S.T.A.L.K.E.R

u/GreenGhost95 Ecologist 5d ago

Taking money out of GSC's pockets? Do you think GSC is owed anyone's money? If people prefer playing Anomaly over S2 then that's GSC's fault for releasing a sub-par product.

u/Regular-Role3391 5d ago

If you keep pimping a "free" game at the expense of another one that you spend a lot of time shitting on as much as you can - then if even 1 person does not but the second one and downloads the one you are pimping instead , then yes, you have taken 60 dollars right out of the developers pocket.

Not mentioning the irony of the pimping being done for a product that was originally developed by the developer of the second game. It would not be so bad if the game being pimped required a purchase of the original product but, for some reason discussed elsewhere, it does not.

Even though the modpack upon which pimped game is based, required ownership of the original product.

GSC put DOTS between each letter to circumvent licensing.

I Have No Reddit Account, and I Must Scream.

Massive STALKER fan, and I like STALKER 2—my playtime proves it—but I also hate it. When Fallout 4 released, I had a similar experience: piling in hours and coming away with a negative perspective. Anyway, STALKER 2 is no different.

I will bullet point the issues:

• Unkillable Monolithian snipers in watchtowers. (Believe me, I’ve tried.)
• Ridiculously punishing anomaly. I call it "flashbag"—don’t know the canon name and don’t care. It’ll be modded out as soon as someone (maybe me) gets to it.
• Mutant health is ridiculously high.
• No binoculars and a general lack of tools to technically plan operations. (Likely a technical limitation.)
• Cheap scripted events in the main quest, like spawning mutants out of nowhere.
• Zero companionship with other stalkers throughout quests. Not asking for Skyrim-style companions, but we’re in the Zone—of course, we’d form groups for some missions. (Probably a technical limitation.)
• No real need for sniper rifles. (Same technical issue as the lack of binoculars.)
• After years of evolution, I’d have expected GSC to lean more into survival elements—more meds, an actual need to sleep, food, and drink. Instead, these are just gimmicks.
• Resource abundance and lack of variation. Endless salami, tinned tuna, vodka, and ammo everywhere.
• Lack of missions from NPCs like wanderers and barkeeps.
• AI is bad, both for humans and mutants.
• Subtitles or English dub replacing dialogue windows is not great for dyslexics like me who enjoy the Slavic voice acting. (Bring some looout! next time.)
• Awful economy, though it has improved somewhat since day one.
• Weapon and armor degradation happens way too fast.
• No NPC side chatter, which makes the world feel less alive.
• NPC longevity is nonexistent apart from bases—and I’ve even lost three friendly bases.
• Dog and rat animations are terrible. Dogs look weird and slinky; rats are stiff and awkward.
• Overall buggy game: main and side quests often require console commands to fix, invisible electric anomalies, infinite spawns, too many bloodsuckers, and mercs randomly spawning on a ladderless watchtower in Army Warehouse.
• Stats have been dumbed down to weak, medium, strong, and bars instead of numbers.
• Missing indicators for PSI tolerance and buffs from food, drinks, and meds.
• Removed minimap (which I’d disable anyway) replaced with a mindless "walk that way" compass, straight out of Oblivion.
• TTK difficulty slider removed in favor of a Fallout-style bullet-sponge slider.
• **fitting a rail to a weapon does not mean all rail attachments will fit.

There’s more, and I’ll keep adding. If anyone else has nagging critiques, I’d love to hear them.

Back to my Fallout 4 point: STALKER isn’t Fallout. It has no business being Fallout, but the newest entry in the STALKER world plays like a mindless looter shooter. Sadly, my monkey brain can’t put it down once I’ve started.

Just to sweeten this negative pit, I’ll add bits I like about this entry:

• Every location—from small towns to single rooms in apartment blocks—is hand-crafted, as if the dev working on them spent hours telling a story through set design. It’s been a while since I played any open-world RPG, but Skyrim and Oblivion don’t even hold a candle to the level of polish in some of these spaces in STALKER.
• I’m probably one of the lucky ones when it comes to performance. The game runs at 100fps most of the time. That’s not to say I don’t get crashes or need to restart for whatever issues plague this game, but overall, performance has been decent.
• The Arch anomalies are stunning and, so far, very interesting to interact with.
• No load screens after loading a save! After years of Anomaly, staring at the bar creeping slowly to the right and thinking, "One day I won’t have to deal with this," it feels like a luxury.
• Sidbitch is HD and greasier than ever.
• The story is good.

Again not recommending the mod: as its a performance hog but as stated in the description A-Life in all its forms is somewhat just marketing, this isn't to say Stalker 2's implementation isn't borked as it obviously is! its a total mess and one we will hopefully see fixed soon.

personally i would like to see what was originally promised with A-Life 1.0, where we can follow an NPC across the map, watch them fight, avoid combat or collect artifacts. watch them slowly rack up kill, improve gear or die at the first mission. the closes we got was with Anomally and i wont be surprised if that is how we will achieve a fuller experience this time around.

anyway i didn't link the mod in vane, the dev has some in-depth knowledge and was a good 5 minute read.

Stalker 2 has released, what's everyone's thoughts?

Personally I spoiled myself with Anomaly and GAMMA so certain features are missing but as a jump from the original series I'd say the developers made a great new entry into the franchise.

No more loading screen:
For years I've been met by loading screens, sometimes within seconds of each other now we only have deal with the shader initialisation.

Movement:
In the original movement was limited but we now have climbing built in, but only to a limited degree not like the anomaly mod which I do prefer as it allows most structures to be climbable.

Voice acting and dialogue:
I'll be totally honest I don't like this aspect and I know I'm an outlier on this as with dyslexia I can't read subtitle's fast enough, meaning I can't use slavic language with English text as I can't read the text fast enough. Whereas og stalker had a text based interaction system meaning I could take my time.

Graphics:
Not something I really care all that much about, I think mood is more important but with that said its a pretty game although lighting has been odd from time to time, out side mid day dark as shit, this might be an atmospheric touch where the zone is an odd place but never saw this same lighting behaviour in the originals.

Mood:
Pretty good, its definitely carried the stalker vibe just wish the upbeat Americans would shut up lol. Dark caves are now black which I'm well into. Monsters are scarier then before.

Difficulty:
Being a veteran I figured I'd go veteran difficulty or the hardest difficulty. In the original series this was essentially a time to kill slider. The hardest mode meant the lest rounds the player could chew but in turn the least rounds enemies could chew. They've changed this and I feel for the worst, bloodsuckers and fleshes take an unholy amount of bullets to put down, whereas before mutants were difficult but the player could become proficient at killing them by knowing their behaviours, this doesn't feel like the case now but I'm still early game and have yet to see.

Controls:
Not massively into it as keybinds for the PC have been changed and we will need mods to revert the console centric stuff.

Stability:
Preface I'm using Linux and proton, my system is and last generation. With that said the game in 4 hours of play time crashed twice, FPS sits at 110 'Epic' graphics setting.

So stalkers all in all I'm having a good time. How's your experience?

I have had my ear to the ground on this for years, each cancellation, each delay, each push back against the development such as the introduction of crypto.
It will be an emotional launch but with bated breath I eagerly wait.
PLEASE BE WORTH IT!