Sometimes it feels like you guys are actually the only ones who do great technical coverage of games, from everyone else it just boils down to oh it run bad.
Yeah that don't make no sense.. I wonder if that's a bug, or something they had to turn off to try to fix a bug? Like I'm not saying go the Half-Life 2 route where you break everything else in order to get flashlight shadows lol.. But like.. Man the the dynamicentially lighting for stalker was like kind of the that was like the clenching core that made it look good, and made the underground look amazing. This is like this feels like kind of like you missed the bushes for the trees or something I don't know.. or is it the trunks for the leaves? Or wait like maybe it's just way too much grass for the trees? Like I'm I'm not making this work.. Little details matter, bigger details don't nearly as much especially when an absence of those little details that help sell your world. I mean I guess the modern game really doesn't care but like you know I do.. and so I'm going to complain about it, cuz you know that's that's really all I can do other than mods which I already am going to do and already have to do for most games nowadays lol.
Hell Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition has these. Considering how performant that game is and how amazing it looks, I wish more developers designed their lighting around infinite-bounce RTGI.
the NPCs destroy performance but barely do anything interesting either, what the hell is it even using the CPU for when all they do mostly is stand or sit somewhere, compare that to something like RDR2, NPCs in that are so much more interactive, reactive and dynamic, and they had that running on the ancient ps4 cpu
And if the whole AI system is nowhere near as robust as original Stalker as people are reporting, then game suffering when NPC's are in play even when doing basic things is very questionable.
rdr2 on pc smilar hardware on ps4 xbox one when you come town fps drop drmaticly when you come city it drops 10fps. on open areas good if you reduce grass. elden ring also reducing grass smooth things making grass medium instead of high. new consoles on pefromace mode elden ring grass lows thats why peformance mod every other settings kinda same. if you make grass high on performance mod the resolsation cut not enough.
More background systems, logic and calculations than older games and also, newer games definitely tend to be more OW with alot more NPC’s on screen than a lot older games.
bcouse they are early acces now. until 2020 pc games also coming physcal format. not like every one claiming pchyscal pc games gone on 2013s with steam rise. since 2020 with cyberpunk you can see dramatic problems on even pc. mostly due to now there is no dead line to press disc so bascily they are early access like games no need to critcal day one patch if there is no disc relase.
@@jose131991 not true look at ac unity streets its almost full of people you cant walk strait even and city is huge. now other games 6 npc drop frame on small village lol.
@MrStrangermoon I'm not an expert at lot, but when it comes to STALKER2 specificaly it's could be caused by nanite and Metahumans. At least from what I've heard, nanite is great to display insane amount of poligons, buts it better to have every object in scene using this feature. Because activating nanite comes with its own overhead. So if you have half of objects are not using it - you still have overhead if CPU-time, and sometimes it makes framerate even lower than scene with fully off nanite. Also, metahumans looks CPU demanding. It's kinda unfortunate that some issues of the engine was patched only in later versions. Like nanite for fooliage in UE5.2 (or UE5.3). And metahumans optimizations in latest UE5.5. Really interesting how it could performs and looks if they started development now on UE5.5. At least, there are possibilities to optimize their custom logic and code, and also take some source code from UE5.5 to make current game run better and support features that UE5.1 didn't when they're switched from UE4.
The only one of the original trilogy that came as poorly optimized (as stalker 2) is Clear Sky. And it still can be explained by the fact that it was pretty advanced when it came out(16y ago btw) and out of the 3 is the best looking, yet unstable(talking about vanilla ofc, no mods). None of that applies to stalker 2, it's looks good(expect the lighting, but that's only on some spots) but nothing ground breaking
I’ve not had one stutter in 7 hours, I’m not sure if they’re playing the day one patched version, it’s the only thing I can think. Edit I’m on the X btw
@@stephenmurray2851I get stutters on a 7800X3D so I would guess you just don't notice them as much while playing. Some ppl are more or less sensitive to it.
@@LEEROY_UK yes, i'm sure you're definitely not mistaken at all and you have a rare production version of the Series X that can play Stalker 2 with absolutely perfect framepacing.
The developers did an interview back in October saying the game could drop to 55 fps on the Xbox Series X during intense combat and also discussed the possibility of bringing 60 fps to the Xbox Series S. I honestly expected it to launch in better condition after reading that.
Nothing against the devs whatsoever (I know this game was made in very difficult conditions), but after Cyberpunk and console PUBG, I never trust comments about performance before launch lol. I think most people have forgotten that Brenden Greene said PUBG was hitting 45 FPS on Xbox One, and 60 on the One X, only for the game to release and often run in the teens despite looking worse than many PS2 and OG Xbox games lol
The bugs were expected. They're almost a feature of this franchise lol. The important thing is that the game is good content-wise. The bugs should be ironed out with a few patches. Nothing against the devs. They did good. This is an old school game and a welcome change these days.
Considering it’s a dense open world UE5 title, that remembers where you drop anything like a Bethesda title on top of it, I’m actually surprised it runs as well as it does considering how punishing this engine has been on console so far, and that image quality is this good. The consoles are aging. I’m sure they’ll get there, but I would have been shocked if this was a locked 60 or even close to it at launch without severe image degredation.
It’s bugged, but I’ve been playing for 5 hours now and I’m immersed. One thing I liked was I haven’t come across any texture pop-in, unlike Silent Hill 2 Remake that I finished last week. The frame rate is far from locked. It’s also way too dark so you gotta play around with the brightness in the settings.
I like the game also, but the game needs to be better optimized. About visuals, are nice, but nothing that we haven´t seen. I hate UE engines! I have a nice PC with a 4080s, play only at 1440p, but I do not like the frametime i´m getting and the FPS.
One point I'd disagree on - and this is a personal preference: I'd actually prefer if the English language audio was spoken by someone with a 'local' accent. At least, it's far more jarring for me to hear, say, a random American accent out of context than Ukrainian-accented voices speaking English. Again, personal preference. There are people all over the world that speak clearly and authentically albeit not in their mother tongue. Nothing wrong with hearing them, if not done by ham actors of course.
I concur. Though I agree with Alex that playing with the Ukranian dialog would _technically_ be the superior option, I don't speak Ukranian, so I would need to turn on subtitles. Personally, I don't enjoy playing games or watching films while staring at a bunch of immersion-ruining text at the bottom of the screen most of the time instead of actually paying attention to what's happening on screen. I find the argument that the player character wouldn't perceive the accents to be a bit absurd, as they wouldn't perceive English either. I get that he was trying to equate it to something akin to native understanding, but personally I find the use of accents to be an acceptable compromise between the immersion of the proper language and the ability to actually understand what is being said without reading a bunch of text. If I wanted to read, I'd reach for a book, not play video games.
Couldn't disagree more. I cannot even imagine what someone who "speaks clearly and authentically albeit not in their mother tongue" might even sound like. It's just completely self-contradictory. Puzzling why anyone would even try to hugbox the topic away. It's a downright perverse and condescending way to try comfort people about their poor pronunciation skills. We [foreign speakers] don't put in decades of language learning effort just to then be handed the metaphorical equivalent of a participation trophy.
No muzzle flash is crazy once you notice it. I get DF wants to give everything a fair showing with its best foot forward but how is this anything but a hot mess you pick up in a steam sale a year or so from now after it gets patched?
Because the devs suffered through a pandemic and an invasion. Some devs becames martirs fighting in the war others relocated to prague leaving friends behind to die. The ones that remain worked without time to mourn the dead. Day by day. So you could have this game. If the Game was canceled everyone would have understood, but they didnt give up. Also bugs can be fixed, flawed design cant. This is an STALKER game, there is nothing like It. Wait for the patches. I bought It to support the Studio, but I plan to play It next year.
@ i did consider that but my country is providing aid so I’d rather just leave the politics out and analyse this as a game on its own merits. I still haven’t played Cyberpunk so I do take a very patient gamers stance on stuff that comes out in a rough shape.
Yea this game is a hot mess right now and shouldve gotten similar treatment as the jedi game but he went much lighter on it because of political reasons.
You guys are like the last bastion on UA-cam for reasonable discussion and objective reviews. It feels like everybody else is just yelling at everything all the time.
Devs said that the A-life engine is broken ATM, especially the AI spawnings randomlyaround you instead of actually wandring on the map like they should. They're aware and looking into it. Probably best to wait for that to be fixed, at minima.
@@PawnbandReally though. It’s like going to a furniture store and buying a dining room table and chairs, getting home only to find the chairs don’t have legs and the table falls over, then when you contact the store they tell you they’ll fix it in 6-12 months, maybe.
@@Pawnband One reason for that is that a lot of customers buy games at launching instead of waiting technical reviews. The studios know that so they don't care about technical issues until players complain.
I don’t agree that it’s silly to have games with English voiceovers (VO) that include accents reflecting the country where the game world is set. In fact, I think it’s a more balanced choice, especially for players who don’t want to use the game world’s native language. For example, I tried playing Assassin’s Creed Mirage in Arabic but found it too different; the voices didn’t seem to match the characters. On the other hand, in the English VO, the background NPCs spoke Arabic, and characters occasionally used Arabic words during dialogue. I thought that was fantastic-it didn’t fully immerse me in the world, but it did create a semi-immersive experience that I appreciated. Another reason someone might not choose the native language for an “authentic” experience-whether Ukrainian or any other language-is that they may not want to rely on subtitles.
Yeah, and his reasoning doesn't make that much sense tbh. Just because a Russian wouldn't recognize another Russian speaking english as an accent doesn't mean they still wouldn't sound a certain way.
Alex spends too much time on Reset Era so has all that overly PC politics on his mind that help form his opinons, Like for example his famous bad take on Stellar Blade's main character.
It really is the worst engine in the business. I can't believe people are accepting of this. Why are devs still using all these stupid rt features? The engine can't even work without them let alone with them
@@HugoStiglitz88it has nothing to do with the engine. There is a plethora of optimization features, tools, debuggers, and profilers available in the engine. Devs don’t use them because they either: don’t know how Or: don’t have time due to budgetary constraints. Developers need to stop ticking all the boxes, without smartly optimizing their game assets, material shader code, etc. UE5 is incredibly performant and powerful
@@HugoStiglitz88 if you look xbox one ps4 era even smootest engine frost bite engine now have problems. ı beliave this due to there is no physcal pc relase so every one early acces on pc now. every one say physcal disc on pc gone since 2010s with steam but this not true. they was out until this next gen start with 2020 sometihng. all ea games out. when ea drop physcal on pc new gen frostbite engine games even have proglems. not just unreal 5. frost bite 3.1 what ever proplematic. unreal engine 4 games was good performace and frostibte until battiifield 5 was smooth as butter. what happen on battlefield 5 we need to ask easy ray tracing implemented on engine first itme. ray tracing is the reason behind all. and try to add over lumens shadows making worse.
Honestly It's frustrating to see new games with simple towns with few people being justifiable of such terrible CPU performance. Take a look to Assassins Creed Unity to see what is a bustling town and interactivity
I'm going to argue debatable on the "interactivity" element. The bustling is definitely impressive, Ubisoft and subsequently the industry failed Unity so badly, we could have had follow ups to Unity instead of the slop malaise that we've have gotten with more recent titles.
@@deetsitmeisterjd Agreed. There's not really a lot going on in the newer AC titles (with incredible simple AI profiles) and I'd say while Unity's density *is* impressive its scope certainly is a lot smaller compared to Stalker 2.
Unity has a lot of people walking around, but all AssCreed games NPC's are just doing that, walking and sitting around mumbling generic phrases. They aren't doing anything close to what a proper NPC in even Oblivion does. In-fact, if you want to compare it to something, compare it to Oblivion. It had NPC's which actually have a routine, can fight, talk, eat, sleep, have inventories, can pick up things and use them.
Thanks for coverage Alex, especially for pointing out missing flashlight shadows and aggressive trees lods. Those are really hurting the immersion and hopefully fix is on the way.
I'd wager on AI when we're talking about CPU limitations. Even CSGO which is extremely easy to run could be CPU limited and tank the frame rate if you put 10 bots on a server.
@@EvilTim1911 Sure, but CSGO bots need to be running line checks for their vision and movement logic every frame. And the same for their pathing/navigation logic. The NPCs in Stalker 2 barely need any of that. Most of the time they are just standing still. If the performance cost is not primarily the skeletal deformations and animations, it seems it would be easy to optimize.
From what it seems like to me, it has something to do with memory management. Maybe utilizing some shortcuts in exchange for runtime performance penalties. It would make sense as to why they expect you to run this game with 32GBs of RAM.
Damn performance on this generation is just laughable across the board! Am I the only one who thinks Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition looks better than this game while also running perfectly smooth?
It looks absolutely amazing imo. Idk why is everyone talking sh1t about this game.. Texture quality and vegetation quality/density look absolutely stunning and I’ve never seen a game looking this good. Sure, there are things like missing muzzle and flashlight shadows and that definitely sucks but I still think the game looks amazing. People talk sh1t because they get bad performance on their 6 years old hardware..
@belec5964 No, people talk sh*t because even on the best hardware, with "cheating" by using frame generation and DLSS, they barely get 60fps and even that has dips. And this game is NOT that impressive. This isn't Crysis from 2007. It's not mind blowing, it's not doing anything new. It's just poorly optimized. In fact, Crysis STILL does a lot more than this game does lmao.
6:43 funnily enough I was just talking to someone about this and we both agreed we’d have preferred the stereotypical accents. As an Englishman hearing us, Scots and Irish in what’s supposed to be Ukraine breaks my immersion like crazy and has me thinking I’m playing Fallout London. 😂 Probably just gonna switch the language to Ukrainian but at the same time I cba reading subtitles the whole game. 💀
The way this game and Dragon's Dogma 2 handles NPCs must be wildly different to games like Assassin's Creed. Where I remember the first game on Xbox 360 could have tons of NPCs on the screen at once without tanking the frame rate.
For frame cap ALWAYS use MSI afterburner/Riva SS - its the best implementation of the framerate cap ever. Ingame caps and nvidia caps are a childs toy compared to that. Why? Because when u use MSI it does not only limit the frames, it takes care of frame-pacing. So if a frame is rendered too fast, it will hold the frame and than insert it at milisecond precise moment. So if u for example cap it at 60fps, every frame will be rendered at same 16.6ms. Almost all games have it wrong.
I do not agree about the English voice acting. As a Slavic man speaking a Slavic language, playing the original trilogy in English with was fantastic. Perfect English of the NPCs in the SHOC 2 breaks my immersion immediately.
@@TechnoSiD25 The NPCs are already few in number and low in reactivity/complexity, dialing them down basically mean removing them from the game altogether! 😆
i dont know if this just worked for me but i switched it to fsr with frame gen played a bit then switched to dlss balanced went from 70 fps in the woods with bad pacing to 110 in the woods with good pacing and city went from a stuttering mess with 40 fps to 70 fps with hardly any stutter maybe try this out
There is alot of bugs and AI problems being reported in this game on top of the graphical issues. This game could have used another year or so in the oven.
Would have been nice to hear if there was a difference in 16gb or 32gb memory. Some benchmarks i've seen show the game using over 22gb of memory even in 1080p medium settings.
@@arek314I don’t think it’s necessarily a memory leak. Sadly, Nanite is very memory intensive (both RAM and storage wise). It explains the 160gb file size as well
It seems that I have only issues with UE5 games. I experience micro freezes and overall bad performance compared to other games. I have a R9 7950X3D with RTX 4090 and 32GB DDR5 6000MT/s. Non UE5 games run as they should for my system.
unfortunely frostbite engine was not good too. it was buttery smooth until co called this next gen games. you can start with burning fortnite but it cast shadows when burn lol.
half of the responsibility goes to AMD with it's pso based design of mantle/dx12. they sacrificed pc performance for consoles. probably because consoles partly saved their business and they wanted to push APIs towards their hardware rather than adapting it to be more pc friendly.
As a long time Stalker fan this feels way more Stalker than I expected, and I love it. I thought they’d dumb it down, but this is definitely a ‘not for everyone’ game. I have a feeling Game Pass players especially might be turned off by the brutality (in the zone you are not the main character) or the unorthadox storytelling. It’s not Metro or Fallout despite similarities in other aspects. But for fans of the series, 12 hours in and this is delivering. It’s also going to be a modder’s paradise. Feels good to be a piece of meat back in the zone again. Lol. I did check it out on XBox and had surprisingly few bugs, despite reviews outlining technical issues, so the couple patches that came out post review may have helped more than expected. I am surprised, despite not hitting anyway near a locked 60, how good image quality was considering this is a dense open world UE5 console title, and how poorly that engine runs on console this generation. I’m actually hoping it comes to PS5 eventually as I would be curious how this could run on PS5 Pro. But I’m sure DF will cover this if or when we cross that bridge. All in all I’m pretty happy so far given the extreme development of this title. I can tell it’s CPU heavy though as much like a Bethesda title, Stalker remembers where you place items (much like older games, in the prologue you van actually keep all your gear by dropping it in a nearby house before you place the third beacon and are subsequently knocked out and robbed of all your stuff, meaning I walked into the game witn multiple weapons and health items by simply loading an earlier save and going through the title card screen after dropping my stuff. Lol.). Glad to see some old Stalker tricks are alive and well though.
I feel like Dragon's Dogma 2 had a similar CPU issue, but there it was literally every town and (in my opinion) felt like the NPC schedules were more detrimental to the experience than they were a contribution. Here in Stalker 2, I feel like the NPC interactions ARE they experience. It's a shame the performance suffers, but I'm personally a bit more lenient in this case as it adds so much to the game.
I've been seeing negative reviews on Steam, mostly referencing the bad AI, and how the game feels kinda dull/lifeless compared to the originals. That NPCs will spawn and despawn, instead of persisting in the environment.
@@bennifer94 Yeah I usually take Steam reviews with a grain of salt. I never played the original games so I wouldn't have a reference point for that, but it sounded kinda disappointing based on those reviews. Have you been playing Stalker 2? The NPC interactions are good?
Haven’t played myself but I’ve now heard a lot of people saying there effectively is no A-Life system, it’s just local spawns around you but no animal and NPC travel
@vl3244 I haven't yet, but I have played the originals. Specifically, I played them recently with only stability/QoL mods, so I wonder if there's some rose tinted glasses going on.
I really wish this game was built on a different engine, but I'm extremely surprised with how smooth my experience has been playing on Series S. I didn't think It would run as well as it has on the Spudbox, and I've only had smaller goofy bugs nothing serious or game breaking and suprisily barely any stutters at all.
@@Szilagyicsabaistvan more than settings on pc rdr2 reducin grass distance on ini file help most. if you find smlilar forest grass setting on this game ini on pc reducing help ı guess but not smooth npc on village drop. those suggested settings on rdr2 also do nothing on towns espcialy city of game which heavly drop fps.
@@MrStrangermoon I was just playing Rdr2 not long ago. It runs like a dream compared to Stalker. Also, try reducing the Hair option to medium or low. It boosts FPS, especially in towns.
Even under Russia terrifying attacks they didn't give up on the game, I dont mind weather the game will flop or not, the studio already have my Respect.
After 4 hours I've still not run into any bugs yet. Other than traversal stutter and settlement frame drops, I'm more concerned about the AI issues. GSC has said that A-Life 2.0 is being patched and is aware of the issues. It doesn't seem to work like a live map like the previous games as if the radius for spawning is much smaller. Mutant AI especially is so simple and seems to know where you are at any time but will immediately disperse if you are on top of a box. Still, its a great game with so much potential looking forward to stalkers future.
Makes you really appreciate what Rockstar were able to achieve with RDR2. When you watch all those tech demos, where they showcase all the new advanced game engine tools that are supposed to simplify and speed up game development and improve performance. Why do these UE5 games feel like the quality is regressing? Is it the tools or have all the talent left the industry that would know how to leverage the tools? I get that in Stalkers 2 case it's a CPU bound game, which is why it tanks performance. But just speaking about AAA games in general, feels like they've taken 3 steps back to take I step forward.
Alex saying that the heavy CPU requirements are justsifed is ridiculous when there's plenty of open world game that have many NPC'S and run much better on older hardware. The game is a broken, buggy, unoptimized mess. Its really that simple. Now we know why they held back the review embargo so late.
I'm essentially running one of the most powerful builds you can get today (7950X 3D paired with 4090) and this game still tanks my system, even dropping everything from Epic to High. However, I have not tried the framerate cap. Looking forward to seeing what that does.
@@Phil_529 for what it’s worth I tried it out and it crashed after 5 minutes two times. That’s the only setting I changed. Bumped it back up to uncapped and stopped crashing, lol
It's brilliantly enticing to search around. Yes I had the anomaly progress glitch (which is about 20 mins into the game when you know where to go and what to avoid), a restart fixed this glitch. As a game it's great, the story lines are more AA type stuff yet is far outweighed by the human touches to design which shine in every house entered. Stalker 2 often feels like I need to creep around as if it was silent hill, this creates great tension. The atmospheric sound is also brilliant, sometimes when you hear a certain noise, gulp, brown trousers time 😅 Top tips Learn when to use bandages, food, water, alcohol, anti rad or meds Guns don't jam that often and do this from wearing out (which can be repaired later in the game) Plenty of weapons around Ammo management comes in handy Turn your light off and crouch to not be seen so easily When your loading screen has finished it's best to wait 20-30secs for the screen to populate. Selecting a weapon or PDA at this point also takes quite sometime and slows down the graphic population Avoid an area if you keep getting swamped by NPC's as some areas are very tough to begin with yet you can go back later, when stronger 💪 PC player, 4070, 16GB, using medium settings , I was using high and that was also great. I'm running around 50-60fps The graphics imo are top notch. The rain hitting the water, the skies look awesome too Definitely a classic The game at launch is in better shape than star field was Full on freezes are from waiting to load, be patient, loading for 5-6 seconds whilst the screen is frozen isn't end the world Now stop being nah, nah and start being a stalker
In case of games built on UE5 I believe it’s over-reliance on built in engine toys such as Lumen, Nanite etc. While cool for presentations and general use in smaller games, they do completely tank performance in the real AAA-games, where besides few cool lightning effects and arguably better LOD system, there are also general shaders, simulation, physics, specific scripting and so on. We are experiencing awful performance because developers do not update their own engines, relying very heavily on pre-packaged solutions like UE5. And when it comes to debugging, the underlying issues with the engine are so deep and fundamental, that it is essentially becomes impossible to fix without rewriting the entire systems and abandoning core engine UE5 features.
I’ve played it for about 6 hours on the Series S and NEVER saw that 6 second pause when entering the town (done it multiple times). When I saw it happen in this video I was actually in shock. Interesting.
Another game ruined by UE5. That said, I'm 9hrs in and the game itself is pretty great. The atmosphere has no rival. Immersive AF. Love it. But why do devs keep licensing UE when it has so many issues? Loaded with features? OK...Large support community? I guess...but if the community is so valuable, why are there so many high profile games built with UE that are spectacular technical dumpster fires? I just don't get it. Why not use Decima or some other engine proven to be good at handling open-world games?
No casting shadow in 2024 is STUPID. But I understand it is UE5 and OPEN WORLD, the devs intentionally turn it off otherwise the consoles would EXPLODE! (SH2R is in UE5 and linear game and has fully casting shadow and it IS REALLY DEMANDING)
No dynamic shadows from flashlights is a disappointment. Also it needs a deadzone slider on console. The aiming is way too loose and touchy. That said, there's an amazing game here, it just needs some TLC.
@@colonelmoeitz9855 Not sure if it's the same as Alex used: under C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Stalker2\Saved\Config\WinGDK - GameUserSettings.ini - set sg.MotionBlurQuality=3
The lack of shadows from flashlight and campfires and muzzle flash was super jarring especially knowing these are all present in the original games x-ray engine and we are 20 years old newer hardware 😅😅😅
I know this game has problems. But I'm enjoying it. I hope the internet rage machine doesn't go after these devs. I believe they love their game and they have been through more than most of us can even imagine.
Series X performance in Quality mode has impressed me quite a bit, especially now knowing the resolution for it. 1440p upscaled to 4K, with this level of fidelity, utilizing lumen for the lighting system, at a locked 30 fps is pretty damn impressive for a $500 system. Played for an hour and a half last night, and not a single crash. I was honestly expecting MUCH bigger cuts and drawbacks on console with an open world UE5 game, but the SX kind of chews through this one. The game looks incredible in-person; a bunch of depth is lost when simply looking at it in a compressed video on a 6.7 inch screen.
So no the series x is a great box for $500, but the much much more powerful PRO is day light robbery for $699? You Xbots are cooked. No wonder Microsoft is shutting down Xbox consoles.
@ And I wasn’t flexing, so not sure why you’re assuming so. It’s a 2020 console running an open world UE5 game with lumen and nanite, at 1440p, that is then upscaled to 4K, yet is maintaining 30fps. For a 4.5 year old, fixed hardware, $500, Zen 2 CPU box, that’s impressive to me. It may not be to you, but that’s also not my personal issue lol. If I wanted to run this game at a higher frame rate, then I’d install in on my PC. However, seeing as the PC port is currently borked, I’ll take a stable experience at 30 fps where I can just turn on the plastic box and play the virtual toy, thanks.
@ Xbot lol. Man, PC is my main platform, and has been for 5 years now. I just got a Series X 3 weeks ago for $15 after trade in, and own a Steam Deck, Switch Lite, PS4, and One X. Sit down. And, your $699 PS5 Pro quickly turns into an $800, Zen 2 CPU box, after the addition of a disk drive that isn’t included, nor a plastic stand that also isn’t included. It costs even MORE in other territories. If you like it, good for you, enjoy. However, let’s not pretend that a PS5 Pro is suddenly a fantastic value proposition lol.
Gave it a quick go on Series X and, honestly, it’s very rough. Also, near impossible to control with the crazy drift and dead zone. Will come back to it in a few months. In the meantime, huge congrats to the devs for getting it out in the face of appalling circumstances.
Really I found ok once I got used to it. Not a fan of the drift after input in sticks and tiny dead zone but I feel it’s the intended style to make firefights imprecise and awkward perhaps
I tried the game out on my Rog Allly via Gamepass cloud streaming and it was actually a lot more stable and enjoyable than playing on my PC. And that was the Series X version being streamed! *Series X doen't seam to suffer from the hugely jarring framerate drops that the PC does although i did experience the game freeze entering the village but this also happened on my PC and for twice as long.
Performance mode surprisingly looks great on series x, not blurry so far but also not as crisp as quality obviously. Looking forward to the ps5 pro port eventually
Been excited for this game since pre-this gen launch trailer. Didn't play Stalker1. With 2, I am playing on Series S and PC--while the game is quite surprising on Series S (really, it looks good and has a stable 30), but I am fortunate enough to have a PC that will run the game at 100+fps on Epic, and there is a significant improvement. After the patches, the game does not suffer from those crazy bugs other, earlier reviews mentioned. My biggest wish? Muzzle flash and other lights being able to cast shadows. I agree with Alex that for a 2007 game, those features made Stalker 1 very impressive, and I would love to see that feature implemented with such high assets that are in 2. Give us muzzle flash and fire shadow casting! :D Great game so far. Edit: I play on a gaming laptop, so running at 1080p using the built in monitor is why I'm getting 100+fps. rtx 4070, 64GB DDR5, i7 processor (not sure the speed).
with foliage I wonder why didn't you mention half transparent dithered trees in the background and unmatching lod trees that pop into different trees when they get closer to camera, or sometimes super bright reflections of sky that is dark
What about control drift? It is terrible and many many people are complaining about this. It is impossible to aim properly... It seems many reviewers are being very easy with this game because of the war in Ukraine... It needs to be fixed!
It runs fine with the right settings and rig. I have an 5700x3d, 4070 and 64gb of RAM. I have to lock it at 60, epic settings, dlss at balanced with 4k output (ultrawide). Thats a pretty higher end pc that is much faster than any console. This is the problem...the consoles arent fast enough. Even the ps5 pro would struggle especially with the limited cpu. If i go without dlss, frame locked at 60...its a mess. Needs fixes...but really it needs modern hardware.
People gave the Metro games a ton of shit for the accents, so its kind of a no win situation. Games need English VA for worldwide appeal, but you should play in the original language if you wish immersion.
Kudos to Alex and DF for waiting for day 1 patch. they didn't have to but it would have been pointless and unhelpful to make video about the broken game after being promised a day 1 patch. I can understand why other reviewers can't wait because of time invested and need for day 1 traffic. I foresee this having a massive updated patch in future with ray/path tracing and all the other good stuff.
I disagree with the accents. I loved the Slavic accents in the English dialogue of previous games (and also the Metro series etc). It makes it seem more grounded in the location. Similar to how Allo Allo did accents as a way of portraying language.
Agreed. Not a fan of the oddly regional and almost oddly comic English accents and delivery. The Hollywood American accent feels out of place to, much rather prefer something more “authentically Eastern Europe”
@ yeah so I tried that and obviously more authentic but at the cost of following what’s going on with so many factions, names, places etc I simply found it to hard to become immersed as a lot was missed plus I find it harder to connect to characters via subtitles alone
Sometimes it feels like you guys are actually the only ones who do great technical coverage of games, from everyone else it just boils down to oh it run bad.
They are
They’re the best in the business
It really is.
You don’t need an hour long DF video to tell you the performance is crap, a 4090 is 1080p card in this game.
@JesuSoup "Oh it Run Bad" is all you need to know. You don't need to be rocket scientist to figure that out 😂
No shadows from campfires, flashlights or muzzleflashes is a grave sin in my eyes
It's CRRRAAAZZZZYYYY. How are they not in this game
Unreal engine treatment
OG Metro 2033 from 2010 looks stunning compared to this. I hate unreal engine 5.
Yeah it's a bit lame.
@@FordHoardI mean you can have all those things in unreal5, for some reason devs struggle with implementing it
No Flashlight shadows is such a bummer
Weird, must be an anomaly.
Yeah that don't make no sense.. I wonder if that's a bug, or something they had to turn off to try to fix a bug? Like I'm not saying go the Half-Life 2 route where you break everything else in order to get flashlight shadows lol.. But like.. Man the the dynamicentially lighting for stalker was like kind of the that was like the clenching core that made it look good, and made the underground look amazing.
This is like this feels like kind of like you missed the bushes for the trees or something I don't know.. or is it the trunks for the leaves? Or wait like maybe it's just way too much grass for the trees? Like I'm I'm not making this work.. Little details matter, bigger details don't nearly as much especially when an absence of those little details that help sell your world. I mean I guess the modern game really doesn't care but like you know I do.. and so I'm going to complain about it, cuz you know that's that's really all I can do other than mods which I already am going to do and already have to do for most games nowadays lol.
If no one mentioned this couple days ago, no one would give a F.
Doom3 has that effect and it released tenmillion years ago.
No flashlight and muzzleflash shadows is a joke compared to the og. We’re in the future guys, get with it.
Push them to add hardware Lumen sooner!
Hell Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition has these. Considering how performant that game is and how amazing it looks, I wish more developers designed their lighting around infinite-bounce RTGI.
@@davidbondy2250 Exodus looks 100000x better than this. Objectively. AND ITS A PERFECT 60fps WITH RT. ........ -_- UE5 is a joke.
@@simonrockstream Well Exodus was coded by OG STALKER devs who left GSC after they made Xray and the first game..
@@davidbondy2250 OG Metro 2033 from 2010 has muzzleflash shadows. It looks amazing still.
the NPCs destroy performance but barely do anything interesting either, what the hell is it even using the CPU for when all they do mostly is stand or sit somewhere, compare that to something like RDR2, NPCs in that are so much more interactive, reactive and dynamic, and they had that running on the ancient ps4 cpu
And if the whole AI system is nowhere near as robust as original Stalker as people are reporting, then game suffering when NPC's are in play even when doing basic things is very questionable.
It does feel like we’re going backwards. You make a great point. RD2 is much better.
iirc RDR2 was extremely CPU intensive when it was released.
rdr2 on pc smilar hardware on ps4 xbox one when you come town fps drop drmaticly when you come city it drops 10fps. on open areas good if you reduce grass. elden ring also reducing grass smooth things making grass medium instead of high. new consoles on pefromace mode elden ring grass lows thats why peformance mod every other settings kinda same. if you make grass high on performance mod the resolsation cut not enough.
@@hankhillsdisappointedsighnot enough to 6 second pause lock a ps4 😂
Why is there no environmental muzzle flash lighting in a dark game with good HDR implementation in 2024? It is extremely immersion breaking.
A very strange omission! I'm sure they're aware of it too
@@piotr78their is multiple missing graphical elements that ruin the atmosphere in this game
I also thought it was weird how it is missing muzzle flash and flashlight shadows, they added a lot to OG STALKER's visuals.
It was back in trailers, everyone was talking about it, don't think they are going to fix it
Metro 2033 had it, killzone 2 had it, hell left 4 dead even...
When you watch DF daily and suddenly hear "Slava Ukraini!" in the end...😊 Thank you, Alexander, and greetings from Ukraine💛💙
I would love a video from you on why modern titles nowadays are often CPU limited from a technical view even though there's not much more going on.
More background systems, logic and calculations than older games and also, newer games definitely tend to be more OW with alot more NPC’s on screen than a lot older games.
bcouse they are early acces now. until 2020 pc games also coming physcal format. not like every one claiming pchyscal pc games gone on 2013s with steam rise. since 2020 with cyberpunk you can see dramatic problems on even pc. mostly due to now there is no dead line to press disc so bascily they are early access like games no need to critcal day one patch if there is no disc relase.
@@jose131991 not true look at ac unity streets its almost full of people you cant walk strait even and city is huge. now other games 6 npc drop frame on small village lol.
@MrStrangermoon I'm not an expert at lot, but when it comes to STALKER2 specificaly it's could be caused by nanite and Metahumans. At least from what I've heard, nanite is great to display insane amount of poligons, buts it better to have every object in scene using this feature. Because activating nanite comes with its own overhead. So if you have half of objects are not using it - you still have overhead if CPU-time, and sometimes it makes framerate even lower than scene with fully off nanite.
Also, metahumans looks CPU demanding.
It's kinda unfortunate that some issues of the engine was patched only in later versions. Like nanite for fooliage in UE5.2 (or UE5.3). And metahumans optimizations in latest UE5.5. Really interesting how it could performs and looks if they started development now on UE5.5.
At least, there are possibilities to optimize their custom logic and code, and also take some source code from UE5.5 to make current game run better and support features that UE5.1 didn't when they're switched from UE4.
@@now_ever ue5 game stray souls use metahuman and peformace not drop even budget pc. dont think meta humans cause that.
I played original stalker on PC and enjoyed it but it's irritating to see people accepting poor optimisation coz the original was poorly optimised.
“That’s part of the stalker charm”
Uummm no…that’s VERY poor optimization. PERIOD
I feel the same way about Bethesda games and their fans lol
@@AnEyeRacky fr
Almost all games have “poor optimization” at launch now.
Welcome to modern gaming. It will be fixed in the coming years.
The only one of the original trilogy that came as poorly optimized (as stalker 2) is Clear Sky. And it still can be explained by the fact that it was pretty advanced when it came out(16y ago btw) and out of the 3 is the best looking, yet unstable(talking about vanilla ofc, no mods). None of that applies to stalker 2, it's looks good(expect the lighting, but that's only on some spots) but nothing ground breaking
a six *second* stutter when entering the town on Series X.... i thought performance on my 5800X3D was bad...
I’ve not had one stutter in 7 hours, I’m not sure if they’re playing the day one patched version, it’s the only thing I can think. Edit I’m on the X btw
@@LEEROY_UKthis always happens. They say there are problems then when I play I never have any of it.
@@stephenmurray2851I get stutters on a 7800X3D so I would guess you just don't notice them as much while playing. Some ppl are more or less sensitive to it.
that's why nobody will remember you
@@LEEROY_UK yes, i'm sure you're definitely not mistaken at all and you have a rare production version of the Series X that can play Stalker 2 with absolutely perfect framepacing.
The developers did an interview back in October saying the game could drop to 55 fps on the Xbox Series X during intense combat and also discussed the possibility of bringing 60 fps to the Xbox Series S. I honestly expected it to launch in better condition after reading that.
Nothing against the devs whatsoever (I know this game was made in very difficult conditions), but after Cyberpunk and console PUBG, I never trust comments about performance before launch lol. I think most people have forgotten that Brenden Greene said PUBG was hitting 45 FPS on Xbox One, and 60 on the One X, only for the game to release and often run in the teens despite looking worse than many PS2 and OG Xbox games lol
They've already said they're gonna be updating it a lot with free content..so i'm sure it'll gwt better in the coming months, oh well
The bugs were expected. They're almost a feature of this franchise lol. The important thing is that the game is good content-wise. The bugs should be ironed out with a few patches. Nothing against the devs. They did good. This is an old school game and a welcome change these days.
i think this version of the game is in the pipeline and the publishers gave us an earlier release that's more content complete, lol
Considering it’s a dense open world UE5 title, that remembers where you drop anything like a Bethesda title on top of it, I’m actually surprised it runs as well as it does considering how punishing this engine has been on console so far, and that image quality is this good. The consoles are aging. I’m sure they’ll get there, but I would have been shocked if this was a locked 60 or even close to it at launch without severe image degredation.
It’s bugged, but I’ve been playing for 5 hours now and I’m immersed. One thing I liked was I haven’t come across any texture pop-in, unlike Silent Hill 2 Remake that I finished last week. The frame rate is far from locked. It’s also way too dark so you gotta play around with the brightness in the settings.
I like the game also, but the game needs to be better optimized. About visuals, are nice, but nothing that we haven´t seen. I hate UE engines! I have a nice PC with a 4080s, play only at 1440p, but I do not like the frametime i´m getting and the FPS.
the non-shadow casting lights also seem to cast self shadows, just not onto the world, how strange.
it genuinely might be bugged rn lol
Man i’m so happy to see weapon
jamming. It’s something i would love to see in many survival games. Reminds me of far cry 2
This game has so much potential
Yeah hopefully it all gets sorted by the time the ps port is released
@@ddp5406 Thought they said it wasn't coming to PS?
@@ddp5406It's not coming to PS at all, never
@@Odie50000 Initially, but the port is slated for a couple of months.
@@Odie50000Why wouldn’t it?
One point I'd disagree on - and this is a personal preference: I'd actually prefer if the English language audio was spoken by someone with a 'local' accent. At least, it's far more jarring for me to hear, say, a random American accent out of context than Ukrainian-accented voices speaking English. Again, personal preference. There are people all over the world that speak clearly and authentically albeit not in their mother tongue. Nothing wrong with hearing them, if not done by ham actors of course.
Yeah I agree, AC unity was so weird
Me too its very jarring hearing someone sound like they are from upstate new york as a Ukrainian stalker
@@adamvose2651well most Ukrainians would be not speaking English anyways. I suggest Ukrainian audio with English subs
I concur. Though I agree with Alex that playing with the Ukranian dialog would _technically_ be the superior option, I don't speak Ukranian, so I would need to turn on subtitles. Personally, I don't enjoy playing games or watching films while staring at a bunch of immersion-ruining text at the bottom of the screen most of the time instead of actually paying attention to what's happening on screen. I find the argument that the player character wouldn't perceive the accents to be a bit absurd, as they wouldn't perceive English either. I get that he was trying to equate it to something akin to native understanding, but personally I find the use of accents to be an acceptable compromise between the immersion of the proper language and the ability to actually understand what is being said without reading a bunch of text. If I wanted to read, I'd reach for a book, not play video games.
Couldn't disagree more. I cannot even imagine what someone who "speaks clearly and authentically albeit not in their mother tongue" might even sound like. It's just completely self-contradictory. Puzzling why anyone would even try to hugbox the topic away. It's a downright perverse and condescending way to try comfort people about their poor pronunciation skills. We [foreign speakers] don't put in decades of language learning effort just to then be handed the metaphorical equivalent of a participation trophy.
No muzzle flash is crazy once you notice it. I get DF wants to give everything a fair showing with its best foot forward but how is this anything but a hot mess you pick up in a steam sale a year or so from now after it gets patched?
Because the devs suffered through a pandemic and an invasion. Some devs becames martirs fighting in the war others relocated to prague leaving friends behind to die. The ones that remain worked without time to mourn the dead. Day by day. So you could have this game. If the Game was canceled everyone would have understood, but they didnt give up. Also bugs can be fixed, flawed design cant. This is an STALKER game, there is nothing like It. Wait for the patches. I bought It to support the Studio, but I plan to play It next year.
@ i did consider that but my country is providing aid so I’d rather just leave the politics out and analyse this as a game on its own merits. I still haven’t played Cyberpunk so I do take a very patient gamers stance on stuff that comes out in a rough shape.
Yea this game is a hot mess right now and shouldve gotten similar treatment as the jedi game but he went much lighter on it because of political reasons.
muzzle flash and dynamic torchlight need to be added
You guys are like the last bastion on UA-cam for reasonable discussion and objective reviews. It feels like everybody else is just yelling at everything all the time.
They are when they aren't shilling for Sony. when they do things that aren't released for Sony exclusively, they do a decent job.
Why is it so CPU intensive? The NPCs are dumb as a rock
Devs said that the A-life engine is broken ATM, especially the AI spawnings randomlyaround you instead of actually wandring on the map like they should. They're aware and looking into it. Probably best to wait for that to be fixed, at minima.
Bad programming.
@@deadgoroth2581 It sucks that gaming is one of the few industries where you can release a broken product to the public with no consequences.
@@PawnbandReally though. It’s like going to a furniture store and buying a dining room table and chairs, getting home only to find the chairs don’t have legs and the table falls over, then when you contact the store they tell you they’ll fix it in 6-12 months, maybe.
@@Pawnband One reason for that is that a lot of customers buy games at launching instead of waiting technical reviews. The studios know that so they don't care about technical issues until players complain.
I don’t agree that it’s silly to have games with English voiceovers (VO) that include accents reflecting the country where the game world is set. In fact, I think it’s a more balanced choice, especially for players who don’t want to use the game world’s native language. For example, I tried playing Assassin’s Creed Mirage in Arabic but found it too different; the voices didn’t seem to match the characters. On the other hand, in the English VO, the background NPCs spoke Arabic, and characters occasionally used Arabic words during dialogue. I thought that was fantastic-it didn’t fully immerse me in the world, but it did create a semi-immersive experience that I appreciated.
Another reason someone might not choose the native language for an “authentic” experience-whether Ukrainian or any other language-is that they may not want to rely on subtitles.
Yeah, and his reasoning doesn't make that much sense tbh. Just because a Russian wouldn't recognize another Russian speaking english as an accent doesn't mean they still wouldn't sound a certain way.
Alex spends too much time on Reset Era so has all that overly PC politics on his mind that help form his opinons, Like for example his famous bad take on Stellar Blade's main character.
22:00 the drops under 40fps here with 7800X3D and 4090 are quite concerning 😅 CPU performance is rough ugh
Not to mention he Alex had DLSS set to ultra performance to achieve such wonderful framerates.
he is a pc meat rider so he leaves stuff out
@@lawnmanGmanooohh cool, petty childish tribalism, how mature
Getting the same performance on 7800x3d and 4070ti on the low end. It's the CPU getting HAMMERED
i9 13900K here, 4090, 64gb 5600 DDR5. Runs fine for me.
Stutter 2: Heart of UE5
🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🫡
It really is the worst engine in the business. I can't believe people are accepting of this. Why are devs still using all these stupid rt features? The engine can't even work without them let alone with them
@@HugoStiglitz88it has nothing to do with the engine. There is a plethora of optimization features, tools, debuggers, and profilers available in the engine.
Devs don’t use them because they either: don’t know how
Or: don’t have time due to budgetary constraints.
Developers need to stop ticking all the boxes, without smartly optimizing their game assets, material shader code, etc. UE5 is incredibly performant and powerful
@@HugoStiglitz88 if you look xbox one ps4 era even smootest engine frost bite engine now have problems. ı beliave this due to there is no physcal pc relase so every one early acces on pc now. every one say physcal disc on pc gone since 2010s with steam but this not true. they was out until this next gen start with 2020 sometihng. all ea games out. when ea drop physcal on pc new gen frostbite engine games even have proglems. not just unreal 5. frost bite 3.1 what ever proplematic. unreal engine 4 games was good performace and frostibte until battiifield 5 was smooth as butter. what happen on battlefield 5 we need to ask easy ray tracing implemented on engine first itme. ray tracing is the reason behind all. and try to add over lumens shadows making worse.
It runs good on my 7800x3d rtx 4070 ti super
Honestly It's frustrating to see new games with simple towns with few people being justifiable of such terrible CPU performance. Take a look to Assassins Creed Unity to see what is a bustling town and interactivity
I'm going to argue debatable on the "interactivity" element.
The bustling is definitely impressive, Ubisoft and subsequently the industry failed Unity so badly, we could have had follow ups to Unity instead of the slop malaise that we've have gotten with more recent titles.
@@deetsitmeisterjd Agreed. There's not really a lot going on in the newer AC titles (with incredible simple AI profiles) and I'd say while Unity's density *is* impressive its scope certainly is a lot smaller compared to Stalker 2.
Unity has a lot of people walking around, but all AssCreed games NPC's are just doing that, walking and sitting around mumbling generic phrases. They aren't doing anything close to what a proper NPC in even Oblivion does.
In-fact, if you want to compare it to something, compare it to Oblivion. It had NPC's which actually have a routine, can fight, talk, eat, sleep, have inventories, can pick up things and use them.
@@deetsitmeisterjd STALKER 2 is a slop too
"buzzling" made me laugh out loud.
Thanks for coverage Alex, especially for pointing out missing flashlight shadows and aggressive trees lods. Those are really hurting the immersion and hopefully fix is on the way.
Praying hardware lumen comes in the next month
What specifically is it about the NPCs that put such a load on the CPU? Is it the skeletal mesh deformations, or the path-finding/behavior logic?
I'd wager on AI when we're talking about CPU limitations. Even CSGO which is extremely easy to run could be CPU limited and tank the frame rate if you put 10 bots on a server.
@@EvilTim1911 Sure, but CSGO bots need to be running line checks for their vision and movement logic every frame. And the same for their pathing/navigation logic. The NPCs in Stalker 2 barely need any of that. Most of the time they are just standing still. If the performance cost is not primarily the skeletal deformations and animations, it seems it would be easy to optimize.
@@coldscooterThey not "stand" they running and explore zone and react on mutant !
From what it seems like to me, it has something to do with memory management. Maybe utilizing some shortcuts in exchange for runtime performance penalties. It would make sense as to why they expect you to run this game with 32GBs of RAM.
They lead rich inner lives.
Damn performance on this generation is just laughable across the board! Am I the only one who thinks Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition looks better than this game while also running perfectly smooth?
It does! Absolutly! I wanted to play Stalker 2 this weekend. Now I will play Metro exodus and will come back to Stalker in about 2 years.
Yeah, it runs on high settings and 144 fps in my laptop with a 4050. It’s incredible how well they did that game. And it cost like 5€
It looks better in every single way
It looks absolutely amazing imo. Idk why is everyone talking sh1t about this game.. Texture quality and vegetation quality/density look absolutely stunning and I’ve never seen a game looking this good. Sure, there are things like missing muzzle and flashlight shadows and that definitely sucks but I still think the game looks amazing. People talk sh1t because they get bad performance on their 6 years old hardware..
@belec5964 No, people talk sh*t because even on the best hardware, with "cheating" by using frame generation and DLSS, they barely get 60fps and even that has dips. And this game is NOT that impressive. This isn't Crysis from 2007. It's not mind blowing, it's not doing anything new. It's just poorly optimized. In fact, Crysis STILL does a lot more than this game does lmao.
1:00 omg the pure nostalgia hit with that original soundtrack.
original? that is not the original theme. Not the one i remember from shadow of chernobyl anyway
That is NOT the soundtrack from the first game
@@AeroFix94 The music that plays during the last part of the intro is in the original and clear sky.
6:43 funnily enough I was just talking to someone about this and we both agreed we’d have preferred the stereotypical accents.
As an Englishman hearing us, Scots and Irish in what’s supposed to be Ukraine breaks my immersion like crazy and has me thinking I’m playing Fallout London. 😂
Probably just gonna switch the language to Ukrainian but at the same time I cba reading subtitles the whole game. 💀
The way this game and Dragon's Dogma 2 handles NPCs must be wildly different to games like Assassin's Creed. Where I remember the first game on Xbox 360 could have tons of NPCs on the screen at once without tanking the frame rate.
For frame cap ALWAYS use MSI afterburner/Riva SS - its the best implementation of the framerate cap ever. Ingame caps and nvidia caps are a childs toy compared to that. Why? Because when u use MSI it does not only limit the frames, it takes care of frame-pacing. So if a frame is rendered too fast, it will hold the frame and than insert it at milisecond precise moment. So if u for example cap it at 60fps, every frame will be rendered at same 16.6ms. Almost all games have it wrong.
I do not agree about the English voice acting. As a Slavic man speaking a Slavic language, playing the original trilogy in English with was fantastic. Perfect English of the NPCs in the SHOC 2 breaks my immersion immediately.
Buhuu no no!Don't play lol😅
@@20Gyver People have opinions 20Gyver
@@piotr78 Don't worry about him, let's not feed the troll.
I agree. The accents add to the atmosphere. Stalker 2 is missing that cheeki breeki.
No kidding. As an American, if this is taking place in Ukraine, I don't want to hear lightweight from California with a lisp doing the voices.
By golly, but do these guys know how to showcase a game's visuals. Been watching other STALKER comparisons and its night and day.
This is an amazing breakdown. Now waiting for PC optimised settings. Hopefully RTX 3080 is included in the optimised settings.
Not gonna do much because the main bottleneck in this game is the CPU. Gonna get about same fps at 1080p low as 4K high.
@jose131991 yep I'm expecting same! Only if this game had an NPC setting that we could dial down.
@@TechnoSiD25 The NPCs are already few in number and low in reactivity/complexity, dialing them down basically mean removing them from the game altogether! 😆
The judder even at high frame rates with Gsync makes it near-on unplayable for me
Glad it's not just me. I'm on a 4090 and 7800X3D and even with DLSS performance and it's horrible.
I’m guessing just lock the fps? I have a 4090 and this game really needs optimization.
You get what you pay for 🤣
i dont know if this just worked for me but i switched it to fsr with frame gen played a bit then switched to dlss balanced went from 70 fps in the woods with bad pacing to 110 in the woods with good pacing and city went from a stuttering mess with 40 fps to 70 fps with hardly any stutter maybe try this out
I keep hearing about this but it runs butter smooth on my rig
7800x3d 4070 ti super
There is alot of bugs and AI problems being reported in this game on top of the graphical issues. This game could have used another year or so in the oven.
Another year or so in the oven is also an Xbox
Yep. Imagine one more year…
its a microsft issue, look at flight sim, people couldnt even play the game this week lol
not even microsoft would pay for another year of development, this thing really needed to come out
@@zlounberg6958 true lmao. They would hopefully now update it. regardless however, modders will do it if dev failed
Would have been nice to hear if there was a difference in 16gb or 32gb memory. Some benchmarks i've seen show the game using over 22gb of memory even in 1080p medium settings.
I saw that too, looks like memory leak more than anything else. The worst one is when upgrading weapons, had freeze that way.
I have 64GB of Ram and the game has used 43% of my total Ram at times.
@@arek314I don’t think it’s necessarily a memory leak. Sadly, Nanite is very memory intensive (both RAM and storage wise). It explains the 160gb file size as well
@@GravityGames15that’s ridiculous
@@jimby812 yeah, it's also possible. I pity anyone running that game with 16 GB RAM
needs another video of optimal settings
That "Slava Ukraine" at the end melted my heart.
Героям слава!
somebody should burn this unreal 5 engine to the ground
It seems that I have only issues with UE5 games. I experience micro freezes and overall bad performance compared to other games. I have a R9 7950X3D with RTX 4090 and 32GB DDR5 6000MT/s. Non UE5 games run as they should for my system.
There's a youtuber called Threat Interactive doing that
unfortunely frostbite engine was not good too. it was buttery smooth until co called this next gen games. you can start with burning fortnite but it cast shadows when burn lol.
half of the responsibility goes to AMD with it's pso based design of mantle/dx12. they sacrificed pc performance for consoles. probably because consoles partly saved their business and they wanted to push APIs towards their hardware rather than adapting it to be more pc friendly.
Glory to Heroes!
Thanks for the review🙏
As a long time Stalker fan this feels way more Stalker than I expected, and I love it. I thought they’d dumb it down, but this is definitely a ‘not for everyone’ game. I have a feeling Game Pass players especially might be turned off by the brutality (in the zone you are not the main character) or the unorthadox storytelling. It’s not Metro or Fallout despite similarities in other aspects. But for fans of the series, 12 hours in and this is delivering. It’s also going to be a modder’s paradise. Feels good to be a piece of meat back in the zone again. Lol.
I did check it out on XBox and had surprisingly few bugs, despite reviews outlining technical issues, so the couple patches that came out post review may have helped more than expected. I am surprised, despite not hitting anyway near a locked 60, how good image quality was considering this is a dense open world UE5 console title, and how poorly that engine runs on console this generation. I’m actually hoping it comes to PS5 eventually as I would be curious how this could run on PS5 Pro. But I’m sure DF will cover this if or when we cross that bridge. All in all I’m pretty happy so far given the extreme development of this title. I can tell it’s CPU heavy though as much like a Bethesda title, Stalker remembers where you place items (much like older games, in the prologue you van actually keep all your gear by dropping it in a nearby house before you place the third beacon and are subsequently knocked out and robbed of all your stuff, meaning I walked into the game witn multiple weapons and health items by simply loading an earlier save and going through the title card screen after dropping my stuff. Lol.). Glad to see some old Stalker tricks are alive and well though.
I like it for it being my first time playing something like this but it is so hard
"Target lost, at ease" in the middle of a gunfight is so immersion breaking.
Almost as bad as the game just dropping enemies on your head randomly or being spotted through solid walls while sneaking.
I feel like Dragon's Dogma 2 had a similar CPU issue, but there it was literally every town and (in my opinion) felt like the NPC schedules were more detrimental to the experience than they were a contribution. Here in Stalker 2, I feel like the NPC interactions ARE they experience. It's a shame the performance suffers, but I'm personally a bit more lenient in this case as it adds so much to the game.
I've been seeing negative reviews on Steam, mostly referencing the bad AI, and how the game feels kinda dull/lifeless compared to the originals. That NPCs will spawn and despawn, instead of persisting in the environment.
@vl3244 Really? I haven't seen that at all, but I straight up ignore Steam reviews personally.
@@bennifer94 Yeah I usually take Steam reviews with a grain of salt. I never played the original games so I wouldn't have a reference point for that, but it sounded kinda disappointing based on those reviews. Have you been playing Stalker 2? The NPC interactions are good?
Haven’t played myself but I’ve now heard a lot of people saying there effectively is no A-Life system, it’s just local spawns around you but no animal and NPC travel
@vl3244 I haven't yet, but I have played the originals. Specifically, I played them recently with only stability/QoL mods, so I wonder if there's some rose tinted glasses going on.
Thank you for covering this in such great detail. A truly bespoke production.
I really wish this game was built on a different engine, but I'm extremely surprised with how smooth my experience has been playing on Series S. I didn't think It would run as well as it has on the Spudbox, and I've only had smaller goofy bugs nothing serious or game breaking and suprisily barely any stutters at all.
Great and accurate review ! I'm glad the day one patch fixed a lot of the issues, it's still not perfect but I'm having a blast with the game.
Will there be a video about the best settings for PC? Like was done for RDR2? It really helped me to have a perfect gaming experience back then.
You might wait for a while. Given the state of the game.
Bro. Alex does 'best settings' for literally every game he covers.
Rdr2 setting actually changed some things. In this game FPS barely moves, only thing that does something are the shitty upscalers and framegen. Yuck
@@Szilagyicsabaistvan more than settings on pc rdr2 reducin grass distance on ini file help most. if you find smlilar forest grass setting on this game ini on pc reducing help ı guess but not smooth npc on village drop. those suggested settings on rdr2 also do nothing on towns espcialy city of game which heavly drop fps.
@@MrStrangermoon I was just playing Rdr2 not long ago. It runs like a dream compared to Stalker. Also, try reducing the Hair option to medium or low. It boosts FPS, especially in towns.
Even under Russia terrifying attacks they didn't give up on the game, I dont mind weather the game will flop or not, the studio already have my Respect.
Brainwashed by the media much?
@@vabbiq8584 Ask this to yourself, vatnik.
After 4 hours I've still not run into any bugs yet. Other than traversal stutter and settlement frame drops, I'm more concerned about the AI issues. GSC has said that A-Life 2.0 is being patched and is aware of the issues. It doesn't seem to work like a live map like the previous games as if the radius for spawning is much smaller. Mutant AI especially is so simple and seems to know where you are at any time but will immediately disperse if you are on top of a box. Still, its a great game with so much potential looking forward to stalkers future.
Makes you really appreciate what Rockstar were able to achieve with RDR2.
When you watch all those tech demos, where they showcase all the new advanced game engine tools that are supposed to simplify and speed up game development and improve performance. Why do these UE5 games feel like the quality is regressing? Is it the tools or have all the talent left the industry that would know how to leverage the tools? I get that in Stalkers 2 case it's a CPU bound game, which is why it tanks performance. But just speaking about AAA games in general, feels like they've taken 3 steps back to take I step forward.
I have never played a game where 120 fps feels like 30 lol
Frame gen is probably what's causing it. It shows you 120 but it's really 60.
@@bo-_t_-rs1152 Its not that, its constant frame time spikes non stop
dont lie ı see you on blight town. when 30 fps feel 1fps.
Disable mouse smoothing from the .ini.
So far my only real gripe in terms of presentation is software Lumen. I want the hardware RT ASAP.
Alex saying that the heavy CPU requirements are justsifed is ridiculous when there's plenty of open world game that have many NPC'S and run much better on older hardware.
The game is a broken, buggy, unoptimized mess. Its really that simple.
Now we know why they held back the review embargo so late.
Please make a guide for improving performance with all the steps and tools you guys use to optimize games and systems.
I'm essentially running one of the most powerful builds you can get today (7950X 3D paired with 4090) and this game still tanks my system, even dropping everything from Epic to High. However, I have not tried the framerate cap. Looking forward to seeing what that does.
Exact same system. Stutter galore. If it’s this bad for us I hate to think what it’s like for people on hardware from a few generations back
Similar setup but with a 4070 Ti. Because I'm always GPU bound I think I'm seeing less of the stuttery mess. Except for in town, town is brutal.
Game feels terrible even on a high end PC. Capping to 60fps is still bad and not really a solution for such a high end setup.
7700x and 4090 here and my performance has been excellent at 4k. Perhaps give AtlasOS a try?
@@Phil_529 for what it’s worth I tried it out and it crashed after 5 minutes two times. That’s the only setting I changed. Bumped it back up to uncapped and stopped crashing, lol
I think STALKER 2 might be the first major open world game that runs on UE5.
Looks like slavjank is back on the menu, boys!
Don’t forget KCD 2 is coming really soon, what a time to be alive
@@et2k166hopefully everything they promise is actually in the game this time
hell yea, brother! 2000's all over again!!!!
It's brilliantly enticing to search around. Yes I had the anomaly progress glitch (which is about 20 mins into the game when you know where to go and what to avoid), a restart fixed this glitch. As a game it's great, the story lines are more AA type stuff yet is far outweighed by the human touches to design which shine in every house entered. Stalker 2 often feels like I need to creep around as if it was silent hill, this creates great tension. The atmospheric sound is also brilliant, sometimes when you hear a certain noise, gulp, brown trousers time 😅
Top tips
Learn when to use bandages, food, water, alcohol, anti rad or meds
Guns don't jam that often and do this from wearing out (which can be repaired later in the game)
Plenty of weapons around
Ammo management comes in handy
Turn your light off and crouch to not be seen so easily
When your loading screen has finished it's best to wait 20-30secs for the screen to populate. Selecting a weapon or PDA at this point also takes quite sometime and slows down the graphic population
Avoid an area if you keep getting swamped by NPC's as some areas are very tough to begin with yet you can go back later, when stronger 💪
PC player, 4070, 16GB, using medium settings , I was using high and that was also great. I'm running around 50-60fps
The graphics imo are top notch. The rain hitting the water, the skies look awesome too
Definitely a classic
The game at launch is in better shape than star field was
Full on freezes are from waiting to load, be patient, loading for 5-6 seconds whilst the screen is frozen isn't end the world
Now stop being nah, nah and start being a stalker
New games are terrible if we are speaking about performance farming 25, stalker 2, flight simulator 24 what’s wrong with this world
In case of games built on UE5 I believe it’s over-reliance on built in engine toys such as Lumen, Nanite etc.
While cool for presentations and general use in smaller games, they do completely tank performance in the real AAA-games, where besides few cool lightning effects and arguably better LOD system, there are also general shaders, simulation, physics, specific scripting and so on.
We are experiencing awful performance because developers do not update their own engines, relying very heavily on pre-packaged solutions like UE5. And when it comes to debugging, the underlying issues with the engine are so deep and fundamental, that it is essentially becomes impossible to fix without rewriting the entire systems and abandoning core engine UE5 features.
I’ve played it for about 6 hours on the Series S and NEVER saw that 6 second pause when entering the town (done it multiple times). When I saw it happen in this video I was actually in shock. Interesting.
Because devs already fixed it in day one patch
just the idea of playing fps at 30fps with a gamepad is giving me nausea
Another game ruined by UE5.
That said, I'm 9hrs in and the game itself is pretty great. The atmosphere has no rival. Immersive AF. Love it. But why do devs keep licensing UE when it has so many issues? Loaded with features? OK...Large support community? I guess...but if the community is so valuable, why are there so many high profile games built with UE that are spectacular technical dumpster fires? I just don't get it. Why not use Decima or some other engine proven to be good at handling open-world games?
No casting shadow in 2024 is STUPID. But I understand it is UE5 and OPEN WORLD, the devs intentionally turn it off otherwise the consoles would EXPLODE! (SH2R is in UE5 and linear game and has fully casting shadow and it IS REALLY DEMANDING)
So why not have that enabled on pc only?
@@Deliveredmean424090 almost dead then ))
Nothing but respect for the Ukrainian developers, but I will wait for the patches & sale.
Needs some patches
Metro Exodus EE clears this so hard
Man i been looking forward to stalker 2 fornl a long time and your review just as much! have a great morning
No dynamic shadows from flashlights is a disappointment. Also it needs a deadzone slider on console. The aiming is way too loose and touchy. That said, there's an amazing game here, it just needs some TLC.
how to force motion blur through the config file ??
upvote
@@colonelmoeitz9855 Not sure if it's the same as Alex used: under C:\Users\\AppData\Local\Stalker2\Saved\Config\WinGDK - GameUserSettings.ini - set sg.MotionBlurQuality=3
Go to: " Users'change to user'\AppData\Local\Stalker2\Saved\GameSettings "
The lack of shadows from flashlight and campfires and muzzle flash was super jarring especially knowing these are all present in the original games x-ray engine and we are 20 years old newer hardware 😅😅😅
Yes.. Absolutely disappointing🤦
I know this game has problems. But I'm enjoying it. I hope the internet rage machine doesn't go after these devs. I believe they love their game and they have been through more than most of us can even imagine.
Series X performance in Quality mode has impressed me quite a bit, especially now knowing the resolution for it. 1440p upscaled to 4K, with this level of fidelity, utilizing lumen for the lighting system, at a locked 30 fps is pretty damn impressive for a $500 system. Played for an hour and a half last night, and not a single crash. I was honestly expecting MUCH bigger cuts and drawbacks on console with an open world UE5 game, but the SX kind of chews through this one.
The game looks incredible in-person; a bunch of depth is lost when simply looking at it in a compressed video on a 6.7 inch screen.
So no the series x is a great box for $500, but the much much more powerful PRO is day light robbery for $699? You Xbots are cooked. No wonder Microsoft is shutting down Xbox consoles.
It’s when you try to run 60fps where it falls apart. A console running a game locked 30 in 2024 isn’t a flex.
@@McaveDweller-v5i Get some help
@ And I wasn’t flexing, so not sure why you’re assuming so. It’s a 2020 console running an open world UE5 game with lumen and nanite, at 1440p, that is then upscaled to 4K, yet is maintaining 30fps. For a 4.5 year old, fixed hardware, $500, Zen 2 CPU box, that’s impressive to me. It may not be to you, but that’s also not my personal issue lol.
If I wanted to run this game at a higher frame rate, then I’d install in on my PC. However, seeing as the PC port is currently borked, I’ll take a stable experience at 30 fps where I can just turn on the plastic box and play the virtual toy, thanks.
@ Xbot lol. Man, PC is my main platform, and has been for 5 years now. I just got a Series X 3 weeks ago for $15 after trade in, and own a Steam Deck, Switch Lite, PS4, and One X. Sit down.
And, your $699 PS5 Pro quickly turns into an $800, Zen 2 CPU box, after the addition of a disk drive that isn’t included, nor a plastic stand that also isn’t included. It costs even MORE in other territories. If you like it, good for you, enjoy. However, let’s not pretend that a PS5 Pro is suddenly a fantastic value proposition lol.
Fun fact, the motion capture director for the cutscenes in this is Ilya Naishyller, the director of Hardcore Henry and Nobody!
Gave it a quick go on Series X and, honestly, it’s very rough. Also, near impossible to control with the crazy drift and dead zone.
Will come back to it in a few months. In the meantime, huge congrats to the devs for getting it out in the face of appalling circumstances.
Really I found ok once I got used to it. Not a fan of the drift after input in sticks and tiny dead zone but I feel it’s the intended style to make firefights imprecise and awkward perhaps
Its pretty rough unless you have new sticks, still enjoyable though
I thought I was the only one. At least I'm not going crazy when it came to the drift
True but they made this game in Prague not Ukraine.
@@Packin-Heat. correction it was mostly in Ukraine then moved due to the invasion where members of the development team left the game to fight
I tried the game out on my Rog Allly via Gamepass cloud streaming and it was actually a lot more stable and enjoyable than playing on my PC.
And that was the Series X version being streamed!
*Series X doen't seam to suffer from the hugely jarring framerate drops that the PC does although i did experience the game freeze entering the village but this also happened on my PC and for twice as long.
another game wasted thanks to Stutter Engine 5 yikes
Agreed
Next it's Halo and The Witcher 4 on Blurry Engine 5.
Don't you think it's the devs who didn't know how to use the engine ?
@stasyanje4225 probably that as well as unreal engine 5 being very new its not flushed out yet
The devs choose it, and you are blaming the engine.
What a brain rot.
Love from Ukraine
Performance mode surprisingly looks great on series x, not blurry so far but also not as crisp as quality obviously. Looking forward to the ps5 pro port eventually
Been excited for this game since pre-this gen launch trailer. Didn't play Stalker1. With 2, I am playing on Series S and PC--while the game is quite surprising on Series S (really, it looks good and has a stable 30), but I am fortunate enough to have a PC that will run the game at 100+fps on Epic, and there is a significant improvement. After the patches, the game does not suffer from those crazy bugs other, earlier reviews mentioned. My biggest wish? Muzzle flash and other lights being able to cast shadows. I agree with Alex that for a 2007 game, those features made Stalker 1 very impressive, and I would love to see that feature implemented with such high assets that are in 2. Give us muzzle flash and fire shadow casting! :D Great game so far.
Edit: I play on a gaming laptop, so running at 1080p using the built in monitor is why I'm getting 100+fps. rtx 4070, 64GB DDR5, i7 processor (not sure the speed).
If a 7800x3d isn't enough then the devs should have kept this in the oven a little longer
No, 7800x3d is an Xbox
@@electrikoptik LMFAO right.
This is a console review. I have Ryzen 7 9700X on PC. The game runs fine.
Enough, even with 12900 ks works good. Anyway they should find some solution with high CPU utilisation
just buy a house with a 9800x3d
this game will be an absolute blast in 3 years, having all the patches, dlcs and community mods
These NPC are like Dragon's Dogma 2s lol. There needs to be advancements in that part of the industry.
😂😂😂
with foliage I wonder why didn't you mention half transparent dithered trees in the background and unmatching lod trees that pop into different trees when they get closer to camera, or sometimes super bright reflections of sky that is dark
Man.. I'm starting to hate this UE5...
I've been hating it. Next Halo and The Witcher 4 will run like ass on it and be blurry.
10:50 the eye blinking is so creepy here...
Love the S.T.A.L.K.E.R series, bought the ultimate edition to give these guys support.
What about control drift? It is terrible and many many people are complaining about this. It is impossible to aim properly... It seems many reviewers are being very easy with this game because of the war in Ukraine... It needs to be fixed!
Insert meme : "the devs will fix it"
There’s a lot of “it runs perfect on MY console/PC” cope in these replies too
reality is, that modders will fix most of the stuff
i could imagine this stalker game becoming the new Fallout 4
It runs fine with the right settings and rig. I have an 5700x3d, 4070 and 64gb of RAM. I have to lock it at 60, epic settings, dlss at balanced with 4k output (ultrawide). Thats a pretty higher end pc that is much faster than any console. This is the problem...the consoles arent fast enough. Even the ps5 pro would struggle especially with the limited cpu.
If i go without dlss, frame locked at 60...its a mess. Needs fixes...but really it needs modern hardware.
rtx 4070 30fps smooth experiance!? GTFO. this is not acceptable. Its not crysis, its just shitty UE 5 job.
They will optimize it more and it will be good. Stutters for few seconds are not acceptable, it need to be fixed asap.
Def disagree on the accent thing. Way prefer the Slavic vibes in English
The native Ukrainian dialect is so much better for me. The game doesn’t feel right when played in English.
Slavic characters with British accents is just weird 😂 whoever idea that was should be fires
Agreed. I'll take a thick accent that culturally fits the setting and character every time.
6:56 Well you're silly to think that. If you don't want to read subtitles, the accent helps tremendously with the immersion.
The lack of Slavic accents is a big loss, the English ones are terrible and the voice actors were poorly casted.
I play it in the Ukraine language with English subs, it’s much better
I swear I heard British accents, instantly changed to the Ukrainian VO After that.
People gave the Metro games a ton of shit for the accents, so its kind of a no win situation. Games need English VA for worldwide appeal, but you should play in the original language if you wish immersion.
@@TheMostWanted92 Metro was great with the accents imo
think I'll wait 6 months before buying this.
Kudos to Alex and DF for waiting for day 1 patch. they didn't have to but it would have been pointless and unhelpful to make video about the broken game after being promised a day 1 patch. I can understand why other reviewers can't wait because of time invested and need for day 1 traffic. I foresee this having a massive updated patch in future with ray/path tracing and all the other good stuff.
You mean the 150gb patch to fix "bugs"? Fuck that 🤣
We need an optimize setting for this game.
I disagree with the accents. I loved the Slavic accents in the English dialogue of previous games (and also the Metro series etc). It makes it seem more grounded in the location. Similar to how Allo Allo did accents as a way of portraying language.
The lack of accents definitely stuck out to me in Atomic Heart, maybe because they used a lot of Russian words still.
Agreed. Not a fan of the oddly regional and almost oddly comic English accents and delivery. The Hollywood American accent feels out of place to, much rather prefer something more “authentically Eastern Europe”
@@neilranson4185why not try the native language with subs?
@ yeah so I tried that and obviously more authentic but at the cost of following what’s going on with so many factions, names, places etc I simply found it to hard to become immersed as a lot was missed plus I find it harder to connect to characters via subtitles alone
It's certainly preferable to the worst option, accents from random other countries like in AC: Unity.
Might give metro exidus another go and give this another year,mods and patches this will be amazing