izigame.me

Did you love the originals? Well, if you recognized my name, my entire Steam account and most of my online handles pay homage to this series. I've been playing Stalker SOC and all of it's sequels and mods since it's release - long before anyone had ever heard of it or understood why it was so special. I can be a "wordy" guy, so I'm going to do my best to try not to slide off into an anomaly of verbosity.
Young folks who've never played the Stalker games may have a bit of a harder time understanding the Stalker formula and it's atmosphere. You need to understand that Stalker was never about perpetually intense action sequences, colorful, rich, highly-populated worlds filled to the brim with countless entities to interact with. If it were, it wouldn't be the "The Zone". Stalker games HAVE to be grim, feel isolated, and without TOO many friends or foes to encounter. It has to paced out, and feel like you genuinely don't know what's around the corner. An enemy faction? Mutant? Intestinal spaghettifying vortex? You don't know.. and you don't want to.
I feel that if you've never played a Stalker game, you may very well be disappointed by what you will inevitably see as a lack of innovation in Stalker 2. I'll staunchly disagree with you though, because if you take a Stalker game and change it too much, or try to turn it into Metro, Fallout, Call of Duty, or Overwatch, you're going to be missing the point entirely and miss the mark. Stalker was amazing because it managed to take a gray, dead, under-populated universe and make it utterly fascinating and intimidating, and they have repeated this formula beautifully in this sequel.
Before I get into pros and cons, some of you will inevitably be Stalker OG's like myself, and you're wondering if it's still truly Stalker, or if it has been franchised by people trying to sell a game they don't actually care about. I asure you, this is 100 percent S.T.A.L.K.E.R. You can drop 60 bucks now, or wait until later when the price goes down, bugs are worked out, and you have a few mods or DLC to play with. Either way, the soul, love and spirit of the Stalker universe is VERY much in-tact, and aside from quality of life and engine changes, and to the sheer joy of those of us that don't want innovation to alienate a game from it's own universe; there is nothing shockingly new about this game in contrast to it's predecessors. This is a GREAT thing, because it could easily have been ruined by any one of the countless cancerous elements ruining modern game design creatively and socially.
The story-line, the character you play, and the tone of this game is truly "Ukrainian" and I recommend playing English subtitles with it's native audio which is how I played the originals (which were in Russian). There are reasons Russian language is not available but that's a whole different subject. I don't want to give away spoilers, but the dialogue, little subtle humorous quirks (such as a guy you're beating up choking on bread lol) are unique, and every character even in a world where everyone looks the same feels like a real person. So when you play this you won't feel like its literally every other sci-fi, wasteland, story recycled 100 times with modern sensibilities. Nope, there's none of that. This world is pretty masculine, and unabashedly so.
-Bugs
It's 2024. I've been gaming for 45 years. I've been through it all. Fallout 1, 2 3, NV, Thief, Thief 2, Elder Scrolls, and I don't recall a time we had new games that didn't release with problems. When you consider the sheer scope of a modern open-world game, it actually amazes me seeing how many people cry about this. Not to mention the fact that the developers were repeatedly displaced by a war-torn Ukraine, shifted around, worried sick about their family and friends... honestly it's astounding to me they managed to turn this game out, and somehow still manage to keep it's soul in-tact. The original Stalker dev literally died fighting the Russians in Bahkmut. Hearing the crying about bugs (aside from pointing them out) is actually kind of infuriating. I'm giving them a pass and the good-will that they will fix them.
-You have your usual texture bugs, the occasional glitch, and yes if your system is old, Stalker 2 is probably going to make you adjust your settings. I've encountered only one bug that caused me to restart, having gotten stuck on the bridge when leaving the first zone.
-The AI in terms of combat is great, in fact they're going to piss you off lol. They will come at you, flank you, and you will not feel like you're fighting Skyrim enemies.
-One legitimate critique is that enemies spawn with varying opinions on where they should spawn, and how close or realistically they pop. I've never liked the popping enemies mechanic in any game, but this game is so massive as an interconnected map of zones that they're bound to struggle a bit with the best way to disperse enemies and its another thing I trust they will tweak and rework in time.
-Ballistic/gun issues. For some of you, you're not going to care about this but I am a huge firearms guy. The ballistics and gunplay itself is fine, the problem is that for example; the 9x19 platform weapons somehow do more damage than 45 acp. Somehow the 45 holds more rounds as well...... Im thinking they somehow got the profiles swapped as it should be the exact opposite. The 9mm pistol shoot shoot flatter, go a bit further, hold more rounds but do slightly less damage. No idea if this will be addressed, or if any other weapons have similar problems, im only 30 hours in and just left the first zone.
Stalker 2 is Stalker, they haven't reinvented the wheel, and for that I am GRATEFUL. If you can't make a sequel feel like a new and improved addition to it's predecessor, than I think you are better off making a whole new game and probably not the best person to lead a design team for an already established IP. I see this mistake happen again and again and again in the gaming industry. Going from Far Cry 5 to all of the nonsense that came later, is a good example.
Stalker 2 is NOT perfect. Neither was Shadow of Chernobyl, Clear Sky, or Call of Pripyat. It's only going to be worked, patched and get better though. If you are someone that doesn't already love and truly understand the originals, I think you're going to be disappointed with this, because at the end of the day, the biggest critique I think you will find from the younger crowd especially is that "I've played many other games like this already" and this is a fair critique. But you have to remember, this series is where all those others came from. The world of Chernobyl in Stalker is similar in some ways, but still impressively different from Fallout or Metro.
Stalker 2 is a worthy successor, and if you're reading these reviews trying to determine if this game has been bastardized by the modern gaming industry, rest assured, the programmers and devs managed to produce this while their entire world is ripped apart. They absolutely have proven this to be a labor of love. It is left unspoiled by Western politics, or "social-engineering". This review is coming from a guy obsessed with the originals, and when they first announced Stalker 2, I had VERY strong reservations it would even be completed, and if it was; I genuinely expected a bad game, marred by store purchase content, and converted for a fleeting multiplayer audience that would quickly get bored, and leave the series cheapened. I could not be more wrong.
I haven't bought a game on release or given a sh!t in a long, long time. I have taken every moment of my free time addicted to this exactly as I was in 2007 making myself late for my chump job and without enough sleep because Shadow of Chernobyl stole it all from me. Ahh, these old boots sure feel good. Luckily for me times are better now.
Stalker fans, buy this game already. You'll be fine, I promise.