 % durabilty cant be sold to traders and jam every 5 rounds fired...but only if you use them ofc.... enemy NPCs will hit you no problem full auto with MP5s at 80 plus meters walking slowly towards you and ignoring walls, foilage, trees....ofc course when you loot them all enemies never have more than say 20 rounds of ammo sry mr. player gotta buy overpiced ammo at local tzraders...again as i said its just about creating artificial bottlenecks and money sinks Gameplay and gunfights are so basic and bad, i would consider this Stalker 0.8 with an unreal 5 mod.
I honestly understand the angry voices about why the game is not polished enough, but at the same time, people need to understand that this game literally lost so many devs in the war in Ukraine. Volodymyr Yezhov, one of the main developers of the game, died in Bakhmut in December 2022. They literally had to move out multiple times because of bombardment, among many other things. I am surprised that they could even finish the game at all.
@@velvetinedrapes4359 Free? I was lucky I suppose. I just redeemed the disc CD keys on Steam/GoG for digital versions. Had to go to a special page to redeem the key first. The page is up, but the service is no longer working.
Thankfully Mack, you gave earned the trust of your audience and I don't need visuals to know that the issues you describe are serious problems. As always we appreciate the honest review.
I think I have a slightly different version of the game. I can change weapons using the mouse wheel or the keys 1 2 3 4 etc. I also don't have yellow paint on the ladders. I can also turn on the flashlight using a key on the keyboard.
Dude lost his shit at the sight of weapon wheel, didn't even bother to try pushing number keys to see if they did anything. Didn't bother pushing L for his light (basically the universal key for flashlights in games going back to HL1). Didn't bother to check options to see if he could disable things he didn't like (such as yellow highlights). Also couldn't be bothered to search Google for 5 minutes to see how to convert his footage to MP4. Still using MP4 for some dumb reason, everyone knows mkv is better. He's using a 5 year old video card and complains about performance. Guy makes a living shitting on games and then complains about not getting a review key. Rushes out a half assed review due to time constraints and then complains about the game being released too early. Mac is turning into an old man who'd rather yell at clouds than actually fix his issues or adapt
@@coboldelphi I feel like Mack plays a bit of a character now, more so than years ago. He's right to call bullshit in games but it feels like he reaches sometimes just to get a bit of drama and haha bellding in the videos and being angry old man for no reason
@Chyrnobyl66 A-life was revolutionary in the original games. It was so advanced the AI could complete the game before you. Factions would move independently, take territory and patrol the zone. It's not simply AI, it's a system that works in the background to keep the world's inhabitants feeling alive. For comparison, in fallout 4, the brotherhood of steel is at the airport and this never changes. There are random events where BOS soldiers will appear out of nowhere and maybe fight something but these are scripted and inconsequential.
There is no AI open world scripts running, There is no A life. It's just timers that just spawns things near you, and sometimes right on you., all based on timers and event triggers. The game has the immersion of a 20 year old game. And I highly doubt they will be implementing a vastly improved AI or script system with any updates, they will just tinker with the event timers and spawn triggers to hide how obvious they are. I was hoping for an improvement in the A-life system and the open world scripts running and tracking other stalkers and enemies. Instead it's even worse. What a disappointment. And enemy AI is not fun to fight, it legit sucks. This is what happens when everything is homogenized into one engine - copy paste Ubisoft shlop, but now with eurojank as frosting on top.
First half of the game is enough to make you want to keep playing. Second half after SIRCAA, very buggy even with the two patches released. You also realize how EMPTY the map really is, and the A-LIFE 2.0 most likely being a marketing gimmick really shows. The original games had more going on even during downtime.
It's made for a controller, which you can use on a PC. I stopped playing with a keyboard a while ago due to carpal tunnel issues from work. This game is great with a controller.
They've tried to recreate the old A-life within UE5 and found they can't. A-Life was revolutionary and STILL nobody has managed to replicate it from the old X-Ray Engine. A janky system at times but brilliant for immersion. With a heavy heart I have to say Stalker2 is massively console orientated. This is a PC GAME FRANCHISE ffs! It certainly has it's merits, no doubt about that but at the end of the day Stalker2 does nothing new, it brings nothing novel or particularly interesting to the table. An above average narrative/survival shooter for sure, especially with further optimisation and fixes but it doesn't reach Metro standards, let alone OG Stalker.
Well, that's the thing, they DIDN'T try. The devs are all fresh hires, all the original team left long ago for survarium and metro 2033. Only the shitty boss remained (Grigorovich) and stalker's IP which he managed to pocket. The game's packed full of default UE5 assets and I'm sure it runs all the basic UE5 code too, it's a common trend with modern developers running rookie cheap teams - they can't and won't code to save their life, only make models, and balance existing scripts with new numbers. And well, it's no wonder, given that most gamers nowadays are casuals who don't care or know better anyway, so to them only the graphics matter in the first place, so it all checks out and they still manage to sell this slop and make a profit.
I got 9800x3d, RX6800, 32GB ram, SSD and on 1440 I have average 50 fps on higher settings. few minor bugs for me - levitation ppl, some flickering but no gamecrash. Keybindings is a big issue for me, I like to use mouse buttons aswell and I can only for half of the things I need. The respawn of group of ppl is probably a bug with AI-life 2 called out by developer, so lets hope they will fix it asap :) the atmosphere is awesome! 6 hrs in and Im having blast!
Medium settings with a 7800x3d and a 2060 super and I'm getting about a 100 frames for 1080p. Also, unless there's some restrictions I didn't run into, you can remap your keys. I remapped the lean keys to be q and e and put the quick access on z and c
Things that I would like to see addressed: 1) Bulet physics and gun accuracy - no ricochets, no tracers, just terrible - old ones were better 2) Lighting in the old games was better, I can't believe I'm saying this 3) HUD looks so generic 4) AI zone simulation needs more work (monster spawns included) 5) I feel like you get lots of weapons early on, also gun repair/condition on drops need to be improved, progression doesn't feel well paced, which reminds me of 6) People expected very extensive gun modding in this game, it was hinted by the teasers/trailers 7) Some monster mechanics need a rework and the monsters need to be made less bulletspondgy acordingly 8) Artifacts need to be entirely reworked, they are not even half as useful as they used to be, also why would the devs even change the classic artifacts' effects??? 9) I would have much preffered it if the devs stayed out of politics and current events, it might have been forced on them who knows, but still, leaves a bad taste Those are the ones I've spotted WITHOUT even playing the game. I guess I'll wait for Gamma 2
I haven't played this yet (if I will at all) but it just looks too...simplified? Like it's trying to mimic other shooters that have come and gone without aspiring to be a true sequel to an already great series with it's own identity. Anomaly was amazing, we should be doing better than what free mods can offer, not going backwards. I'll stack this amongst the growing pile of "give it a year or two and see it's good then".
What blows me away... its 2024 as you said... why haven't consoles allowed a mouse and keyboard input option to begin with? They would level out the competition with PC gaming for one. I would never play a serious FPS game on console, especially PVP because controllers suck for that. And RTS/4x games... consoles are ignoring a whole genre and the community that loves it. I tried Civ5 on PS4 when it was free... unplayable. Every turn takes a week cus playing Civ with a controller is F'ng stupid. And then it solves a big part of the bad port issue... M&K controls will no longer be an afterthought. Even if you gotta buy a Playstation brand mouse and keyboard, cus they love their proprietary equipment, I would be fine with that. Wise Up, Console makers.
it's up to the developer, mouse, keyboard was there in the PS4, few games supported it,mostly direct PC ports like warthunder. I think COD supported it the problem is they presume console users you sitting on a couch 10 ft away but it did work i just plugged in my dell PC one
@davidrenton i could get it to recognize the keyboard and use it to enter text but thats it. It would not recognize the mouse, maybe because it was on the same USB reciever as the keyboard.
Mouse smoothing is allegedly on with no ingame toggle (and a few other dumb config choices like framerate smoothing), there are some ini tweaks floating around
Yeah, you have to tweak ini files to get it to a playable state. Even then, it's still not known how to get rid of the frame smoothing. What a god awful game to develop for consoles, their entire fanbase is on PC. I'm fine with frame drops, I have VRR to take care of that, I don't need your stupid *ss forced framerate limiter.
Hey man I'm on a 4070 too how well does it run in general at 1080p with DLSS. Do you have to have to lower a lot of stuff so it doesn't chugg or is it nice and playable?
Some useful things for the people who may need them. Regarding the flashlight you can turn it on or off with L or middle mouse and not use the TAB plus E combo. Mouse lag can be sort of fixed with some config file settings. Game pass version: "C:\Users\"user name"\AppData\Local\Stalker2\Saved\Config\WinGDK\Input.ini" or for the Steam version here: "C:\Users\"user name"\AppData\Local\Stalker2\Saved\Config\Windows\Input.ini" paste: [/script/engine.inputsettings] bEnableMouseSmoothing=False bViewAccelerationEnabled=False make sure to save it. It will set acceleration and smoothing off. Which are on by default and can't be turned off in game.
It amazes me how people have missed all the content surrounding that, and are still baffled by the error. Even normienews picked it up. They literally live under a rock...
@@The_Noticer. "hurr durr, I have seen this one channel and one error before, so the rest of the world's population ought to have seen it as well, durr"
@@BouncyStickman I literally said, this was in normie news, all over the world. Even my local dutch news picked it up at some point. Its not obscure knowledge. All tech channels were talking about it. If you've missed it, you literally live in a bubble and never step out. Its still a valid comment. When this has been going for over a year, not knowing about it is a you problem.
@@The_Noticer. Dude I am perpetually online and I never heard about it until I was looking for stalker 2 shader crash fixes.... and I Don't even have an intel chip.
I just started the game for the first time and it’s unplayable. The stuttering is awful. Feels heavy and clunky, like moving through mud. Don’t get me started on the Compiling Shader thing when you start the game - that shit is worse than Chinese torture! Why can’t devs just keep their games simple anymore? Fucking gives a shit about about 64 or 200 square mile map when the game is consistently having an epileptic fit.
Enemies spawn in after you’ve cleared… That’s a hard pass from me, even if they fix everything else. There’s too many good games out there without that bullshit. Great review as always.
@@somecallmetim42I believe it’s happening with older CPU’s. The game is extremely CPU intensive and some CPU’s are just not able to process the complexities. Haven’t had a single respawn issue and I’m 5 hours in my experience and having an absolute blast. Hope the devs fix it because I want people to enjoy it
The cope in these comments is unreal. There are videos out there of this not just happening but it's happening right in fron of the player. Stop laying to defend such a shitty ass game already, folks!
@@somecallmetim42 I've had groups spawn right behind me about 4 or 5 times in 6 hrs. Not really annoying but doesn't feel organic or immersive. The npcs aren't actually living in the world they are just spawned in next to you. It's pretty poor game design.
I did complete and enjoy the game but yeah my god sometimes the enemy spawns are ridiculously op, the end mission I would never have survived without money glitch it’s just not even fun at that point was just tedious …
Cuz they wanted shiny graphics instead of good gameplay. They are not og gsc that made stalker trilogy they are worthless millennial devs thar never made a big game before
@@aev6075 Can you not count dude? Millenial means born in 2000 we are now having 2024, so at most these dudes are 24 years old. Which is indeed pretty damn young to have any expiriene with developing a game.
IDK, I think most reviews are quite similar to this. Mack's key rebinds aren't all that common (but really should be completely supported) but outside of that the gripes are pretty similar.
the not enough vram issue is an intel micro code bug. When you update to the newest one it goes away. So many PC gamers don't seem to know that their intel chips are bombs just waiting to blow
you forget to mention that microcode update tanks performance on those cpu's up to 30% lol people should just rma all 13 and 14 gen intels and be done with this charade of a company
Nah, stalker SOC is better than gamma, cop too, mostly cuz gamma is kind a pointless and very casual too. The original games may be semi casual but at least the main quest is fun and some gunplay is at work unlike gamma where everything is too accurate and you have way too much HP. A mod better than gamma and a little better than the originals is miserly (on black road, with stash randomizer). Gamma is still fun for emmersion, free play and unpredictability, don't get me wrong, but it's undeserving of as much praise as it gets. As pets stalker 2... I think even most trash mods are better, this shit is really bottom of the barrel tier.. Heck I can't even call it a stalker game, it's a stalker flavored far cry mod at best
I had to stop playing for 2 reasons. The laggy mouse input and the camera gives me motion sickness. I hate when games do this - take the camera control away from you to show you how a chest is opening. And all the unnecessary head bobbing aaaargh :(
How about when you get in the middle of a pack of those invisible mutant things and you waste all your ammo on the way to a mission as they run around you taking swipes as you fight the controls because one of their powers is to slow your aiming and movement down as if it isn't already fkn impossible.
@@Naotaku How do you like in games such as far cry when you are forced into a cutscene every time you get near a ladder - your view is spun around in the worst way possible for those that suffer game nausea and all you wanted to do is jump off the ledge, but no, the ladder grabs you. I have to close my eyes
@@minbari73 Yea, same. And that's just climbing a ladder, opening a chest... What about first person cut scenes?! :) I had to close my eyes for the whole intro, lol. Cyberpunk 2077 did this very well, all the cut scenes are happening around you, and it never takes the camera control away from you. You are free to look at whatever you want. I wish more games did it like that. I play a lot of FPS games without any issues, it's only when the game takes over the camera that causes this nausea. And excessive head bobbing like in this game. You make ONE STEP and the camera keeps shaking for like 2 seconds afterwards! On top of the mouse lag. Meh, I uninstalled it already. :)
Its just so friggin sad to be honest. I pre-ordered this Game two months before the release date, after like a decade of never pre-ordering anything - watching the documentation just made me sad to see the devs with war, covid so I wanted to support them BUT they sell a product and this product is not worth 109€ (highest version with DLCs and stuff). This was my first refund on GOG in years of using the platform. I was confused because I got the refund in like 10 minutes of asking for it (either a sign that a lot of people refund this too, OR I got very lucky) I played for 30 hours and always thought please just let It end, the more you play the game and get deeper into the zone the more bland It gets. I had 2 softlocks, had to re-load my saves just to play this whole hour again because of invisible enemys, locked doors that shouldn´t be locked, enemys I had to fight in a complex and the enemys two house blocks further away were locked on this quest too (dude wtf how should I even know). I know Kingdom Come 2 will come out in February and I rather buy the 4,50€ royal version of the first game and play this now and a year or two later I buy the second game for 10 € max. Thats the gaming industry right now, and people cry why nobody buys their games wtf lol.
@@shivan2418 their AA not AAA and had to rebuild most of the game from scratch due to unforseen circumstances, we should appreciate the fact that it even exists and still manages very well to create the intended atmosphere and gameplay they were wanting, gamers today are so fucking entitled tbh
I didn't pre-order this game because of the late lifting of the review embargo. That told me to wait until the full edition with all DLCs comes out and goes on sale in a year or two. I have a deep backlog, so no worries there.
Here is a snippet from an online article. The title is "Stalker 2 devs reassure players: Yes, A-Life 2.0 is in the game, no, it's not working right, and yes, fixes are on the way" A-Life is essentially the underlying system of simulations that governs the behaviors and interactions of NPCs and monsters in the game. "The gist of the A-Life is that the characters in the game live their own lives and exist all the time, not only when they are in the player’s field of view," OG Stalker programmer Dmitriy Iassenev said in a 2008 interview about the original Stalker with AIGameDev.
@@Mrcool179 A-Life is the constant world ai around you, in this game ai only exists near the player unlike the complex A-life in the other games which makes it boring and pointless
I'll treat it like Cyberpunk 2077. I just bought that game with all DLC for 40$ two weeks ago. It's amazing now. So, I will check this out in a year or so. It's a shame as I am a huge decade long fan of the series.
@@gogista so you admitted to not understanding a game that you have never played....you answered that yourself. Sometimes you need to experience something yourself to better understand.
Man I was so ready for this game to come out... then I saw the trailers with those cutscenes forced in and already knew this wasn't going to be the classic STALKER like us die-hard fans grew up knowing. The game releases and I'm watching gameplay and reviews and wasn't surprised at all by the results. A real shame they fell short of a master-class game just to end up like some new-age AAA bs console gamer focused garbage. Looks like I'll be sticking with the OG and save my $60 fuckn dollars.
@@theonefrancis696 No, that wasn't the standard back in 2000s. There were tons of games on PC that weren't defective and filled to the brim with bugs. That's not the case now ever since the mid to late 2010s because nearly every big modern game these days is essentially released in "early access" with how unfinished they turn out to be. Don't justify this non-sense.
FYI for people watching, middle mouse button is the button for the flash light. This isn't in the key binds, someone in discord kinda just found it. One of the things that really needed a tutorial pop up to just tell you.
Just so you know Mac, you can turn off the yellow paint in the game options. I did before I even started and it made a huge difference. Now if only they'd let us turn the stupid wheel off....
I don't know about the game being primarily made for consoles. If it had, they'd have seen the huge issue with the lack of deadzone settings and many gamepad players drifting all the time.
When the game has a weapon wheel instead of the normal keyboard 1 2 3 4 etc buttons for selecting weapons, then it's a console port. Weapon wheels are good for gamepads but an impediment when on PC.
When he says console game, he doesn’t mean it was literally designed to be loaded up on a console, though sometimes that is the case. He means that developers include shitty console game mechanics that have no business being in PC games.
What baffles me is that the game reached very positive reviews on Steam (80%) but A LOT of those boil down to "it's stalker, i know stalker, stalker good". IP recognition still seems to be the major deciding factor instead of actual quality when it comes to user enjoyment. Nostalgia is hell of a drug.
ah yes, simply enjoy undercooked products and if anyone speaks up against the product that person obviously couldn't formulate their own opinion, it must have been put there by some internet hater, roger that
@@johnwicks4936 maybe the issue happens only on lower framerates(would make sense). i dont think that on such expensive hardware you will have a lot of issues besides typical ue5 issues.
@@johnwicks4936 yeah well Mack insists on using a 5 year old 2000x series card, when the game is actually running below 60 fps before frame gen, there's gonna be input lag.
1:10 Example of how to use ffmpeg for quick conversion from MKV to MP4 as the container in the future, if this happens again: ffmpeg -i input.mkv -c copy -map 0 output.mp4 (this won't do a re-encode, so should be *way faster* than something like Handbrake; as long as the codec itself is compatible, it should be good with most software) If you also need the audio tracks as separate files: ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0:1 -acodec copy mixed.m4a ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0:2 -acodec copy desktop.m4a ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0:3 -acodec copy voice.m4a (example has multiple channels, depends on how you record things, whether everything is mixed down into one, or whether you record mic/game/etc. separately) If you need to convert the audio tracks to MP3 (or something else) for some reason: ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0:1 -acodec libmp3lame -b:a 256000 mixed.mp3 ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0:2 -acodec libmp3lame -b:a 256000 desktop.mp3 ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0:3 -acodec libmp3lame -b:a 256000 voice.mp3 There's bunches more commands, but this should be a good starting point!
They seem to have lied to their customers. They didn't release it as beta which they should have if they needed the money. Just be honest. Intead they release an unfinished game at full price
Recording to Matroska (MKV) is preferred in OBS, because standard MP4 containers have to be properly closed out when the recording ends, or the _entire_ video will be corrupted. I think OBS now supports an alternate form of MP4 container that is recoverable if the recording is abruptly terminated. OBS has a built-in utility to convert MKV to MP4, but I suppose Mack didn't think to search online for what to do in his situation. It's a simple re-multiplex operation that only takes a few minutes.
I've been waiting for this... If Mack doesnt get a key you know there are big problems with the game. Thank you for being honest and guarding our hard earned money Mack.
Given Mac's extremely low tolerance for bugs, GSC probably weren't confident in giving him the pre-release version. They've been fixing bugs and patching the game as the reviews were being recorded
The A-Life 2.0 is currently bugged and been confirmed by the devs they are working on a patch so hopefully the respawning enemies part will get fixed as currently it doesn't really feel like a stalker game without these systems running, also they are fixing the rebinding keys issue. Probably not worth the price at the moment so its another one of them where best to wait for a sale or when its fixed.
@@gromuk4849 They removed it before the game came out because they are changing the wording of it because new players to Stalker dont really know what it means. Its still on the official website
@gromuk4849 I'm enjoying the game for the most part and sadly I have a feeling you are right, but hoping not. I had the same issue as Mac in that same quest/base so that for sure is a bug. I haven't had it happen anywhere else. I play on wasd so that's not a problem. I'm playing at 1440p with mostly 60ish fps. Some things do need to be tweaked for sure, but this is not a game for Mac anyway. I watched him aiming at enemies and my 5 year old did better, not even joking.
@@DanMProductionsBois I have a key from gamesplanet (official store) waiting for me to reedem it, I have 14 days to refund it and I am waiting to see if the developer will fix that AI spawning bug in time, if not then I will refund...
whats crazy to me is this game is sitting at mostly positive reviews on steam. I don't understand how. people gave cyberpunk and starfield a lot of gripe when they released in their condition back in the day. There seems to be some fanboiism with this game, it's very cringeworthy.
Well the first half of the game is fixed all the quest up to leaving SIRCAA are not bugged but after leaving SIRCAA you’ll start to find more bugs but to get that point takes 30 hours at least
@@jestemlegendom There is a standardized menu system that is super clunky for mice and only really intended for controllers. This is a huge clue that the game designers have selling to the large console market in mind more than to PC gamers.
@@jestemlegendom That's just the first clue as to how the game is going to play. He speaks to the way it handles, optimized for controllers rather than mouse and keyboard, it's never as satisfying
The positive reviews are insane. People want to like the game more than they actually like it, they're just coping hard because it's the first STALKER game in 15 years. Game needs a lot more time in the oven, at least a year.
In terms of a Stalker game, it provides what you want and more with the zone fully realized in all its glory. In terms of whether anybody should buy it unless they're a fan willing to overlook some things till they get fixed? No, they should be payed to beta test it so it can be released in a year or two in a playable state. I love the game, I wish I could play the game for more than thirty minutes at a time without it starting to deteriorate, they should pay me to test it for them instead of making me pay to test it for them.
At this point the influx of new players is most likely the explanation for the positive reception on steam and so on. They have no comparison and we barely get any games in that vein to begin with, so they hype this game up to an unrealistic degree. Despite it being vastly inferior in the gameplay, AI basically everything wich should make Stalker standout from the sea of generic open world shit we are innundaded by for a decade and a half at this point.
@@FalloutboyLP Liking something does not make it good. I can like kicking a fucking stone down the road which still doesn't make a stone the holy damn grail of entertainment.
I’m really confused about this I’ve had literally none of the issues a lot of people have had. I’ve been able to bind ALL of my keys.. I use up down left right and have a bespoke setup as left handed and had none of this. It ran fine for me… yes there was some clipping but o have never been shot through doors not had enemies spawning on me anything… I don’t understand this it’s simply not the experience I had.. was this the unpatched version?? I’m not complaining I believe every word you’ve spoken but I simply can’t agree/relate.. anyways it’s just a game - peace.
Tried world warz recently and it was still a stuttering mess, at least framerate got better, but what's the point if you wouldn't be able to aim for split second every few sec
Can anyone explain why this has so many positive reviews on steam? I played 4 hours and I uninstalled it... This was my first and last time I preorder. I did it like two years ago because of all the fun I had with the first 3 games. Stalker 2 is an insult, the game is not ready
My issue is how horrid the optimization is. Constantly fails to load on time for me on a WD BLACK HDD, it loads in, then i need to load into the session, then once im loaded in i need to wait for the game to finish loading bc it's not done yet. Then god forbid you walk into a new area.
It clearly says on the requirements page: SSD REQUIRED. C'mon man, they are dirt cheap these days, you're robbing yourself of so much performance still running a harddisk drive.
Yeah, it's broken. Some minor technical issue I can deal with. But in a game where immersion is paramount, having immersion breaking game mechanics is simply unacceptable. I played it at my buddy's house (poor sap couldn't help himself and pre-ordered) and the magically spawning enemies and bizarre AI behavior completely ruined it for me.
@@ryanarchuleta6231 It feels nothing like old-school stalker at all. I know, because i'd rather play this, as buggy as it is currently, than those old games. The only thing i'd take away from this is the stamina bar that makes it so you can't even jump to escape something if you've been running for two seconds. Ridiculous mechanic.
Honest review, thanks a lot Mack! Thanks also for being a 1080p guy like me, this also helps. I'll wait for a few years before trying it but it's sad for this game to come in Early Access without the tag.
One of the biggest problems I have is when I'm looking for stashes, I scope and area out or clear it out and then magically 10 rats get spawned into my general location out of absolutely nowhere and just swarm me, I'm playing the game on veteran difficulty too so even the rats are bullet sponges.
Don't worry, the game feels awful on consoles too. No idea why they put food items on the d pad. Like as if that's what I want quick access to. Not the fire mode on my rifle, noooo, I need a dedicated tuna button! Such a disappointment. Been looking forqard to this since it was announced, and we're left with a 2010 game released in 2024.
That military base (the sphere) with the absurd respawning enemies is where I stopped playing. Yes garbage is the right word unfortunately, it completely ruined immersion for me. Maybe the game will be good one day when they keep "fixing" it.
Performance is quite horrible & unacceptable. I see a lot of stalker fans looking past it, but encouraging this behaviour will hinder future releases. I had to refund my copy, I ain`t playing an fps game on low frames even if I have an above average setup.
What are your specs? running great for me on a 3080ti and 12900k at 4k balanced DLSS and frame gen, mostly epic, no stutters and a smooth 100fps. My only issue is it does crash every now and then.
I’m past the refund point sadly, but that is insane not to have A-life, that is what made stalker, they just have these random events where stalkers will spawn behind you, or bandits and be aggro automatically and attack you, insane
Just to be clear about the rebinding as some people seem to think I don't know how to rebind the keys or climb a ladder lol The problem with the game is you can not climb the ladder unless you use WSAD, I use TGFH so when I walk up to a ladder it automatically mounts the bottom rung but will not climb, I have to press W in order to climb up the ladder. I also try to bind J and Y but they are still bound to their default setting, there are many other keys that simply won't bind. I hope this clears it up.
What a freak...
TGFH jesus christ mr. bighands
I only use LGBT ❤ 🏳️🌈
mate its not about the game if you r idiot who cant play with WASD like 99% of gamers do
Use a controller 🎮
That’s how I play all my games now, I wait for 2-3 years when all the bugs are fixed, DLCs are out and it’s all on 75% discount on steam. I am in no rush.
Same 👍
Considering how many great games we all have to sit and replay, the people who buy brand new games now are in the same boat as the meatheads that buy new cars.
yepp same here
hurry up, thermonuclear war is coming in nicely
And mods.
Mods mods mods.
Ah yes, modern gaming - wait for 2 years until it's finished, then wait for 80% discount.
sad but true
FFS their staff are serving in a war and have fucking died, get some fucking perspective. It's a miracle this game ever got to launch
who could have predicted a STALKER game having jank and bugs
"Ah yes, modern gaming - wait for 2 years until it's finished, then wait for 80% discount."
I see that as a plus ;-)
The game is free on console. We are practically forced to bundle game pass.
The company released a love letter to STALKER fans under invasion. The first patch came within 5 days of release.
Everyone needs to calm their shit 😂 look at the state of COD/EA titles with infinite cash and manpower and they're dog shit.
I can't wait for this game in 2 years.
Meh. Depends on the rigs , some people are having a blast some people are having a bunch of performance issues. I'm not waiting that long , I'll be getting it next week. I got a 7800x3d and 4090 with ddr5 ram. So I'm good to go
Early Access has ruined gaming
You hate every single good classic game and only play bing boo wahoo slops. And yet you dare to call me that i have a bad taste LMAO
It's just UE5. Until the engine matures you're gonna have bad overall. UE5 games have improved, but I'm happy that my 4080/13700k was a good investment for UE5. I have the occasional crash but other than that I'm having an absolute blast
Same. The original one was kind of janky on release too but became an utter classic after they fixed things up. Being easily moddable helped out a lot too I guess lol.
While I am more of a casual gamer these days, I'm also an old school gamer. And while I can usually get passed most inadequacies in games like glitches, bad story \ voice acting \ graphics etc. it's pretty difficult to get passed bad gameplay.
The spawning system Mac describes with enemies popping into existence out of thin air is indeed a MAJOR sin (and also a major red flag for the dev team) for a game that is supposed to have a huge element of realism. Just as a concrete example, in the situation Mac showed, the pop-in type of spawning eliminated the tactical possibility of taking out the enemies from the tower. That option just ... doesn't exist.
This "my way or the highway" approach to game design makes the game less of the sandbox it's supposed to be and more of a story-driven game with specific encounters that are supposed to be scripted in a certain way. In essence you don't make up your own stories by playing the game and using your own wits to survive, you play the stories the devs envisioned and react to scripted scenarios. And if those stories are bad or just mediocre then you end up with a bad or mediocre experience.
What I'm describing is basic game design philosophy and so I'm afraid that because they went with decisions like this (and putting out an almost finished game) that they have at least some young devs on their team that are there just for a paycheck and don't really care about the product. Or they are too incompetent to do anything about it (a sad situation I've seen more and more in the past 20 years, not just with games). The worst case is if they are being micro-managed into this by people whose only experience of gaming is playing a bit of Candy Crush here and there.
Thank you Mac for putting out honest reviews! I've played the game up till the point the guy hits you in the face. I thought that was going to be a one off experience but this review showed me I should wait for some patches and mods.
For sure the greatest disappointment of the year.
I expected a buggy launch, since it still is a Stalker game, but there are just so many other issues with the game.
Though the worst part is that the biggest issues aren't even (easily) fixable. Bugs can be fixed, either by the developer or a fanmade patch down the road.
But the writing and atmosphere and such? That's hard to replace unless fans are really dedicated.
Plus real life politics might be in the way of the game, not only have they put a greater focus on "diversity" where it didn't need any and the whole Ukraine vs. Russia thing. The first 3 Stalker games were oozing with atmosphere and had this Ukrianian-Russian blend that worked so well.
Are there any references to the real-life conflict in the game itself? I haven't played it yet, but I was wondering if they would shoehorn something in like that.
@@TonyMcCrea fuck, i hope not
@@TonyMcCrea Not that I am aware of.
I didn't have a chance to play it myself yet (but will on the weekend), but I watched some streams and from what I've seen that blend of Ukraina-Russian culture from the original trilogy is just kind of gone.
The english dub seems to have most characters speak with either british or american accent and the dialogue is just really basic.
@@Dionysus24779 Well, if it's bland and basic then I personally think it's better than to have the game reference the conflict in the game. It would sort of nullify the point of that universe in the first place, given that in the eyes of the government they're ALL trespassers and deserve to be either put in jail or killed. They're all criminals, technically, that escaped the real world and devoted their life to the zone. Doesn't matter if you're Duty or Freedom, or Loner. Plus, it wouldn't make sense for them to take any side of the conflict. Everybody's got enough on their hands with anomalies and monsters and radiation.
Sad trend that shows no signs of slowing; early access games parading as fully finished (and full priced) releases. Looking forward to playing it in maybe 6 months from now.
If only there were people who reviewed games when they released. Guess I’ll just keep buying day one releases
GSC did it before it was "cool"
Its where money starts talking. The more players stop buying the new bugs and wait developers will start giving games again
What? You’re telling me you don’t jump at the chance to pay developers for the honor of being their unpaid beta tester? Wild.
6 months? That's too optimistic, I'd say at least 18 months, or more realistically 2 years.🤔🤔
This is why I don’t pre-order
This is why I just use gamepass. Don't feel like I lost anything having tried the game out. I'm still enjoying it even though it definitely needs some work.
@@Bastuvian owning > renting
@@evaone4286 lol, you never own games anymore lol, are you 12?
I don't mind pre-order, you can always refund.
Ye, but you can get a refund most of the time, so it's no biggy.
The original STALKER is one of my favorite games of all time because of its amazing atmosphere. If that game had featured re-spawning enemies, I never would have bothered with it.
I guess the devs didn’t realize that the A-life system is what made their games popular
I am sure the original A-life did have respawning enemies, it's just that they did not spawn at any conceivable vicinity of the player. As far as I remember, they had these "spawn areas" called "gulags" in the game script files, and apparently mobs were bound to these gulags (could not leave them either), and did respawn there but only if you weren't around.
@@niavellir7408 How can you even believe that? lol
And that's not "their" games. You can be sure 1% of the team stayed the same. Probably the main boss btw.
@@guiguijol half of them run out to make Metro games that is by far even better.
@@Jimoshi1 unfortunately I’d like to disagree but yea….. I went back to Anomaly Gamma .
This is such a disappointment.
I was expecting Starfield and Cyberpunk letdowns, not this one.
Visual and render issues I can deal with but a shitty spawning system basically kills the franchise.
They took out the A-Life 2.0 System at the last minute...
I think it had something to do with those (((games journalists))) complaining how they'd failed a quest because the quest giver had died in some situation half the world away. So the system obviously ~was working at some point, because that's the kind of unexpected thing you'd expect.
why?
@@jestemlegendom games journalists complaining about quest givers dying on the other side of the map (welcome to the zone, mfers), and the fact theyre trying to make this run on the Airfryer SeriesX
@@JimmyWelds I didn't ask you. I asked @butifarratv...
@@JimmyWelds Series X isn't the problem. Because there are no loading screens anymore the AI isn't working as intended & wondering into places it wasn't meant to.
To anyone with an IQ above 80, it's obvious the AI spawning system is garbage junk and clearly immersion breaking.
Devs are working to fix that right now I believe
@@JustinLazloim not optimistic but let’s hope they can improve it massively.
Its not working properly at the moment..devs have a pinned post from the q&a section on their discord where they say that a-life is not working as it should be
I'm ngl it was pretty funny to kill an entire squad of like eight soldiers only to have a squad of five loners spawn when I looked away, say, "We really fucked them up," walk straight into an anomaly field and all die the most brutal deaths possible.
@@raskolnikov6443They rolled out 5 patches in 8 days during early access so I am optimistic. They are really active on discord and have been listening to the community
Mack you can remux MKV files! MKV is better than MP4 because if your PC crashes it will still keep what was recorded up until the crash. While MP4 files will be corrupted by a crash. In OBS go to file > remux and then add MKV's and it converts to MP4
he doesnt care. the default in OBS is MKV because they are better for this exact reason. hes been slacking for the last few months padding videos with random gameplay to "showcase the bugs" or whatever. cheap excuse to lengthen the vids.
@@ADR69 Imagine talking out of your ass like this.
He actually said in the video that he did not have time to convert all the files.
Bruh, Mack literally said the issue is he didn't have time to convert all the files. 1:30
It can be done automatically in the background if he had 30min to spare setting that up.
Middle mouse button is flashlight. It doesn’t say anywhere in the game.
Yea, but I found that out in 5 mins, just clicked it and there she went
not that deep just adapt to controls like bruh.
@@MadGermanX_Xno, why should i buy a controller, when i have a working keyboard and mouse, which i am used to playing?
Actually it's "L" for Light. Who guessed, right?
Game tell you L for flashlight at the start
This game is class and is everything you ask for in games, yeah it's buggy but it was made during wartime, pull ya heed out ya arse man
This game is so frustrating. The enemy spawns 50 feet away and doesn't exist outside that. You clear an area, walk 50 feet away and new enemies spawn in .
Guns are consumable items that have a shorter lifespan than a mayonnaise packet. Enemy humans have unlimited ammo but when you kill them they never have more than a few measly rounds on them. Etc etc
The developers are bad at what they do and need to get a job at a fast food joint.
The only way for this cancerous business model of game companies releasing broken, incomplete games to be corrected is for it to be made illegal. For them to suffer series penalties in tune with false advertising and even fraud.
We have all had enough of this shit.
Why buy modern AAA games on day 1? ;-)
@igorthelight you'd have to be an idiot to do that. Some of us get it for free via xcloud game pass.
Don't worry it's only going to get much worse, play older good games that sell dirt cheap.
@@spike178 Modern indies are pretty good tho ;-)
@spike178 always do but I gotta give the developers a break. They're going through some serious shit. The fact that they even made a game right now is legend.
Man that yellow paint shit needs to end in games. How do people still think thats a good idea?!
only shows up in journalist mode
Tbf it was only on ladders, absolutely nothing else. I don't know why they even bothered.
It can be turned off and should have been off by default in my opinion
@@snowpaletehdog I tried to and it didn't work lol. It's only on ladders and breakable boards in stashes so it's not as immersion breaking as you would think.
Not everyone has time to waste like when they're 16.
Released to early. Needed more time in development.
Shipping out half baked games is GSC World tradition.
@@superspicysoysauce8231 They gotta keep the lights on with a premature release. It's early access, they just don't call it that.
I have to agree, i was looking forward to this game.
I suppose i could wait until some of the issues are fixed.
Before those who ask, yes i do own the original both on steam and CD if i remember correctly and i am not sure if it would work on my Wins 11..
vanilla stalker is a good game. there are some bug patches that are quite desired but its still a good game. i hope this is a similar issue with stalker 2.
story of every game these days
Once again I am really sorry that most of my footage was lost, I hope it did not ruin the video for you.
No worries at all mate, happens. Your perspective on the game is more important than the footage
You're good brother.
When you said the footage was lost, I just closed my eyes after a long day of work and listened to the wonderful rant so it worked out 👍 I'll check back on the game in a year, thanks Mack! Gives me another shot at playing the original games too...
You can just press L for the light, you can even change it in the bindings. There's no need to use the wheel, its optional. Also the yellow paint is to make games more disabilty friendly to color blind people that's why its added. There are laws in the US requiring video games to be accessible to people with disabilities. It would be good if they added an option to remove it.
Very disappointing.... jk.
hi mac. for reference. if you recorde as MKV again in the future. you can just run the following command in CMD.
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -c copy output.mp4
takes a minute or 2 and does not re-encode the file but just remuxes it into the MP4 format.
cheers mate
Wish they just delayed it again instead of just shoving it out under baked.
They were probably running out of funds.
@@abstr4cted496Thats what you get for leaving a game in dev limbo for so long. Over 20 years of development limbo is INSANE.
@@abstr4cted496No wonder why. Over 10 years of dev limbo is INSANE.
Game had like 7 delays already, they are that incompetent, it was 12 years in making with at least one total remake.
@@Stryker98 20 years? Last game was released in 2011
Thank you Mack! Almost all other "reviewers" (shame on them) are just Marketers who run Advertisements everytime a new game comes out.
I'll wait a few months then I will revisit buying and playing this game.
As a left-handed dude I'm disappointed to hear you can't rebind all the keys. This same garbage was in the Metro games as well. I can't play with WASD.
Console-first attitude is trash and these guys should know better.
Yes you can, he was completely wrong on that account, the keybinds can be rebound under the "keyboard settings" in the control option in the settings.
@@mitchy693it sounds like from the video that Mack did that but it didn't stick
@@juliantheapostate8295 Then his summary at the end shouldn't say you CAN'T, it just glitched for him, my rebinds worked fine.
It's literally pc first
I have rebound various keys in game and it works fine. The mouse smoothing is pure garbage though
As someone who played Stalker back when it first came out back i the 2000s, the sequel is so dissapointing.
I am not talking about bugs or spec/performance issues I am talking about the gameplay.
First about the enemies
All Enemies just have wallhack/autoaim on your ass. Its so obvious when you have an "encounter" in a heavy foilage or forrested area, the ai is nonexistent, pure lock on autoaim if they have guns, and that includes the supposed flanking...the mutants also just perfectly lock on you and rush....
but what about mutants...MY GOOD THEY ARE BULLET SPONGES, breaks every and any immersion....Bloodsuckers eat 10 plus shotgun shots to the face , or over 90 rounds of basic AK ammo ,they simply dont care, they dotn stagger, they dont react , all you can do is bunny jump and strafe like its fuken unreal tournament retard..so bad...its not even that hard, its jsut so lazy and boring...oh yay here comes thje 15th bloodsucker in your starting area called "lesser zone"....no the last part isnt a hyperbole the game jsut loves to spam them plus at least 4 you will encoutner during main and side quests and the one at the very start because fuck it.
Even human enemies are bullet sponges, unless you go for the head, even those rouge camo military looking guys can easily eat 10 plus rounds of AKs unless you headshot them, again they dont care and if they fire you lose HP and fast...
The spawns and A life
Nonexistent... its just a spawn that is randomly generated roughly a 100 meters away, with an enemy autolock/rush towards you.
I wont go "into details" because there is nothing to talk about , its that sad and basic.
The economy, the mission rewards, weapon/gear upgrades.... all is either basic, outdated for 2024 or a lazy way to increase difficulty...missions dont give you any money, my biggest income are enemy weapons, guns are made out of chinese plastic because durability goes down faster than you say blyat, and are OFC SUPER expensive to repair...its all about creating stupid money sinks for the player and then hoping fanboys and copers will call you out to "git gud" and gaslight you...thats all it is to it.
Ofc weapons with sub 30 % durabilty cant be sold to traders and jam every 5 rounds fired...but only if you use them ofc.... enemy NPCs will hit you no problem full auto with MP5s at 80 plus meters walking slowly towards you and ignoring walls, foilage, trees....ofc course when you loot them all enemies never have more than say 20 rounds of ammo sry mr. player gotta buy overpiced ammo at local tzraders...again as i said its just about creating artificial bottlenecks and money sinks
Gameplay and gunfights are so basic and bad, i would consider this Stalker 0.8 with an unreal 5 mod.
Nice man. Someone who gets it.
I honestly understand the angry voices about why the game is not polished enough, but at the same time, people need to understand that this game literally lost so many devs in the war in Ukraine. Volodymyr Yezhov, one of the main developers of the game, died in Bakhmut in December 2022. They literally had to move out multiple times because of bombardment, among many other things. I am surprised that they could even finish the game at all.
"people walking through walls and doors and shooting at me through walls and doors"
Sounds like Stalker alright.
Yes. That's normal in stalker, always was.
@@esmolol4091 easy to avoid anything stalker related forever. Thanks for the info.
yep sounds exactly like stalker, it has always been janky and kinda cheesy
Yeah but it shouldn't be a thing when they are using UE5.
@@miller42 Game engines don't magically remove bugs, it being newer has no bearing on it.
I'll stick with what works: wait until the game is less than $30 and feature complete.
That's been my mantra for the last decade of games.
@@modernmobster Ever since the PS3/Xbox 360 patch it after mentality. Nearly two decades of this patch it after shite.
or get it free like the original trilogy in a few years time ;)
@@velvetinedrapes4359 Free? I was lucky I suppose. I just redeemed the disc CD keys on Steam/GoG for digital versions. Had to go to a special page to redeem the key first. The page is up, but the service is no longer working.
@@modernmobster my mantra's been to just look for the torrent
Thankfully Mack, you gave earned the trust of your audience and I don't need visuals to know that the issues you describe are serious problems. As always we appreciate the honest review.
And you also love x x x ray vision 😂💪
Btw this game has a option in the menu to disable the yellow paint.
I think I have a slightly different version of the game. I can change weapons using the mouse wheel or the keys 1 2 3 4 etc. I also don't have yellow paint on the ladders. I can also turn on the flashlight using a key on the keyboard.
I think some people are just being harsh because that's the cool thing now for reviews
Game is amazing. I’m loving it.
I kept the yellow paint in as i think its a subtle enough system. I did turn off the crosshair tho. The game is very customizable.
Dude lost his shit at the sight of weapon wheel, didn't even bother to try pushing number keys to see if they did anything. Didn't bother pushing L for his light (basically the universal key for flashlights in games going back to HL1). Didn't bother to check options to see if he could disable things he didn't like (such as yellow highlights). Also couldn't be bothered to search Google for 5 minutes to see how to convert his footage to MP4. Still using MP4 for some dumb reason, everyone knows mkv is better. He's using a 5 year old video card and complains about performance. Guy makes a living shitting on games and then complains about not getting a review key. Rushes out a half assed review due to time constraints and then complains about the game being released too early. Mac is turning into an old man who'd rather yell at clouds than actually fix his issues or adapt
@@coboldelphi I feel like Mack plays a bit of a character now, more so than years ago. He's right to call bullshit in games but it feels like he reaches sometimes just to get a bit of drama and haha bellding in the videos and being angry old man for no reason
You can remux MKV files directly in OBS, no need for converters. And it only takes a couple of seconds.
Yep!
Mack has zero points in Computers xD
Looking forward to your book review of "Central Banking and the Enslavement of mankind"
He refuses to believe it because its mean. He's discussed this before.
*Bewk review
They've stripped back a lot of things and keybinds from older games to serve consoles.
The modders are going to go wild with this game though im sure.
The A-Life in this stalker is broken everything spawns near you
It doesn't exist.
A-life? you dont have to make up new terms, just call it AI like everyone else
@@Chyrnobyl66Pretty sure that's what the Devs called this illusive system. Apparently every NPC "lives a life".
@Chyrnobyl66 A-life was revolutionary in the original games.
It was so advanced the AI could complete the game before you. Factions would move independently, take territory and patrol the zone.
It's not simply AI, it's a system that works in the background to keep the world's inhabitants feeling alive.
For comparison, in fallout 4, the brotherhood of steel is at the airport and this never changes. There are random events where BOS soldiers will appear out of nowhere and maybe fight something but these are scripted and inconsequential.
There is no AI open world scripts running, There is no A life. It's just timers that just spawns things near you, and sometimes right on you., all based on timers and event triggers.
The game has the immersion of a 20 year old game. And I highly doubt they will be implementing a vastly improved AI or script system with any updates, they will just tinker with the event timers and spawn triggers to hide how obvious they are.
I was hoping for an improvement in the A-life system and the open world scripts running and tracking other stalkers and enemies. Instead it's even worse. What a disappointment. And enemy AI is not fun to fight, it legit sucks. This is what happens when everything is homogenized into one engine - copy paste Ubisoft shlop, but now with eurojank as frosting on top.
I hate respawning enemies , good you told me about this shite. I don't think the original which is like 20 years old even had that...
First half of the game is enough to make you want to keep playing.
Second half after SIRCAA, very buggy even with the two patches released. You also realize how EMPTY the map really is, and the A-LIFE 2.0 most likely being a marketing gimmick really shows. The original games had more going on even during downtime.
Everything this game attempts to do, Metro did better years ago. This game feels like it’s 10 years outdated already.
Metro is a masterpiece
Stalker being a game made for pc as an after thought is a real kick in the nuts for the Stalkers fans.
It's made for a controller, which you can use on a PC. I stopped playing with a keyboard a while ago due to carpal tunnel issues from work. This game is great with a controller.
They've tried to recreate the old A-life within UE5 and found they can't. A-Life was revolutionary and STILL nobody has managed to replicate it from the old X-Ray Engine. A janky system at times but brilliant for immersion. With a heavy heart I have to say Stalker2 is massively console orientated. This is a PC GAME FRANCHISE ffs! It certainly has it's merits, no doubt about that but at the end of the day Stalker2 does nothing new, it brings nothing novel or particularly interesting to the table. An above average narrative/survival shooter for sure, especially with further optimisation and fixes but it doesn't reach Metro standards, let alone OG Stalker.
I have not played the Other games but was interested in this due to hearimg how Dynamic it is.
Shadow of chernobyl was very dynamic
@@John-996 Go play the original fgames. Hell even Old Good Stalker if you want a more hardcore expirience. Let this one cook a few months / years.
and here's me thanking DODI for this repack.
Well, that's the thing, they DIDN'T try. The devs are all fresh hires, all the original team left long ago for survarium and metro 2033. Only the shitty boss remained (Grigorovich) and stalker's IP which he managed to pocket. The game's packed full of default UE5 assets and I'm sure it runs all the basic UE5 code too, it's a common trend with modern developers running rookie cheap teams - they can't and won't code to save their life, only make models, and balance existing scripts with new numbers. And well, it's no wonder, given that most gamers nowadays are casuals who don't care or know better anyway, so to them only the graphics matter in the first place, so it all checks out and they still manage to sell this slop and make a profit.
I got 9800x3d, RX6800, 32GB ram, SSD and on 1440 I have average 50 fps on higher settings. few minor bugs for me - levitation ppl, some flickering but no gamecrash. Keybindings is a big issue for me, I like to use mouse buttons aswell and I can only for half of the things I need. The respawn of group of ppl is probably a bug with AI-life 2 called out by developer, so lets hope they will fix it asap :) the atmosphere is awesome! 6 hrs in and Im having blast!
Medium settings with a 7800x3d and a 2060 super and I'm getting about a 100 frames for 1080p. Also, unless there's some restrictions I didn't run into, you can remap your keys. I remapped the lean keys to be q and e and put the quick access on z and c
Things that I would like to see addressed:
1) Bulet physics and gun accuracy - no ricochets, no tracers, just terrible - old ones were better
2) Lighting in the old games was better, I can't believe I'm saying this
3) HUD looks so generic
4) AI zone simulation needs more work (monster spawns included)
5) I feel like you get lots of weapons early on, also gun repair/condition on drops need to be improved, progression doesn't feel well paced,
which reminds me of
6) People expected very extensive gun modding in this game, it was hinted by the teasers/trailers
7) Some monster mechanics need a rework and the monsters need to be made less bulletspondgy acordingly
8) Artifacts need to be entirely reworked, they are not even half as useful as they used to be, also why would the devs even change the classic artifacts' effects???
9) I would have much preffered it if the devs stayed out of politics and current events, it might have been forced on them who knows, but still, leaves a bad taste
Those are the ones I've spotted WITHOUT even playing the game. I guess I'll wait for Gamma 2
I haven't played this yet (if I will at all) but it just looks too...simplified? Like it's trying to mimic other shooters that have come and gone without aspiring to be a true sequel to an already great series with it's own identity.
Anomaly was amazing, we should be doing better than what free mods can offer, not going backwards. I'll stack this amongst the growing pile of "give it a year or two and see it's good then".
voice acting $2 metal fence texture $100
Haven't bought it yet but can't you switch the voice acting to Ukranian and use subtitles?
@@JustinLazlo yes
@@JustinLazlo Ukrainian voice acting is also really bad.
@@JustinLazlo I suppose you could but what's the point lol
@@Void-uj7jd Save whatever immersion there is to save ?
What blows me away... its 2024 as you said... why haven't consoles allowed a mouse and keyboard input option to begin with?
They would level out the competition with PC gaming for one.
I would never play a serious FPS game on console, especially PVP because controllers suck for that.
And RTS/4x games... consoles are ignoring a whole genre and the community that loves it.
I tried Civ5 on PS4 when it was free... unplayable. Every turn takes a week cus playing Civ with a controller is F'ng stupid.
And then it solves a big part of the bad port issue... M&K controls will no longer be an afterthought.
Even if you gotta buy a Playstation brand mouse and keyboard, cus they love their proprietary equipment, I would be fine with that.
Wise Up, Console makers.
Keyboards give the peasants too much power.
it's up to the developer, mouse, keyboard was there in the PS4, few games supported it,mostly direct PC ports like warthunder.
I think COD supported it
the problem is they presume console users you sitting on a couch 10 ft away
but it did work i just plugged in my dell PC one
@davidrenton i could get it to recognize the keyboard and use it to enter text but thats it. It would not recognize the mouse, maybe because it was on the same USB reciever as the keyboard.
@@gwoody4003 i used wired, i did'nt extensively use it,just years ago wanted to see how it worked
@@bfrehksdhf Exactly! If anything they will probably try and normify keyboard
my 4070 felt like it was 30 frames behind my mouse moves.
Mouse smoothing is allegedly on with no ingame toggle (and a few other dumb config choices like framerate smoothing), there are some ini tweaks floating around
Yeah, you have to tweak ini files to get it to a playable state. Even then, it's still not known how to get rid of the frame smoothing. What a god awful game to develop for consoles, their entire fanbase is on PC. I'm fine with frame drops, I have VRR to take care of that, I don't need your stupid *ss forced framerate limiter.
Minimum spec is a 4090
were you running frame generation? do note that this adds latency...
Hey man I'm on a 4070 too how well does it run in general at 1080p with DLSS. Do you have to have to lower a lot of stuff so it doesn't chugg or is it nice and playable?
Some useful things for the people who may need them. Regarding the flashlight you can turn it on or off with L or middle mouse and not use the TAB plus E combo. Mouse lag can be sort of fixed with some config file settings.
Game pass version:
"C:\Users\"user name"\AppData\Local\Stalker2\Saved\Config\WinGDK\Input.ini"
or for the Steam version here:
"C:\Users\"user name"\AppData\Local\Stalker2\Saved\Config\Windows\Input.ini"
paste:
[/script/engine.inputsettings]
bEnableMouseSmoothing=False
bViewAccelerationEnabled=False
make sure to save it.
It will set acceleration and smoothing off. Which are on by default and can't be turned off in game.
"Out of video memory" is usually a UE5 error related to a defective intel 13th/14th gen cpu
It amazes me how people have missed all the content surrounding that, and are still baffled by the error. Even normienews picked it up.
They literally live under a rock...
@@The_Noticer. "hurr durr, I have seen this one channel and one error before, so the rest of the world's population ought to have seen it as well, durr"
@@BouncyStickman I literally said, this was in normie news, all over the world. Even my local dutch news picked it up at some point. Its not obscure knowledge. All tech channels were talking about it. If you've missed it, you literally live in a bubble and never step out. Its still a valid comment. When this has been going for over a year, not knowing about it is a you problem.
@@The_Noticer. Dude I am perpetually online and I never heard about it until I was looking for stalker 2 shader crash fixes.... and I Don't even have an intel chip.
@@LeoMajor1 Even Nvidia made a statement about it, because they kept getting blamed lol. Jeez.
I just started the game for the first time and it’s unplayable. The stuttering is awful. Feels heavy and clunky, like moving through mud. Don’t get me started on the Compiling Shader thing when you start the game - that shit is worse than Chinese torture!
Why can’t devs just keep their games simple anymore? Fucking gives a shit about about 64 or 200 square mile map when the game is consistently having an epileptic fit.
Turn off frame generation if your using dlss that’s what fixed the stuttering for me
@@LarsMario-i8lGreat comment. Thank you. Just worked.
Dunno what shitty ass computer you're running this on buyt the game runs smooth as butter
Update bios for the compiling shaders error.
@@DenomicRoxs you should never ever ever ever have to update bios for any game period if you have hardware from the modern era
Enemies spawn in after you’ve cleared…
That’s a hard pass from me, even if they fix everything else. There’s too many good games out there without that bullshit.
Great review as always.
I've played about 20 hours now and not noticed any annoying respawns, maybe it can happen but it been a non issue to me.
@@somecallmetim42I believe it’s happening with older CPU’s. The game is extremely CPU intensive and some CPU’s are just not able to process the complexities. Haven’t had a single respawn issue and I’m 5 hours in my experience and having an absolute blast. Hope the devs fix it because I want people to enjoy it
The cope in these comments is unreal. There are videos out there of this not just happening but it's happening right in fron of the player. Stop laying to defend such a shitty ass game already, folks!
@@somecallmetim42 Same, not had any enemies spawn in like this.
I believe there are issues of course and devs appear to have noted issues with A-Life.
@@somecallmetim42 I've had groups spawn right behind me about 4 or 5 times in 6 hrs. Not really annoying but doesn't feel organic or immersive. The npcs aren't actually living in the world they are just spawned in next to you. It's pretty poor game design.
This is proof that AAA games are meant to be played 2+ years after release! Sad the industry is at this point.
Early access for $70
They're not even a AAA studio. It's a AA game, that people are judging as AAA.
It's not AAA that people are claiming, that's another huge problem.
@@JDumbz I mean it is priced like Cyberpunk 2077. You can say it's not a AAA studio, but you'd expect more out of 60USD (same goes for Cyberpunk).
Wouldnt call gsc triple a
I did complete and enjoy the game but yeah my god sometimes the enemy spawns are ridiculously op, the end mission I would never have survived without money glitch it’s just not even fun at that point was just tedious …
@9:10 Starfield devs waiting for the modders to finish their game 😂
There has to be something underneath worth saving.
The difference being that 25 different performance mods were uploaded to nexus day 1. Stalker has always had a pretty great modding community
@@AT-xr8qhis there a sleeping bag mod? A must have for me
I don't get why they chose to go for unreal 5 instead of unity when they clearly didn't have the proficiency or manpower to fully utilize it anyway.
Cuz they wanted shiny graphics instead of good gameplay. They are not og gsc that made stalker trilogy they are worthless millennial devs thar never made a big game before
@@Dregomz02 Aren't millenials like over 30? How old do you want your game devs to be
@@aev6075millennial are in their 40s in many cases
@@aev6075 Can you not count dude? Millenial means born in 2000 we are now having 2024, so at most these dudes are 24 years old. Which is indeed pretty damn young to have any expiriene with developing a game.
@@bazzy5644 Wrong, a millennial is a person who was born between 1981 and 1996.
Im so stoked to see Stalker 2 has finally entered development. Stalker 2 Anomaly GAMMA edition will be great when it finally releases
Trust Mack to tell us what no one else bothers to.
IDK, I think most reviews are quite similar to this. Mack's key rebinds aren't all that common (but really should be completely supported) but outside of that the gripes are pretty similar.
@@DNRTannen Agreed. If it's not a sponsored video, reviewers seem to be mentioning these issues as well.
Get off his meat bro, he said the same thing most reviewers are...
I mean he honestly didnt and the stalker fans are playing anyway, we think of bugs as "anomalies"
@@CloseToTheMetal but the game has a far worse NPC/ world simulation. This doesn’t feel like stalker.
Nah, 45 FPS at 1080p isn't good performance, and with DLSS / FSR enabled it's downright pathetic, don't cut them any slack.
the not enough vram issue is an intel micro code bug. When you update to the newest one it goes away. So many PC gamers don't seem to know that their intel chips are bombs just waiting to blow
That's why I have purchased 2nd hand 12th gen i7 last year
It isn't a guaranteed fix. If your CPU has already degraded from the 1.6V microcode, you have to RMA it.
you forget to mention that microcode update tanks performance on those cpu's up to 30% lol people should just rma all 13 and 14 gen intels and be done with this charade of a company
It's pretty sad that Stalker Gamma, a free mod, is better than the OG title...and it seems better than the sequel too.
Nah, stalker SOC is better than gamma, cop too, mostly cuz gamma is kind a pointless and very casual too. The original games may be semi casual but at least the main quest is fun and some gunplay is at work unlike gamma where everything is too accurate and you have way too much HP. A mod better than gamma and a little better than the originals is miserly (on black road, with stash randomizer). Gamma is still fun for emmersion, free play and unpredictability, don't get me wrong, but it's undeserving of as much praise as it gets.
As pets stalker 2... I think even most trash mods are better, this shit is really bottom of the barrel tier.. Heck I can't even call it a stalker game, it's a stalker flavored far cry mod at best
I had to stop playing for 2 reasons. The laggy mouse input and the camera gives me motion sickness. I hate when games do this - take the camera control away from you to show you how a chest is opening. And all the unnecessary head bobbing aaaargh :(
How about when you get in the middle of a pack of those invisible mutant things and you waste all your ammo on the way to a mission as they run around you taking swipes as you fight the controls because one of their powers is to slow your aiming and movement down as if it isn't already fkn impossible.
@@minbari73 Well, I got sick early on so I didn't get that far, lol.
@@Naotaku How do you like in games such as far cry when you are forced into a cutscene every time you get near a ladder - your view is spun around in the worst way possible for those that suffer game nausea and all you wanted to do is jump off the ledge, but no, the ladder grabs you. I have to close my eyes
@@minbari73 Yea, same. And that's just climbing a ladder, opening a chest... What about first person cut scenes?! :) I had to close my eyes for the whole intro, lol.
Cyberpunk 2077 did this very well, all the cut scenes are happening around you, and it never takes the camera control away from you. You are free to look at whatever you want. I wish more games did it like that.
I play a lot of FPS games without any issues, it's only when the game takes over the camera that causes this nausea. And excessive head bobbing like in this game. You make ONE STEP and the camera keeps shaking for like 2 seconds afterwards! On top of the mouse lag. Meh, I uninstalled it already. :)
Its just so friggin sad to be honest. I pre-ordered this Game two months before the release date, after like a decade of never pre-ordering anything - watching the documentation just made me sad to see the devs with war, covid so I wanted to support them BUT they sell a product and this product is not worth 109€ (highest version with DLCs and stuff). This was my first refund on GOG in years of using the platform. I was confused because I got the refund in like 10 minutes of asking for it (either a sign that a lot of people refund this too, OR I got very lucky)
I played for 30 hours and always thought please just let It end, the more you play the game and get deeper into the zone the more bland It gets. I had 2 softlocks, had to re-load my saves just to play this whole hour again because of invisible enemys, locked doors that shouldn´t be locked, enemys I had to fight in a complex and the enemys two house blocks further away were locked on this quest too (dude wtf how should I even know).
I know Kingdom Come 2 will come out in February and I rather buy the 4,50€ royal version of the first game and play this now and a year or two later I buy the second game for 10 € max. Thats the gaming industry right now, and people cry why nobody buys their games wtf lol.
Another reason to never buy AAA games at launch.
You will be able to buy this game 50%-75% off in two years and it will be much better than it is now.
How does anyone get excited for new game releases??? You know its gonna be a mess at launch and be on sale by the time its "fixed"!
@@blubug768 They are console players...
If everyone did that, every game dev would clock out...for good!
@@shivan2418 their AA not AAA and had to rebuild most of the game from scratch due to unforseen circumstances, we should appreciate the fact that it even exists and still manages very well to create the intended atmosphere and gameplay they were wanting, gamers today are so fucking entitled tbh
@@piosammut519 found the console gamer.
I didn't pre-order this game because of the late lifting of the review embargo. That told me to wait until the full edition with all DLCs comes out and goes on sale in a year or two. I have a deep backlog, so no worries there.
not having A-LIFE in the game is BS. It's what made the atmosphere in the originals, made them feel so special and alive.
Without A-Life this game has literally nothing to offer that you can't find in Far Cry
What is A-LIFE?
No clue what a life is. Anyone?
Here is a snippet from an online article. The title is "Stalker 2 devs reassure players: Yes, A-Life 2.0 is in the game, no, it's not working right, and yes, fixes are on the way"
A-Life is essentially the underlying system of simulations that governs the behaviors and interactions of NPCs and monsters in the game. "The gist of the A-Life is that the characters in the game live their own lives and exist all the time, not only when they are in the player’s field of view," OG Stalker programmer Dmitriy Iassenev said in a 2008 interview about the original Stalker with AIGameDev.
@@Mrcool179 A-Life is the constant world ai around you, in this game ai only exists near the player unlike the complex A-life in the other games which makes it boring and pointless
The A-Life system is broken on launch, confirmed by the devs, that might explain the pop-in spawning
The default controls are bad. Z and C to lean is crazy
I'll treat it like Cyberpunk 2077. I just bought that game with all DLC for 40$ two weeks ago. It's amazing now. So, I will check this out in a year or so. It's a shame as I am a huge decade long fan of the series.
I still don't understand what's so amazing about Cyberpunk 2077 (never played it). I guess it's a preference thing
@@gogista You get to experience what depression feels like. All the endings are gutpunches.
@@gogista so you admitted to not understanding a game that you have never played....you answered that yourself. Sometimes you need to experience something yourself to better understand.
Man I was so ready for this game to come out... then I saw the trailers with those cutscenes forced in and already knew this wasn't going to be the classic STALKER like us die-hard fans grew up knowing. The game releases and I'm watching gameplay and reviews and wasn't surprised at all by the results. A real shame they fell short of a master-class game just to end up like some new-age AAA bs console gamer focused garbage. Looks like I'll be sticking with the OG and save my $60 fuckn dollars.
I don't think people remember; Stalker 1 was a massive failure on release. No one could play it. It took years for it to become the game it is today.
Do you really expect people to play old niche titles? And give a comprehensive review? Nah. It's easier to shoot to the biggest target.
@@theonefrancis696 stop being buthurt
Ah so it makes it okay to release a 60 to 100 bucks game in that state ?
@@Thesavagesouls that's the standard for every company lol welcome to the 2000s
Sorry you lost money
@@theonefrancis696 No, that wasn't the standard back in 2000s. There were tons of games on PC that weren't defective and filled to the brim with bugs. That's not the case now ever since the mid to late 2010s because nearly every big modern game these days is essentially released in "early access" with how unfinished they turn out to be. Don't justify this non-sense.
FYI for people watching, middle mouse button is the button for the flash light. This isn't in the key binds, someone in discord kinda just found it. One of the things that really needed a tutorial pop up to just tell you.
Just so you know Mac, you can turn off the yellow paint in the game options. I did before I even started and it made a huge difference. Now if only they'd let us turn the stupid wheel off....
First thing I did. Not sure why so many players don't know about that option...
why do you need to turn the wheel off? just don't use it, everything in the wheel has a keybind in game.
You can turn off yellow ladders, keys are fully rebindable the weapon wheel is optional, let's face it this review is full of errors.
I don't know about the game being primarily made for consoles. If it had, they'd have seen the huge issue with the lack of deadzone settings and many gamepad players drifting all the time.
No, you don't understand Stalker, the dead zone is applied to the mouse instead.
When the game has a weapon wheel instead of the normal keyboard 1 2 3 4 etc buttons for selecting weapons, then it's a console port. Weapon wheels are good for gamepads but an impediment when on PC.
@@AParticularlyConcernedCitizen Eeeuugh, it's nightmarish when a game does that. GTAIV does that.
@@youtubesucks3882 It doesn't, you still use 1-7 to select things. Some people like the wheels, the insane monsters.
When he says console game, he doesn’t mean it was literally designed to be loaded up on a console, though sometimes that is the case. He means that developers include shitty console game mechanics that have no business being in PC games.
What baffles me is that the game reached very positive reviews on Steam (80%) but A LOT of those boil down to "it's stalker, i know stalker, stalker good". IP recognition still seems to be the major deciding factor instead of actual quality when it comes to user enjoyment. Nostalgia is hell of a drug.
or maybe some people are able to simply enjoy the game, instead of having their opinion molded by the internet
ah yes, simply enjoy undercooked products and if anyone speaks up against the product that person obviously couldn't formulate their own opinion, it must have been put there by some internet hater, roger that
So your saying i need to hate it? Or if i like it i am brainwashed? Is this even real or we dreaming? So manny questions
@@FalloutboyLP Contrarians have infected the internet, if you like something that's popular then you're either brainwashed or woke
For better aim you have to disable the framegeneration, it introduces a terrible response delay.
I don’t have this issue with frame Gen on. I’m on a 4080.
@@johnwicks4936 maybe the issue happens only on lower framerates(would make sense). i dont think that on such expensive hardware you will have a lot of issues besides typical ue5 issues.
@@johnwicks4936 yeah well Mack insists on using a 5 year old 2000x series card, when the game is actually running below 60 fps before frame gen, there's gonna be input lag.
1:10 Example of how to use ffmpeg for quick conversion from MKV to MP4 as the container in the future, if this happens again:
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -c copy -map 0 output.mp4
(this won't do a re-encode, so should be *way faster* than something like Handbrake; as long as the codec itself is compatible, it should be good with most software)
If you also need the audio tracks as separate files:
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0:1 -acodec copy mixed.m4a
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0:2 -acodec copy desktop.m4a
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0:3 -acodec copy voice.m4a
(example has multiple channels, depends on how you record things, whether everything is mixed down into one, or whether you record mic/game/etc. separately)
If you need to convert the audio tracks to MP3 (or something else) for some reason:
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0:1 -acodec libmp3lame -b:a 256000 mixed.mp3
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0:2 -acodec libmp3lame -b:a 256000 desktop.mp3
ffmpeg -i input.mkv -map 0:3 -acodec libmp3lame -b:a 256000 voice.mp3
There's bunches more commands, but this should be a good starting point!
They seem to have lied to their customers. They didn't release it as beta which they should have if they needed the money. Just be honest. Intead they release an unfinished game at full price
Recording to Matroska (MKV) is preferred in OBS, because standard MP4 containers have to be properly closed out when the recording ends, or the _entire_ video will be corrupted.
I think OBS now supports an alternate form of MP4 container that is recoverable if the recording is abruptly terminated.
OBS has a built-in utility to convert MKV to MP4, but I suppose Mack didn't think to search online for what to do in his situation. It's a simple re-multiplex operation that only takes a few minutes.
I've been waiting for this... If Mack doesnt get a key you know there are big problems with the game. Thank you for being honest and guarding our hard earned money Mack.
Mac only gets keys for bottom of the bin early access games. So I guess you should stick to those, enjoy.
@@mobiusoneplays3218🤡
Given Mac's extremely low tolerance for bugs, GSC probably weren't confident in giving him the pre-release version. They've been fixing bugs and patching the game as the reviews were being recorded
@@mobiusoneplays3218like Space Marine 2?
The A-Life 2.0 is currently bugged and been confirmed by the devs they are working on a patch so hopefully the respawning enemies part will get fixed as currently it doesn't really feel like a stalker game without these systems running, also they are fixing the rebinding keys issue. Probably not worth the price at the moment so its another one of them where best to wait for a sale or when its fixed.
I think A life is fake and is just marketing… they even removed it from the steam store
@@gromuk4849 They removed it before the game came out because they are changing the wording of it because new players to Stalker dont really know what it means. Its still on the official website
@gromuk4849 I'm enjoying the game for the most part and sadly I have a feeling you are right, but hoping not. I had the same issue as Mac in that same quest/base so that for sure is a bug. I haven't had it happen anywhere else. I play on wasd so that's not a problem. I'm playing at 1440p with mostly 60ish fps. Some things do need to be tweaked for sure, but this is not a game for Mac anyway. I watched him aiming at enemies and my 5 year old did better, not even joking.
@@DanMProductionsBois I have a key from gamesplanet (official store) waiting for me to reedem it, I have 14 days to refund it and I am waiting to see if the developer will fix that AI spawning bug in time, if not then I will refund...
@gromuk4849 it isn't it exists its just very bad it's comparable to clear sky's A life system
whats crazy to me is this game is sitting at mostly positive reviews on steam. I don't understand how. people gave cyberpunk and starfield a lot of gripe when they released in their condition back in the day.
There seems to be some fanboiism with this game, it's very cringeworthy.
Nah its cos those games were unplayable and had no atmosphere, no immersion to hook you, stalker has it in spades despite its flaws
It’s amazing on the new Xbox though maybe it’s still bad on PC idk
Well the first half of the game is fixed all the quest up to leaving SIRCAA are not bugged but after leaving SIRCAA you’ll start to find more bugs but to get that point takes 30 hours at least
As soon as I saw the graphics options menu I knew it was a console game. So disappointing.
How do you mean?
@@jestemlegendom There is a standardized menu system that is super clunky for mice and only really intended for controllers. This is a huge clue that the game designers have selling to the large console market in mind more than to PC gamers.
@@drezworthy okay.... Works fine for me. So maybe your mouse is half dead....
@@jestemlegendom That's just the first clue as to how the game is going to play. He speaks to the way it handles, optimized for controllers rather than mouse and keyboard, it's never as satisfying
@@drezworthy you mentioned the graphics options. What do you mean exactly? I'm curious.
The positive reviews are insane. People want to like the game more than they actually like it, they're just coping hard because it's the first STALKER game in 15 years. Game needs a lot more time in the oven, at least a year.
But i liked the game for Real but please my lord Tell me what to think or feel.
In terms of a Stalker game, it provides what you want and more with the zone fully realized in all its glory. In terms of whether anybody should buy it unless they're a fan willing to overlook some things till they get fixed? No, they should be payed to beta test it so it can be released in a year or two in a playable state. I love the game, I wish I could play the game for more than thirty minutes at a time without it starting to deteriorate, they should pay me to test it for them instead of making me pay to test it for them.
Idk I went into it blind on gamepass and I've been enjoying it.
At this point the influx of new players is most likely the explanation for the positive reception on steam and so on. They have no comparison and we barely get any games in that vein to begin with, so they hype this game up to an unrealistic degree. Despite it being vastly inferior in the gameplay, AI basically everything wich should make Stalker standout from the sea of generic open world shit we are innundaded by for a decade and a half at this point.
@@FalloutboyLP Liking something does not make it good. I can like kicking a fucking stone down the road which still doesn't make a stone the holy damn grail of entertainment.
best reviewer on yt
I’m really confused about this I’ve had literally none of the issues a lot of people have had. I’ve been able to bind ALL of my keys.. I use up down left right and have a bespoke setup as left handed and had none of this. It ran fine for me… yes there was some clipping but o have never been shot through doors not had enemies spawning on me anything… I don’t understand this it’s simply not the experience I had.. was this the unpatched version?? I’m not complaining I believe every word you’ve spoken but I simply can’t agree/relate.. anyways it’s just a game - peace.
Actually just to add yeh… the dialog is crappy but I speak Ukrainian so have it in native language and it’s way better 😝
I'd just replay Metro Exodus. I had a bad feeling about this game for some reason and I stayed away because of that. Sadly, I was right.
my working theory at this point is play all AAA games two years late and you will have a much better time
Tried world warz recently and it was still a stuttering mess, at least framerate got better, but what's the point if you wouldn't be able to aim for split second every few sec
@@Dregomz02 Most games are better after 1+ year tho ;-)
Not all of them, of course
2024 really is the worst year for games
Not if you play other games 🤣
Can anyone explain why this has so many positive reviews on steam? I played 4 hours and I uninstalled it...
This was my first and last time I preorder. I did it like two years ago because of all the fun I had with the first 3 games.
Stalker 2 is an insult, the game is not ready
Most review are paid and developer friends and bots.
The only channel I trust ❤
My issue is how horrid the optimization is.
Constantly fails to load on time for me on a WD BLACK HDD, it loads in, then i need to load into the session, then once im loaded in i need to wait for the game to finish loading bc it's not done yet. Then god forbid you walk into a new area.
It clearly says on the requirements page: SSD REQUIRED. C'mon man, they are dirt cheap these days, you're robbing yourself of so much performance still running a harddisk drive.
Yeah, it's broken. Some minor technical issue I can deal with. But in a game where immersion is paramount, having immersion breaking game mechanics is simply unacceptable. I played it at my buddy's house (poor sap couldn't help himself and pre-ordered) and the magically spawning enemies and bizarre AI behavior completely ruined it for me.
Feels like Far Cry instead of STALKER. I expected much more.
It does not feel like Farcry. I was actually impressed by how it literally feels like old school Stalker with better graphics.
@@ryanarchuleta6231 except the ai that makes the series what it is is completely absent, it is literally botched farcry ai with a stalker skin
@@ryanarchuleta6231 It feels nothing like old-school stalker at all. I know, because i'd rather play this, as buggy as it is currently, than those old games. The only thing i'd take away from this is the stamina bar that makes it so you can't even jump to escape something if you've been running for two seconds. Ridiculous mechanic.
Ima wait for 6 months to a year. Luckily I'm not a reviewer so I don't have to play the game new. It looks like it will be really good one day though
Honest review, thanks a lot Mack! Thanks also for being a 1080p guy like me, this also helps.
I'll wait for a few years before trying it but it's sad for this game to come in Early Access without the tag.
One of the biggest problems I have is when I'm looking for stashes, I scope and area out or clear it out and then magically 10 rats get spawned into my general location out of absolutely nowhere and just swarm me, I'm playing the game on veteran difficulty too so even the rats are bullet sponges.
That's because they didn't have time to impement A-life 2.0, and just made it random spawns.
Don't worry, the game feels awful on consoles too.
No idea why they put food items on the d pad. Like as if that's what I want quick access to. Not the fire mode on my rifle, noooo, I need a dedicated tuna button!
Such a disappointment. Been looking forqard to this since it was announced, and we're left with a 2010 game released in 2024.
Couldn’t agree more metro exodus is better
"Dedicated tuna button"
Can't make this shit up 😂
Man I wish I could trust others reviewers like I trust you. You're the most authentic reviewer.
He's also hilarious.
I have beedn watching Mack since I was 13 just for laughs... I'm 24 now 😂🔥
A game so buggy, it even messed up Mack's OBS
Or more than likely he didn’t even play it, he probably scrubbed his footage from TH-cam.
@@mobiusoneplays3218he gives games that take skill bad reviews. He’s always done this.
Why would a game reviewer not play a game he's reviewing?@@mobiusoneplays3218
a lot of the out of video memory is ue5 / intel 13 and 14th gen issues. as in your cpu is degraded and need to rma.
That military base (the sphere) with the absurd respawning enemies is where I stopped playing. Yes garbage is the right word unfortunately, it completely ruined immersion for me.
Maybe the game will be good one day when they keep "fixing" it.
Performance is quite horrible & unacceptable. I see a lot of stalker fans looking past it, but encouraging this behaviour will hinder future releases.
I had to refund my copy, I ain`t playing an fps game on low frames even if I have an above average setup.
What are your specs? running great for me on a 3080ti and 12900k at 4k balanced DLSS and frame gen, mostly epic, no stutters and a smooth 100fps. My only issue is it does crash every now and then.
No A-Life = no stalker = refund
Exactly what I think about it.
Already irrefutable proof it is in the game, just not working well enough/correctly.
Best not to just jump on the band wagon of fake news.
I’m past the refund point sadly, but that is insane not to have A-life, that is what made stalker, they just have these random events where stalkers will spawn behind you, or bandits and be aggro automatically and attack you, insane