izigame.me

The new Stalker turned out to be not quite what was expected. Which is quite logical, in 14 years any game would be very different from the previous one. Therefore, the developers had to try hard not to make it a failure. A similar situation with Half-Life 3. If the continuation of the HL series came out after 14 years, it would either be a failure or Valve would have to come up with something absolutely grandiose, ideal, preserving everything as before. That's why it was not released and it is unlikely that this will ever happen. But specifically with Stalker 2, the situation is different. GSC Game World made a dystopian game in 14 or 6 years. They did not try, they made an average game, which at the start did not work properly, thereby throwing shit into the ventilator for Russian haters. Personally, I, like many others, obviously expected much more from this project, in 14 years. It seems that the developers from GSC really dislike their fans, releasing such a game. The developers' hostility towards the player is felt in the first minutes of a serious fight in Stalker 2. Enemies hear you and shoot through walls with amazing accuracy, when you can't kill an enemy without armor with your AKS-74 or MP4, emptying the entire clip. It feels like you're playing with players using evil Rage Cheats in CS 2. This is also indirectly confirmed by the fact that for so long they worked on the game they didn't do any optimization, people like me simply can't play at 10 fps. Unfavorable unrealistic economy in the game. Some tips on the loading screen are repeated under the same number, they sound ridiculous because the game simply doesn't have the mechanics described in these tips. And there are still many bloopers, bugs, lags, etc. Perhaps they just hyped up good reviews about their product and didn't even apologize for all of the above, and they are in no hurry to release patches. Although the reviews can be quite real, if they are written by some fools or just loyal fans, I will not claim anything, but nevertheless I am not the only one who wrote about serious problems of the game that they do not pay attention to. In general, the developers of this studio have already ruined their reputation by making the game for 14 years and with the release of Stalker 2 they completely ruined my attitude towards them.
Stalker 2 looks much worse than its competitors, Metro Exodus or Cyberpunk in terms of gameplay, optimization and graphics. And this is despite the fact that the listed games were released much earlier and Stalker was developed, let me remind you, for a very long time. I have not yet met a single game where the optimization was so bad on release that it was completely impossible to play.
More about the game:
After watching the gameplay trailers, it seemed to me that the game would be similar to Call of Duty in the style of modern shooters on UE. But my expectations were not met and this is good because then it would have completely killed the atmosphere of the first Stalker. What the developers really deserve to be praised for is that even after so many years and the transition to a new engine, some of the atmosphere of the first games has been preserved. They were able to repeat the same "rough" textures similar to those in the first games, which brings back that very atmosphere. But since this is UE5, this is not enough. This deficiency is immediately visible, for example, by the rounded geometry of buildings, etc. The first Stalkers had their own engine that did all this, any other, of course, will not repeat everything as much as it was before.
Although the graphics are inferior to other games, at the same time it is pleasing that now there is Stalker with high resolution textures similar to those that were before.
Otherwise, there are only disadvantages ...
There is no longer such a feeling that you are exploring abandoned places of the Soviet Union, zones in general as consequences of those times ...
I think this is also connected with the transition to UE.
They removed some mechanics from the first games. For example, displaying the name of the group when looting a corpse. Some associations, names, behavior of NPCs and groups have changed a lot, new ones have appeared. Which negatively affects the immersion in the game, if this is considered not as a new game, but as a continuation of the old ones.
They removed the atmospheric ambient music that played in the background in the first parts of Stalker, or at least they could not make the same new one.
Poor lighting, many darkened graphic objects, and the change of day and night works too quickly. During sleep, it is impossible to control what time of day to wake up.
Each time the game is loaded, shaders are compiled.
There is almost no benefit in looting corpses, they always have broken weapons, no ammo, no variability. Returning to the question of the economy in the game.
Changing weapons takes quite a long time, there is no automatic reloading with the default game settings.
Everyone speaks Ukrainian, and the translation in the subtitles is not entirely accurate. Which is unrealistic because in Ukraine many people also use Russian. I can't say anything about the plot because I haven't completed the game yet.
If you take everything listed at the beginning of the review and add cheating enemies, the mortality of the main character, bad economy, optimization, and the fact that the graphics and gameplay are inferior to competitors for so many years of waiting for this game, draw your own conclusions..
Now more about optimization:
This is just awful. After a while, the fps drops to 10-15. And when the fps stays around 50, stutters appear. The first two hours of playing were still bearable, but then the fps drops began to occur more often and it became unplayable.
With a decrease in texture quality, the inclusion of frame generation parameters and dlls, the game begins to work at 100 fps a little more stably, but frames still drop to 20 fps quite often.
Also, with normal fps, stutters still occur, input lag, and at some point the game just crashes. To fix a crash or fps drops, only a computer reboot helps.
The system requirements stated by the developers say that with my video card the game should run at 60 fps on maximum graphics settings. I wonder how they tested it so that they didn't notice how the fps dropped to an unplayable state in this configuration.
Once again, don't believe 80% of the enthusiastic reviews from idiots on Steam who bought the game and play at 40 fps on RTX 4090 or at 15 fps on other cards and are happy about it...
My review is not about politics, I don't feel any hatred towards Ukraine, and I know what is happening in the world now. In fact, I would like everyone to know that not all Russians are like the developers think they are. Therefore, my review is absolutely neutral and was not written with any subtext due to some personal beliefs/considerations, etc. I am sincerely sorry about what is happening now.
My PC:
Intel i9 10900K
RTX 3070 Ti Palit GameRock
Corsair Vengeance RGB PRO 32GB 4000Mhz
Noctua NH-D15
Samsung 980 PRO