It's a slightly-inferior version of the previous 3 games. And, i cannot think of a single thing that is actually better.
It's the same maps. They just took ALL the maps of the previous 3 games and put them into an open world.
Sure, it's technically impressive, but nowhere near as impressive as Stalker 1 was back in 2007 (SoC) 2008 (Clear Sky) 2009 (CoP).
Also, the ART is slightly inferior. I thought the graphics of the first were better than the second, i can see .. well, not artifacts per se (i mean graphical artifacts), but the way the foilage moves when your character moves, it's weird but it looks less realistic. Kinda the same way i felt between the graphical art of Oblivion and that of Skyrim.
The story is decent. The villain is pretty damn cool, but he's very little in the game.
I'm on 1.3.1 and the bugfixes seem to have worked, i have not seen any of the problems reported by other players at launch. Very few bugs and not a single CTD.
Gameplay-wise, it's nearly identical. Oh yes there is one thing that is better, the weapon degradation is much more reasonable. But on the other hand, the much larger distances make it kinda joyless to have to walk several kilometers from one point to another, and while there is little to no loading (!!), i am less inclined to be amazed at the world, and more to be yawning at oh yet another slog in the field.
This is still stalker so you need to save every four steps, because anomalies = landmines.
You need to seriously gear up and once you have exoskeleton, artifacts, etc then the gameplay changes substantially (again, identical to the previous games), and at that point it becomes an okay shooter at best. For balance reasons they gave all the strong enemies some crap weapons, so it's not even vaguely balanced when they have 9mm MP5s and you have snipers, auto-shotguns and instant-headshot rifles with armor-piercing rounds.
You are also given a massive amount of medkits, food, bandages, etc to the point where they need to regularly be dropped off in your stash at home because of the weight.
I won't say there haven't been some nice moments in the game, but then again there is at least 1 section that is absolutely horrendous. Overall, this is a missable game, more so if you have played the previous 3.
this new Stalker 2 really wants to script stuff. It's not QTEs but we're near that type of storytelling gameplay. To be fair, the coding of the events is good, because they LOOK unscripted, but they are. Oh no, there was a bloodsucker hidden behind that door?! shock and surprise !
But there always is. And it's always in that spot behind that one door.
Stalker 1 did NOT do this. Actually you often felt you were the victim of the artificial life they had, yes you *would* have gotten away with stealing that artifact or taking that gun from the excessively-armored exoskeleton guy, IF ONLY that random mutant did not spawn in at the worst time possible to ruin your day.
But, at the same time, you felt you were in a living, breathing world. The coders didn't gaf if you experienced horrendous gameplay because of the randomness of circumstances, on the contrary, that was expected. And they certainly didn't want to script it. It's the Zone, you walk around, you try to stay alive, you learn to spot the sound of imminent mob aggro in a fraction of a second, you learn to chug energy drinks and spring away to save your ammo and weapon condition.
I mean, you can always have "there's 2 bloodsuckers in this basement during this mission" but then the monsters can roam free, even get lost. I think the occasional failing of the mobs, just like the failing of the puzzles that could often be solved with some lateral thinking, or "microcheating" if you want, that added to the general experience, rather than detracting.
I was a little surprised going back and and seeing how controversial the game was on release. I rather enjoyed my time with it.
The Good:
The game is gorgeous, great lighting, great sound effects. Worst you can say is some of the textures are fairly low quality, but the game launched on the Xbox360 so *shrug* can't win them all.
Gameplay is distinctly Halo, and the game is built a lot like Halo Reach with a good mix of linear ground combat, vehicle combat, arenas and corridors. The levels mix it up frequently and rarely feel stale.
Master Chief is a chatty Cathy in this game vs the prior installments. No more stoic silent protagonist, which is actually a refreshing change. The game really revolves around Master Chief and Cortana's relationship and the friendship they've developed (although canonically I think the two of them have known each other for about a week or two tops from Halo 1-4) and does a good job having a solid emotional core which is quite a departure from the prior games.
The Bad:
The music is a solid 2-3 steps down from Bungie's games. I honestly have no idea wtf happened here but the background music is almost comically generic for a series lauded for it's soundtracks. The orchestral scores and Gregorian monk chants are gone, replaced by some technowave garbage cranked out by some intern on their sound board. Its that bad.
The story isn't intrinsically bad, but it does that thing where there must have been a shitton of adjacent media leading up to this game cause names and places and ships and faction names are dropped like you're supposed to be in awe but instead it's like "Who? What? Why is that important? What's going on?"
The also gets a bit of flack from supposedly going from "Milsim" sensibilities to space opera, but honestly Halo went space opera in Halo 2 and never looked back (Gravemind practically smacks of something pulled out of an anime) so I didnt really understand this criticism.
Lastly the new Promethean enemies and weapons are just very meh. I understand it's going to be tough to come up with an interesting new enemy after the Covenant (and you still do fight Covenant rebels in this game) but damn it's hard to imagine how they could do worse.
The Prometheans are really more annoying than fun. The knights ability to teleport away, the flyers that also run away when damaged and can resurrect/heal recently killed knights, the dog things that climb walls and rapid fire their weapons. Its somehow all just redressed light/heavy/support style enemies that are tweaked just enough to deal a little too much damage while also being a little too tanky, and having aggravating evade abilities.
The guns are so so ho hum: pistol, shotgun, assault rifle, battle rifle, sniper rifle, rocket launcher... But ohh they're shiney and float and make enemies disintegrate now.
But in the end the bad does not outweigh the good.
Its a shame the game got so much grief, it was a really good foundation for 343 to build off of, but from what I read they went design by committee and "listened to the fans" who at this point I am convinced are the wrong people to ever listen to and really screwed up Halo 5 (on PC when Microsoft?). When Halo 5 was panned they responded with Infinite... And now it looks like the Halo franchise is on ice for a while.
No it isn't. 💀 It is the worst installment in the series. But all of them have been money printers. It made $220 million day one.
No one knows how much Infinite has made, but the estimate is a billion minimum. Why do you think Halo is on ice? They are making a Halo game on UE5 as we speak. I'd expect it to be part of the launch for next gen Xbox hardware whatever that ends up being. I am hoping there has been a real shakeup within the company to go along with the name change to Halo Studios. Just as with Gears, they stopped using the original formula. No one wants new coke, we want coke classic. Add vanilla, cherry, etc. for those that want a little variety or a new mixer, but classic coke needs to be the base.
I am about to start Robocop Rogue City.
Concerning Stalker 2: I still have not finished the game. I am probably 30 minutes from the ending. I burned out from all of the side questing to get the best gear and weapons. And enduring the grind from before they patched the economy and such. Probably put 70hrs in.
No it isn't. 💀 It is the worst installment in the series. But all of them have been money printers. It made $220 million day one.
No one knows how much Infinite has made, but the estimate is a billion minimum. Why do you think Halo is on ice? They are making a Halo game on UE5 as we speak. I'd expect it to be part of the launch for next gen Xbox hardware whatever that ends up being. I am hoping there has been a real shakeup within the company to go along with the name change to Halo Studios. Just as with Gears, they stopped using the original formula. No one wants new coke, we want coke classic. Add vanilla, cherry, etc. for those that want a little variety or a new mixer, but classic coke needs to be the base.
-Had no idea there was a Halo 7 in the works. Infinite felt like a flash in the pan, people talked about it for a week or two and then it sort of disappeared. Figured it was a flop.
H7 is speculated to be a reboot of the series and Christ Almighty I hope it isn't. Halo CE can really only get worse if it's remade, the gameplay stands up just fine today and the anniversary edition cleaned up the dated graphics quite a bit.
6. the english dub has HORRENDOUS accents. A whole bunch of guys are voiced by the same bri'ish guy and his accent is so funny and completely out of place, it makes me think i'm playing Fallout London or We Happy Few. And the protagonist is an'Mmurican whose voice would not be out of place of a Call of Duty videogame.
Please give me back cheeky breeky bad russian accents.
What kind of psychopath plays Stalker and doesn't use the original VAs with your native language as subtitles?
Also...
I FORGOT TO BUY STALKER 2 WHEN IT WAS ON SALE!
I guess I'll play Metro instead. Given how many remasters have been thrown at me on Steam, I genuinely don't know which one is the third installment. Gotta look up the wiki to figure this one out. Oh, and I finally finished the main campaign for Bannerlord and I completely understand why everyone ignores its existence. It adds nothing to the enjoyment and the new quests it gives you are scripted in such a stupid way as to make you trek across the entire map "just because". It's the exact same bullshit as a game claiming to make the game harder by just conflating health pools. It doesn't increase the difficulty, it just makes it take slightly longer. I'm hoping the new DLC adds a significant amount of content for my next run through the game next year.
Game pass is projected to hit 50 million subscribers this year. Infinite had 20 million players early on between Campaign and MP. We don't know how much it made as MS does not disclose the data, but there are estimates as high as 5 billion. Gears is also a money printer. But they have to know they are leaving money on the table with the new coke formula. Infinite campaign is solid in a lot of places, but the story missions start to suck as the game goes on. The final boss fight I did not enjoy. It makes the Halo 2 Tartarus fight look like peak gaming by comparison, at least IMO.
Robocop is triggering my nostalgia hard. They drop you right into the world from the first movie. It isn't what I thought it would be either. I am doing a lot of normal police work. Hell, I've worked the front desk at the station. I was about to get spicy that the average weapons like a 9mm handgun do damage to me, but it is all part of the skills system. I will be able to unlock everything in the movies, like regular gunfire ricocheting off me and killing other thugs.
It has old school mechanics like health pickups and corridor shooting. It looks great and lumen reflections look every bit as good as cyberpunk. It has some Batman vibes too, Bat trash is flying everywhere without PhysX, imagine that. 🤣 And we do investigative police work using bat tech. They should have put more money into motion capture of facial expressions though, as I am guessing they went with generic UE5 implementation? The character models look great mostly, but their expressions and mouth movement are old school in a bad way. Murphy is chef's kiss, including the movie sound effects. Advertising and commercials convey the Robocop universe perfectly so far.
-Not to turn this into the @Stg-Flame tech support thread but is that something that's happening across more games or is it unique to Metro?
Might be worth applying V-sync or a frame cap, some older games can get power virus-y since they're so light to run on modern hardware they can expose weird instabilities.
If it's happening at random with more games then take @DAPUNISHER advice, it ain't getting better...
Thanks for the advice. I plan on RMAing/replacing/upgrading everything inside this PC that I possibly can because something is screwed up based off the issues I've had in the past and the reoccurring issues I'm facing now, but since I can't tell what's causing this massive headache, everything is going to go (especially this case). In the meantime, I'm going to probably go back to some indie stuff that my old hardware can run since it looks like I'll be back on the 980Ti for a bit. Terraria has had some updates recently so that'll tide me over for a while.
Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition was fun though - what little I got to play.
Spending a few days taking the kids to visit my parents, only have my crapcastle of a laptop a long (Intel 8700? And 1050 4gb) with no gamepad so I've decided to fire up Half Life 2 20th anniversary edition up with no intention of actually finishing the game .
All the episodes and the base game are rolled into one executable, and the base game engine is upgraded to the Episode 2 edition of Source (although to my immense disappointment it doesn't look like shadows and AO and other stuff was back ported to the base game from EP2).
In the canals level, game is like mainlining nostalgia. Still remember the first time I saw the water fx and physics etc in this game, I so naively thought we were on the verge of a new era of FPS gaming.
Turns out HL2 fits right in with any modern shooter, sans the graphical fidelity (which is still fine really), because FPS games basically stopped evolving at this point more or less.
The gunplay is still fun and intense, the levels still somehow both linear and labyrinthine, and one of my first gaming crushes if the girl next door was somehow assembled in a lab Alyx Vance is still as crushable as ever.
Spending a few days taking the kids to visit my parents, only have my crapcastle of a laptop a long (Intel 8700? And 1050 4gb) with no gamepad so I've decided to fire up Half Life 2 20th anniversary edition up with no intention of actually finishing the game .
All the episodes and the base game are rolled into one executable, and the base game engine is upgraded to the Episode 2 edition of Source (although to my immense disappointment it doesn't look like shadows and AO and other stuff was back ported to the base game from EP2).
In the canals level, game is like mainlining nostalgia. Still remember the first time I saw the water fx and physics etc in this game, I so naively thought we were on the verge of a new era of FPS gaming.
Turns out HL2 fits right in with any modern shooter, sans the graphical fidelity (which is still fine really), because FPS games basically stopped evolving at this point more or less.
The gunplay is still fun and intense, the levels still somehow both linear and labyrinthine, and one of my first gaming crushes if the girl next door was somehow assembled in a lab Alyx Vance is still as crushable as ever.
-Eh I actually like the laptop. Gaming on it feels like "camping" or "roughing it" in digital terms
Forces me to play older/indie titles from my library.
I plan on RMAing/replacing/upgrading everything inside this PC that I possibly can because something is screwed up based off the issues I've had in the past and the reoccurring issues I'm facing now, but since I can't tell what's causing this massive headache, everything is going to go (especially this case). In the meantime, I'm going to probably go back to some indie stuff that my old hardware can run since it looks like I'll be back on the 980Ti for a bit.
-Had no idea there was a Halo 7 in the works. Infinite felt like a flash in the pan, people talked about it for a week or two and then it sort of disappeared. Figured it was a flop.
H7 is speculated to be a reboot of the series and Christ Almighty I hope it isn't. Halo CE can really only get worse if it's remade, the gameplay stands up just fine today and the anniversary edition cleaned up the dated graphics quite a bit.
It seems like the next Halo will be a CE remake/reboot using Unreal engine, but those are only rumors at this point. The only thing 100% confirmed is they are definitely using Unreal. The entire management structure at 343 was axed when rebranding into Halo Studios. The new studio head was the lead dev on fixing the disaster that was the MCC launch, so maybe a good sign.
I have finished the long-awaited Stalker 2 and i have mixed feelings about the game.
1. i have had one single CTD in the whole 50+ hours. I was almost happy when it happened, it did more to remind me of the old Stalker games than anything else in there.
2. i felt frustration at the memberberries because the whole game is memberberries. Every map, every building, you've seen it before.
While i get it that they are trying to go for the "full stalker experience" as someone who has played the first games i would rather have something new. The first 3 were ALSO the same story with slight variations, so essentially what you have here is not Stalker 2, but rather Stalker Reboot N.3, the fourth version yet again of the same story.
3. the story is just not great. Yes ok there are a few individual nice parts but overall it's pretty mediocre. Or "mediocre" as some guy i know would say, who hates reinforcement of absolutes. *wink wink*
First, be prepared for tons of gobbledigook. Everything is Project X, Operation Super, Mission CertainDeath, Laboratory X9, Mission Plottwist, Codename Stalker, etc, and every thing that affects another has some technobabble associated with it.
Some of the past games are retconned. In the past, the zone was some kind of unknown energy that was caused by the Chernobyl NPP meltdown, and this energy created weird artifacts, the most important one being the Monolith AKA the Wish Granter, at the center of the zone.
At some point Strelok enters the center of the zone, bypasses the Monolith (which is shown to grant wishes in a devious manner) and finds C-Consciousness, an experiment of mind-meld created using the energy of the zone.
Later on this is flipped by making the zone a result of the C-Consc experiment. The stalkers are Jason Bourne -like brainwashed agents, and the Monolith becomes a lie - it did not emerge from the zone, it was just a brain-wave-disruptor kind of thing.
In stalker 2 you are Skiff, just-some-guy who lives on the outskirts outside the zone, and one day your house is destroyed by an artifact. But artifacts are not supposed to last outside, they are supposed to lose their powers, so this is really weird. Some random guy who we do not know who he is, has a rare machine, and he says "if you get inside the zone and use this machine, with this artifact inside, and then plant it on an anomaly, we may be able to "recharge" the artifact in a way that it allows it to keep its powers forver outside the zone" which essentially means, we can sell artifacts the same way we sell mobile phones.
skiff needs a new house so he goes along with the plan.
There is a very long part where you become a stalker .. not someone who was part of the STALKER Program, no, just someone who spends time in the zone, also called a Stalker ..
and you get acquainted with the various parties who want to "win the game".
In the end you learn that the C-Consc team had discovered that the earth is surrounded by a field of mystical energy called the Noosphere. Through the energy of the zone they have ascended into this Noosphere, and they did this because they are really good people who want to unite everyone in eternal life and remove all anger and hate from the world.
These same people also brainwash agents in the STALKER Program to kill stuff, fry the brains of people using the Brain Scorcher, create the Monolith who attracts people and then turns them into zombies or kills them, etc.
These lovely individuals now live immortal in the Noosphere, and there was some mishap that cut them off so they couldn't communicate with earth anymore, but if Skiff restores power to the end-game machine, everything will become perfect.
You do this by finding out where the machine is, then you run a gauntlet of killing tons of heavily armored slave-soldiers of the Monolith (don't question it) and you then have 4 very disappointing endings, but NO perfect ending.
1. the zone gets cut off forever and Monolith comes under the rule of Strelok, and you are a moron.
2. the zone creates traps you in an illusion where people think they live in paradise but none of it is real, including the Noosphere being a lie, and you are a moron.
3. the zone becomes a business to sell artifacts, and the organization that controls it begins to build a world dystopia through the use of the scientific breakthroughs of the previous experiments, such as the STALKER Program. You get a new house, but fade into obscurity.
4. the zone takes over the world, with multiple zones appearing in various parts of the planet. You're not a moron, but you make things worse for everyone else.
So, story-wise, not great.
The gameplay experience is that you have 3 distinct phases; at first, you are in this hostile world where a single step can mean death. You are carefully minding radiation, anomalies, bleeding, hunger, and rationing ammo, watching out for sounds of mutants, hiding from hostiles.
This is because you have no armor to speak of and your guns suck. NOT because of how the world works.
Then the second phase is the minute you get access to decent weapons and armor. You immediately become pretty much immune to radiation, anomalies, and you can gun down enemies to earn more than you spent in ammo and repairs. At most you need to pop a medkit, and maybe avoid the mutants as they are still a waste of ammo, but otherwise you are no longer worried about "the zone".
The third phase is when you start running the gauntlet, you wil be in linear areas with prescripted events, and at this point you are just loading up with all the gear you have been saving - all the armor-piercing ammo, all the scientific medkits, all the gauss gun clips, and you're basically playing COD campaign mode.
Stalker 2 is .. too easy, too scripted, too railroaded, not scary, often annoying. It has been polished from a certain point of view, but ruined from another.
Another MAJOR issue i have with this game, is that it's not a good survival game either. Lemme'splain.
Enemies will shoot you THE INSTANT that you become visible. In order to make this work in the game, they have toned down the amount of damage you take. So if you are in a room with a bunch of enemies, no matter how good you are at aiming, you will take a certain amount of hits. In order to make this playable, they give you a ton of medkits.
The previous Stalker games had much more punishing .. "stats". Bullets did more damage, and you were less likely to get hit, but sometimes you *did* get hit and you would get seriously hurt. You would benefit from using range and stealth to kill enemies from afar or quickly and avoid getting shot at back, from enemies whose guns did the same damage as yours did. Now, you can find yourself reloading, have an enemy right in your face, spray you with his gun, take half a clip, and NOT DIE.
Likewise, in early Stalker if you hit an anomaly like a moron, even with an exoskeleton you would be severely wounded - now, you're even supposed to take some damage, but it just buffs out.
You are also pertty damn slow at aiming, at changing weapons, and you're just not put in the position to win fights by intelligence rather than brute force. Stealth is nonexistent, with enemies often shooting at you even when you are in full cover AND there's wallbanging, and ofc the enemies all happily empty clips at you while then having 5 bullets on them after you kill them. And none of them ever drop armor.
And imho this is criticism that only old Stalker players will have. For new players, Stalker 2 is a pleasant walk in the park, but at that point it does not need all the memberberries.
The fine tuning that the previous games had does not exist here. It's been replaced by cutscenes and better graphics (dabatable), but it cannot compare to what the previous games were, nearly 20 years ago.
I started a new playthrough on the higher difficulty .. and i thought .. "ok, i know there is nothing worthy of my attention here in the starting zone(s). I will run to Rostok where i can sell red-quality weapons, and buy a good gun and armor. I will skip the initial missions and once i have armor go to Yaniv to buy endgame gear."
But why would i do that.
There is no replayability. And the gameplay does not suit a harder difficulty either, the only difference is that you are now using more medkits and spending more in gun repair. This, does not make the game better in any way.
The old Stalker was better even in this. Master Difficulty made the guns of BOTH enemies and player stronger, so while you were risking death at every encounter, you were given the tools to survive if you were up to it. And the fact that factions no longer represent a viable target is puzzling. In all 3 games prior, the zone was full of these mobs wandering around; they were your N.1 source of income, but, the more you kill, the more you lose faction status. So you could find a Freedom group walking around, and you are friends with them .. but one of them has a sniper you really really want. So you kill these guys, take the sniper, drop in reputation, then go do some fetch quests to get back in their graces.
Or, you could go kill some Monolith troops .. well they don't have a faction, aside from the fact that they HURT and there's a reasonable chance you will lose the fight, and even then you need a Exo and a top-tier weapon to even consider this.
idk, it's like the first 3 stalker games were like, "heyguy here's your sand box, go play" and this last one wants to be more cinematic, at the cost of a bit of everything else. All in all, if you are/were a Stalker fan, i would not recommend.
I kept having the wall fuse get tripped in games with big explosions, even though the PC has a UPS. It was a combination of high GPU power use, bright HDR scenes on OLED and the subwoofer going off all at once. I solved it by running the sub to a different outlet.
-Eh I actually like the laptop. Gaming on it feels like "camping" or "roughing it" in digital terms
Forces me to play older/indie titles from my library.
I keep classic RTS/4X strategy games on my laptop (especially C&C games and mods) and ScummVM adventure games on my phone. The strategy games are perfect when I'm traveling.
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