Hey guys, big shout out to LG for sponsoring this video! Grab the LG UltraGear 45 here: bit.ly/4foCJlL Pre-Order (Nov 18th ~) the GX7 here: bit.ly/3YLZucu
As an owner of 3 LG UltraGear monitors, don't buy them unless you like frustration, core features not working reliably and some of the worst support in the entire tech industry.
I just bought an LG 4k Oled monitor and my lord that is the way to game. I was delusional thinking 1440 was good. I have seen the top of the mountain and it is good.
how strong is the knife in this game? in the other three, the best tactic for some monsters was to get to point blank range on purpose instead of waiting for them to get to you.
I’ve never been able to beat soc from game braking bug in Pripyat. Soc is also one of my favorites games of all time. Not all that upset with missing the ending with how much fun everything else was.
People often say the comparison to modded STALKER (Anomaly, GAMMA, EFP) is unfair but after more than 15 years, it’s just as much part of its identity than the trilogy. If you compare S2 to these modded games, it’s lacking, mechanically but even visually (UE5 best engine?). If you compare S2 to the originals, it’s also lacking, most of all in AI (like the A-Life system) and overall atmosphere. I made a video essay on all this, impressions, comparisons, how other games do this (like Metro). To me, as a long-time fan of these games, it’s a massive disappointment.
Watched your stalker 2 video, totally underrated channel. I agree, GSC should’ve maybe put more focus into actual gameplay than just make open world first person shooter no. 12904 just now it’s set in the zone. The old games were just so much more.
The artifacts causing radiation is why you need to find the one artifact that absorbs radiation. It was the same way in the old games. Using artifacts without that is pointless.
In the first one , all artifacts had useful effects. Selling artifacts came more in Call of Pripyat. And it being the main source of money is more of Anomaly thing.
@ivanmonahhov2314 you definitelly havent played clearsky seriously, have you? Artifacts were only pointless to sell in the very first game since there was no upgrades and repairing equipment. Whatever you bought would be thrown away eventually anyways, so it was pointless to buy anything making money was only good for buying medkits and ammo.
@ivanmonahhov2314 i dont think much of the game otherthan what you hear from one time players is rememberable to you. Let me remind you, 80-90% of the artifacts through out the whole series was to sell except for the first game where they were unable to implement alot of features about artifacts and artifact hunting. All the mods including anomaly tries to make artifacts more actively usable
@@ivanmonahhov2314They changed it to most of them giving rad poisoning because otherwise people just stacked on good artifacts with no drawbacks and speed blitzed through the mid to late game.
I appreciate them not watering the game down to make yappers like this happy. Dude was even dumb enough to play the game with English audio. "Boohoo a foreign country didn't cater to my language!" Yikes.
@PugilistCactus that's an absolutely dumb take to have. The entire reason of having multiple languages to help the player understand the mannerisms and context of a situation they are in. Which are entirely lost when you can't understand their language. The fact you don't get that says a lot about whoever taught you critia thinking. Or in this case, the lack thereof.
@@PugilistCactusim actually really glad they added english dialogue it kinda sucked not knowing what they were saying in the first three games and yeah the dialogues janky but once youve heard all the dialogue you want just switch it to Ukrainian like he said its more immersive
I was worried stalker 2 was going to be dumbed down like the last couple fallout games but I'm happy they didn't cave for people that weren't fans to begin with.
An exact copy of earlier gameplay, word and concept, is a dumb down in itself. Original games where highly innovative and unique. I might wait 6 months before trying this...
Vehicle?! My friend, the zone is known for having anomalies that pop up out of nowhere and turn you into a brick of fucking dry ramen. You can't drive in the zone!
Imagine driving and your car and it gets picked up into the air and crushed with you still in it, or it gets launched upside down or zapped and the engine breaks, would be annoying as hell
Bro there are literally IRL videos of people illegally entering the zone with e scooters. It really wouldn't be that hard to even have a bike in the game for faster travelling.
in SoC the dev try to implement drivable vehicle but they had cut down and yes good luck driving on those anomalies that constantly spawn at random spots 🤣
@@lotovsvs No it's not LOL. Majority of people don't want new games. They want the old games, but on the new graphics and new engines. That's why all the "remakes" are so popular, like it was for Warcraft, Far Cry, Silent Hill and many more.
@@Gggmanlives I dunno every voice so far has been American or an American doing the worst Russian accent they can manage. At any rate switching to Ukrainian is the exact correct advice anyway lol.
Drewski loves it beside the lacking A.I life compared to Stalker 1, which hopefully will get fixed or modded. Splattercat also liked it. But as always never buy any game on day 1 nowdays.
@@henriklarssen1331Ya Ive taken a more wait for a few patches approach to new games the last few years. But as a console player, as long as it doesn’t play like a 20fps flip book then I will be playing immediately.
@@leobustos740 Kinda like cyberpunk lol. As long as the core elements are good I'm fine with technical issues and bugs, those can be fixed easily, a bad game cannot though.
That artifact hunt rant sounds like if you actully hadn't played all the STALKER games tbh, bc in every game they change what the artifacts do and every single one gives radiation that you have to offset with another artifact
@@xnour2 And you can find the kolobok in agroprom underground that gives the best radiation protection so you can equip 4 artifacts without having the worry of radiation
I'm a huge Stalker fan. But this, still needs time in the oven. - No Alife AI, Enemies just spawn 5m away from me. The world does not really feel alive and everyone is mostly there because of you. - AlIfe was a huge deal for Stalker, it is really what made this game - Enemies organically living and fighting. - Bullet Sponge Mutants and Enemies, It's just no fun especially early game, when a Flesh takes a magazine of an ak, or 3 hits of a shotgun - Fighting with a double Barrel and an MP5 against a Bloodsucker is atrocious. - Thanks to the approach to the AI and encounters, the world feels barren and often you just run through empty fields. I really love Stalker but the current game feels like Fallout. I hope it will get better, or the modders will "fix" it.
Hey, i found out that spawn distance is based on your render distance; you might want to give that a try. They spawn way further away and i got to use (and need) a scoped gun for once.
What i can see from reviews that lot of people don’t understand concept of game. For example lot of people are saying that artefacts are useless and at the same time there is theese complaints that weapon upgrades or repair coast lot of money….and there is a thing…you go after artefacts to sell them and buy things what you need, including upgrades and repairs. It was like that in old stalker games. You still can use artefacts on yourself but that is second thing, you do that when find artefacts whats fits well together. It is not just a regular shooter…
Lol everything he complained about, the healing, fixing equipment, selling things, artifacts, enemy AI, etc. Is all how the other games are, and it's what people were hoping for so I see it as an absolute win.
A. going to wait until a lot of the performance issues are patched B. going to wait also until there is a solid modding community, which there will be, the original had a huge modding scene.
The performance issues have been so mild I was blown away that there are so many people complaining on the internet. This isn't Cyberpunk 2077 launch. It's way better and even better than Cyberpunk was a year after its launch. For context I'm running the game on medium with an i5, 16Gb ram, and a 3060.
@@assaulthetz I did a custom setup using a lot of what GAMMA has but toned down closer to the original Stalker gameplay. It plays and looks great and is a lot of fun.
@@6033Kain no they dont, I dont remember Prague is in Ukraine? Do they coding with 1 hand and shooting AK with another? Doubt that. Ive seen dozens of this emotional manipulation/guilty tripping argument. F off.
Its Anomaly with a 4K texture pack and Reshade and a Story Mode. It really offers nothing new except that. Its also not running in the clunky Eurojank X-Ray engine that needs the soul of a Dev to start up but instead is using the super modern UE5.
Been playing Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl for a few hours, and it’s incredible. The story hooks you, the Zone is hauntingly atmospheric, and the gunfights are intense. No bugs so far, just pure immersion. Huge respect to Ukrainian studio GSC Game World for delivering this masterpiece under such tough circumstances. A must-play!
I second this. Played for 17 hours so far and I'm hooked. Loving the grind and I have only noticed a few bugs. Nothing game breaking. The game is difficult but the payoff feels great when finding that new armor or weapon. For what it is worth I am playing on PC also.
@@almostontimehero5415 What do you mean "These new people" brother if I have to run 2 hours just to get into a shitty ass gunfight than the game isn't good.
no, head of studio came out and said in Russian , that there will be no Russian voice over , only Ukranian. ( head of the stuidio doesnt speak Ukranian ) . So no Чики брики
There are definitely too many bloodsuckers, and they're too tanky. Way too many dogs too, I mean holy shit. Why am I fighting 10+ dogs every time I run into them. And the fact that there's no mutant loot means you gain absolutely nothing from fighting them.
This reminds me of OG Stalker, Shadow of Chernobyl. Now I want to buy it because of this. It isn't about the efficiency about the game, its about the experience... and you'd die a lot in the Zone.
There are a lot of them, but the section he complained about them in particular is one where you don't even have to fight the bloodsuckers nor are you expected to. You can stealth past them there. Dying to 4 or 5 bloodsuckers should be enough to tell the player that they're doing something wrong. There's a lot of things like that people are getting tripped up on and then blaming the game for.
For everyone playing this game ukraine dub and english text made the game so much more immersive and feel like a stalker game i reccomend everyone do it this way
Chernobylite : Wife is missing and won't stop haunting my dreams. Metro Exodus : Wife won't shut up about the world outside the bunker. STALKER 2 : That damn Artifact scorched my apartment !! The Zone owes me a new apartment now !!
In metro exodus your charter is the one who wants to see the outside world and your wife does not want too, then she gets sick trying to find a new bunker lol
It seems liek they completely removed A-life and all the NPCS are now stationarry and will only activate their AI when player gets near them wow that is dogsh*t
Big part of the Stalker games was the different factions fighting together in what felt like a living world that you are a part of, not the center of. Big disappointment for sure.
Man. I suddenly stopped playing this game one day, similar to how I once froze up on a jobsite and quit right then and there. Just put my tools down, took my hat off, and Charlie-Brown-walked pathetically to my car, never to return to that place. The sequence around 19:45 game me great comfort. The agony.
Homie is showing the new LG monitor but all i can see is Shodan on that CPU cooler looking at my soul and now i completly forgot why i was here in the first place and i'm brownsing the net to find one for myself.
@@GangsterFrankensteinComputer the original trilogy, instead of having a compass, has... a minimap with an arrow that tells you where to go. What's the difference?
@@tomasjanak4113 When I said they have nailed it I meant that's a good thing. That term as far as I know is a phrase meaning a good job, well it is in my country.
@@XmarcX92 cyberpunk was an unplayable mess made by AAA developers, whereas stalker is completely playable with maybe a Ragdoll or two launching or bot getting confused (which is fun if u know what that is), no game breaking bugs that soft lock me or ruin it so what’s the problem? Go sniff your Cheeto dust u grease warrior, bet you role play military games or gta with 100% seriousness cuz it makes you feel like the man, why try bully ppl u don’t know? it’s honestly just sad bro, get help Damn It sucks I had waste a few mins and write all this for some crusty c@m sock who’s just looking for an argument, I need a shower now I’m feeling greasyyyy 😂 so cringy
nah ragdolls are awesome, they feel heavy and verstaile in reactions - and feel not like an empty image - the way it should be and th way most games don't have. All in great amosphere
and omg the sh*t take on preferring loading screens over traversal 😭 my guy you are definitely not a part of the core fanbase your opinions are dog water
Chernobylite has suchhhhhh cringy voice acting. The game is pretty in terms of graphics but just feels very undercooked overall. Some of the lines from this video did sound a bit familiar to Chernobylite though…
“The good, bad & ugly” Proceeds to just only speak on “The Bad, Ugly, Why I’m bad, Why my gameplay reviews are ugly, More of that, less of the good, lesser than that, this is bad… I’m negative, that’s worse, more bad reviews… maybe I’ll say something good around the corner… nope, more poor takes…”
I don't know..the first Stalker SoC just feels better in so many ways (at least to me) - like the raw sounds, gameplay, overall atmosphere and so on. This definitely needs some polishing, or mods.
Sadly they used Unreal Engine which kills every game's aesthetic nowadays. Every realistic graphics game looks the same which is sad because not a lot of games held a candle to Stalker's atmosphere.
@@inoodlesi4459honestly its not even that good looking for unreal engine 5. Silent hill 2 remake however looked fantastic most of the time, even on epic it looks just bland with no real dynamics. And the performance is also alil wonky on my 3070 no matter what settings I play in it goes from a nice 60fps to 45fps at times. A 3070 ain't exactly the best gpu but its also not bad either, I expected at least a solid 60fps or more on high and this game is in need of a patch ASAP.
Looking forward to playing this game, but the amount of people excusing bugs and shitty launches is why we get crappy game launches. "Oh the previous ones were buggy too!" Okay cool, they haven't improved I guess.
Whatever I’d rather bugs than something boring and soulless like Bethesda’s latest. Could easily say people like you are why we get pretty looking vanilla snorefests like Dragon Age Veilguard.
Don't forget they lost a lot of their staff to the war so polishing was harder. They will surely be patching the game too, and using Unreal engine will make it easier for the community to fix things as well.
@@mikzin630 For sure, development hell sums it up pretty well to say the least, and I know they'll fix it too as the real only issues are bugs and not gameplay. Still wish they delayed it once again or had a beta or something to make the launch better.
The AI is the perfect point for the "games are evolving, just backwards" argument. And I understand the AI was bad in the original games, but you know what I mean.
Ive gotta say, one of the biggest problems ive noticed about stalker 2 is all the wasted space. The original games made the most of the the limited map sizes they could work with, and many areas were packed to the brim with points of interest, whether its a factory or a small stalker camp with a fire and a couple snacks sitting in a box. Stalker 2 on the other hand has so many spots that feel like theyd have something but dont. In one of the early missions i was in an underground area and there were some boxes stacked up leading to a platform, i went up expecting a stash or a medbox or something, but nope it was a dead end. They made a space and even set up objects to allow you to get there but then made it so there was 0 real reason to do so.
That wasn't "British" that was an American/Eastern European accent... he was talking about the fact they're apeaking English at all not the accents, although if they had an English accent rather than American he'd probably be more okay with it.
I absolutely hate how there's a cloud of bright red blood when you shoot an enemy, and it stays in the air for a second or two. It's so unrealistic and just stupid because that's not how bullets work. Blood should spray out of exit wounds, not where the bullet actually hits.
@@marfg12345 Overal it looks a lot more cartoony then the original games. I was excited when Stalker 2 was announced but as soon as I saw this footage that and a lot of the gameplay seems to be copy pasted to stretch out the length m I'm not that interested anymore. Definitely not worth a full price.
@@kevinfromsales9445 It reminds me of Dying Light 2. Gritty and realistic E3 gameplay trailers, but the finished game looks more like Far Cry 3 with zombies.
True, ive seen a lot of videos of this guy that i liked, but this one missed the mark by a mile. Contradictory points, issues that can be attributed literally to “skill issue”, excessive complaining about issues that aren’t really issues but core concepts of the game. Terrible video.
I think they’ve made some changes. One specific one is that the dogs act more like the old games then they do in this footage. So obviously this isn’t on Gman. I’ve faced them like 5 times and every time they did the scrambling and hiding like they used to. It seemed natural and worked well. I can see why he criticized the way they all bum rushed in the version he played
The more game get release with Unreal Engine 5 ... the more I hate it. The sound staging feel cheap, the UI font and scaling is always the same it's so weird.
Sound is not handled by UE, its Wwise - separate middleware specifically for audio, can be integrated in any engine, i.e. Unity etc as well. But yes its also used in alsmot every AAA game nowadays.
All the common assets that Unreal uses sucks, every game looks exactly the same. Same shitty hair works with weird AI rendering artifacts, same environments, same stuttering and abysmal 1% fps. Bleh. Unreal is like a colouring in book; bespoke engines are like the Mona Lisa
oh yeah, the x-ray engine was even more demanding for hardware than this game is right now, and even then just loved to crash every single damn hour or less.
Can confirm firsthand that the crying about performance issues is WAY overblown. It's very minor issues, no game breaking bugs for me so far, and the issues I have run into are completely unintrusive
I believe that the game works on amd GPUs better. Im having time to time stuttering on my RTX card, as well as my friend with another RTX card. My other friend on AMD tells the game works smoothly for him
If you line up Gman's criticisms here, they don't make much sense in the context of the game. The things he highlights as negatives are game loops, and that's ignoring the fact that alternative/solution to alter the game loops are almost all in the game but are not mentioned here. If I took all of Gman's criticisms of S2 and corrected them the "problems" in game it would be a very bland, uninspired and odd game. Convenience and hand-holding in videogames is generally just boring because there is no challenge. On the other end of the spectrum, knit-picking how mechanics in S2 are not "realistic enough" or "immersion breaking" is just doing yourself a disservice because it contradicts the points about the outdated, hardcore game loops like stamina, weight management, bleeding etc. Well? Which is it? Do you want a hardcore military sim with all the pain mechanics or do you want the slime rancher game with no pain at all, for babies? Well, s2 is neither - it's a mil sim rpg more on the hard core spectrum, and it is it's own game, and that game is very good, in my opinion. Exactly what I was looking for in fact...even more than I'd hoped, as an old school fps fan myself.
Honestly I wouldnt be shocked if some of these issue stem from them trying to at least make the game playable for modern audiences, but also probably a lack of being able to get proper QA. EDIT: or also the fact its UE5, UE5 is kinda hot ass lmao
How shocking that they would try to appeal to a wider audience to actually sell the game, not just the handful of idiots who think they're all the devs need from a game franchise that EPICALLY BOMBED
actually ue5 is very very good you just have to understand what your doing with it you can do quite alot and have it run fairly well to very well this seems like they really just had no experience with the engine and this is their first time using it alot of devs are making ue5 look like shit because its so easy to use anyone can throw a game together but they dont put the effort in to smooth it out and go deep into it it has the whole feature set an entire toolbox and a good base to stand on devs just cant fucking use it properly but indie devs have been kicking absolute ass with it lately
@@themetasora1331yeah that's the problem they are having, anomoly legit probablly out down loaded every single game they have ever made, new Vegas made a bunch of money all there old games didn't I legit only bought this cause ive played the shit out of anomoly and modpacks but never even went near the old games cause they just look trash to me, but I also wouldn't be surprised if I couldn't even run this with my 3060 and my i7 9700f, just downloading the game is making my pc slow
Since it's a UE game just wait until the patches come. For every patch the game will have to rewrite that 160 GB game size every time regardless the size of the patch.
@@abstr4cted496Not necessarily. It depends how the game files have been packed, it's just unfortunately common for devs to just have one giant .pak file instead of multiple smaller ones which causes the download issue.
Unreal engine is one of the worst *game* engines of the modern age. Movies, animations? sure. but games are just same looking, same feeling, poorly running crap, and Stalker is a highlight of that. I don't understand how we got from Crysis, and the insane boost in performance in the past 2 decades, only to end up with barely better looking games that have to render at a resolution for ants, then AI upscaled to render properly..
yep. every U5 engine game I have played has been a buggy mess that takes forever to load AND stutters like fuck. yet every other game engine has been fine
@@archiemisc and you base this on a dream you had? The team clearly lacks the required skills to be at the top of the game and the management has a literal war to worry about. Are there faults there? Sure, even X-ray ran on vodka, hopes and dreams, but it's still UE that's to blame because it allowed for such bad practices in the first place. Every piece of crappy code that was ported over just got additional layers of abstraction and complexity to it.. If Epic didn't know it's engine is was crap there wouldn't be so much focus on upscaling, frame generation etc.
@@Gggmanlives I appreciate you being honest. Don’t let these mouth breathers tell you otherwise because no one should accept a half backed game when the predecessors were much better.
@@Gggmanliveswomp womp, 99% of this sounds like obnoxious knit picking and the rest of sounds like you want a brain dead looter shooter........shall i suggest fortnite to you?
@XmarcX92 i have no issue with his honesty, my issue lies in the fact that A.) You are led to the conclusion that game is half baked when the team literally went out to pripryat to recreate an entire city and B.) All he did was whine when he titled the video (the good, the bad and the ugly) only highlighting flaws in something expansive. There is nothing wrong with pointing out issues that need attention but there comes a point where this guy is just another throwaway games journalist that only complains. They released a game despite some really harrowing odds.
The game was promised to be released in April 2022. When the military conflict began, the game should have been ready. And the development studio moved to another country in a few months. They have only two reasons why the game is so buggy. They lied about the readiness of the game and the fact that, according to the head of the studio, they are involved in the development of weapons for war.
There are random encounters, but its nothing like previous games, sadly. Instead they just spawn a random trio of baddies 40 feet away from you or a pack of dogs, or a trio of good guys to help fight in whatever encounter you're in, etc. etc.
@ Idk maybe start with the massive amount of immersion breaking bugs and glitches? The performance? Are you serious rn? I can’t enjoy a game when everything good about it is ruined by massive technical problems that should’ve been fixed forever ago.
@@jeremyterkelsen2518 the dude in this video never even said the bugs were his biggest problem i wasn't saying that the bugs make it stalker dude was complaining about the way the inventory and interfaces, the combat even, work things like that and have been that way since the first game that make the game good
5:14 You’re highlighting a crucial point. As a Ukrainian, I feel that a significant part of the game’s perception comes from its voice acting, which loses its authenticity when adapted into other languages.
it's mainly how bad the voice direction is for english. Some sentences have pauses in the wrong spots or weird cadence. In Ukrainian it sounds like natural speech.
We are so spoiled that we don't seem to understand that sometimes English isn't going to be the primary language in a game. Non-English speakers constantly deal with poor dubs over to their native language, I think we should be able to handle it once in a while without crying about "terrible voice acting."
Why are people acting like these devs had to shoot rifles and also program at the same time? You realise they weren’t programming the game in a Warzone😊
They actually all got killed in the war, the game is being released by their loved ones as a tribute to their sacrifice and to help pay for the funeral cost.
Well, Ukraine wanted to be separated from Russia for centuries and they chose to do it by becoming a part of west/europe. And because of their current underdog situation they get lots of symphaty and positive attention from west. Westernes on average a very arrogant and you can say everytnig as long as it don't challenge their worldview. And Ukranians abuse the fuck out of that pity system. I mean, if you can get your product to sell more by making puppy eyes then you must do that.
That’s what happens when the industry becomes a revolving door, can’t spend time training temp hires on a proprietary engine or else you get Halo Infinite. It’s not even the engine that irks me as art direction and “look” isn’t dictated by an engine, it’s the monopoly that Epic will have if the industry keeps heading down this route.
I bet most developers would love a fanbase a fanbase this forgiving. Any other game would be torn to shreds by everyone, but nooooo, Stalker fans are here to save the day with “i AcTuALLy LiKe tHE bUgS”.
In all honesty, being 6 hours in and I have yet to experience game breaking bugs, I've only seen very small bugs, I dont know if I'm lucky or what but so far it is surprisingly stable and consistent
He probably played the press version a week or two beforehand. Since then, they got a few patches that overall smoothed out the experience. But there's still a long way to go.
@@aftertwentea yeah dont get me wrong there is plenty of room to enhance this game, but the reviews that claim the game is a buggy mess and should be avoided are, imo, simply untrue. 13 hours in game at this point, and the worst I've had are bugs like not being able to upgrade a weapon.
@@ChosenChicken "I dont know if I'm lucky or what" then proceed to.... "the reviews that claim the game is a buggy mess and should be avoided are, imo, simply untrue", its other experience my guy, that means youre lucky.
a lot of cope for this game. its not goty and its buggy as fuck. not saying its terrible as the bit i did manage to play was decent. but all these people acting like bugs are not a thing or are "ignorable" when they have literally been crashing peoples games including mine or so atrociously bad that shooting is made a chore because of the constant frame dips and texture pops is just serious cope. Is it a bad game? no def not. Is it goty? fuck no not by any metric. is it a decent mid game that would please the old fans and maybe get some new ones? sure
The game was originally scheduled to come out in 2022 even before conflict started. They delayed it like 4 times and people still ate up the technical state with "haha well its Stalker its supposed to be like that", when the reviews for other games like this were scathing. It feels insane to see this. Game is fun but its not polished or optimized, and some of the gameplay elements have huge issues. And mods we dream about already are not even out, nor is there an official mod support.
@@SPTX. The embargo being last minute shows how devs themselves knew the game had issue, giving people less time to refund. Thankfully steam let me refund mine
Like with the upgrade for the lead case on your belt to have a artifact be carried without any rads, and additional pouches to have anomaly’s that remove rads from other anomaly’s?
@@Gggmanlives You're wrong here. Mid to late game armor will have lead lined containers which will negate the radiation completely. Also, there are artefacts you can find in chemical anomalies that negate radiation effects completely. You did review the game, but you didn't do your due diligence in this mechanic. I'm sure you got to the point where you just wanted to be done with the game and didn't explore these mechanics further. It's fine to dislike the game for what it is. Maybe take into consideration that when you report these mechanics as being pointless, but they aren't, will ruffle feathers of fans. It also makes your review for this game less credible, especially since this video was ready to go on release day.
Bro, artifact hunting is the best way to get cash and upgrades dude. If it wasn't a challenge, what's the point? If it's useless but worth tons of cash, SELL IT.
But the development studio has been located in the Czech Republic since May 2022, and they were quietly developing in Ukraine until February 2022. What difficult conditions are we talking about in this video?
1. Covid, forced fwh can disrupt productivity. 2. Yes, but thery had to excute a quick, unplanned relocation of the entire team complete with economic and legal chellenges, surely to also disrupted productivity for several months.
@@vladimirrodionov5391 I agree, but I think they were planning on releasing the game in april 2022, I think they said it was ready. It took them 2 years to finish a finished game even with all the complications?
@@iValeriiPandamic welcome to modern game development. Also the stalker development team has always been plauged by genuinely godawful leadership who incentivised personal profit and wealth over making a polished game. It's the whole reason the metro games even exist they are the og stalker devs who were forced out because they wanted better working conditions (they had to work without heating in the winter moths and deal with frequent power outages due to the studio being in a state of disrepair because the high ups kept gobbling up any profits )
@@XmarcX92 Stalker 2 was always marketed as a stalker game, not the best game in the world. Look at Cyberpunk, how the devs absolutely overhyped it from the start, while it was in much worse state than Stalker now - and yes, I still played it through and I'm a Pole. The jank is on predictable levels for a first game of the studio, on a new engine, in more than 10 years.
@@tomclanys Then why not do the right thing and delay the game when it's ready to come instead of doing a review embargo 2hrs before the game release? Why do you people accept anticonsumer practices just because they made a few games you like 14 years ago?
@@XmarcX92 they're out of money, with the moving out of the country, c0vid and then there's war. So yeah, they cant delay it any further. The franchise was very niche, and this is the moment when your niche game went mainstream. Dont even try their old game you will absolutely hate it. About the performance yeah i cant argue with that, but everything else is just the stalker experience from the old game.
@@KABLAMMATSI’m currently playing Stalker Anomaly Custom mod, feels like an actual sequel compared to whatever nonexistent AI game they released. Whats sadder are all the fanboys making excuse when modders have done it for free
@@lienomzekon4763 looking back at CoD, BF, other mainstream AAA Games, nah its gamers, they cant help themselves and the main cause of why studios release half baked game , paywall, ridiculous prices, obnoxious preorder feature, etc. Its them that allows it, supply & demands concept. No demands, no broken game release, simple, gamers at fault.
Seeing as mod support was immediately mentioned as a big focus, I'm just excited to see where the community takes this game. If Anomaly is an indicator of how passionate the community can be, this game is going to be the basis for something incredibly special (not that it looks bad, mind you, it actually looks really good. But that's just where my mind goes)
When the hell in the old games where you getting into combat every few minutes?? I'm at Call of Prikyat and combat only POSSIBLY happens when you reach a mission location and in the middle of the objective.
@ 19:50 theres a really good strat for this, its called Hodor doorway. The first doorway before the double door one and with a pump shotgun with slugs is best.
What is really putting me off the game, is the grenade spam! Like, even the shittiest bandits have grenades without limit, and they just keep lobbing them... hope it gets fixed soon.
I have absolutely no idea what you're claiming they've taken from Tarkov. The game plays nothing like Tarkov and shares very little in common. It plays like a Stalker game. It's near identical to the originals in its mechanics. Combat, economy, progression, all of it is the same as it has ever been.
As a new fan, personally, this game is what he said: Fun, depressing, but beautiful. There is a bit of jank, but on my playthrough so far, I've had almost NONE. It will vary from person to person.
Hey guys, big shout out to LG for sponsoring this video!
Grab the LG UltraGear 45 here: bit.ly/4foCJlL
Pre-Order (Nov 18th ~) the GX7 here: bit.ly/3YLZucu
Nah, thanks, I have to eat.
As an owner of 3 LG UltraGear monitors, don't buy them unless you like frustration, core features not working reliably and some of the worst support in the entire tech industry.
$1700 😂
I just bought an LG 4k Oled monitor and my lord that is the way to game. I was delusional thinking 1440 was good. I have seen the top of the mountain and it is good.
how strong is the knife in this game? in the other three, the best tactic for some monsters was to get to point blank range on purpose instead of waiting for them to get to you.
Imagine telling someone a decade ago that we'd get S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 before Half-Life 3 and GTA VI.
Decade ago no one would think that it will take more than 10 years to produce new gta.
@@shtein4476 Yeah, that's my point.
I mean, they would believe it dude what’s the point of this comment 🤣
@@shtein4476 To be fair by 2014 most people have given up waiting for Half-Life 3 considering that Half-Life 2: Episode 2 released in 2007.
I'd believe it
Reviewers:""Stalker 2 is a buggy mess"
Stalker fans: Ah just like old times
I would be disappointed if it wasn't buggy.
Apart from the fact content is locked behind pre orders and ultimate editions. Back in the day when you bought a game you got the whole game
I’ve never been able to beat soc from game braking bug in Pripyat. Soc is also one of my favorites games of all time. Not all that upset with missing the ending with how much fun everything else was.
I wouldn’t have it any other way
Except it no longer runs on the X-Ray engine that needs the hopes and dreams of the devs to even boot up but instead is using the super modern UE5.
People often say the comparison to modded STALKER (Anomaly, GAMMA, EFP) is unfair but after more than 15 years, it’s just as much part of its identity than the trilogy. If you compare S2 to these modded games, it’s lacking, mechanically but even visually (UE5 best engine?). If you compare S2 to the originals, it’s also lacking, most of all in AI (like the A-Life system) and overall atmosphere. I made a video essay on all this, impressions, comparisons, how other games do this (like Metro). To me, as a long-time fan of these games, it’s a massive disappointment.
Watched your stalker 2 video, totally underrated channel. I agree, GSC should’ve maybe put more focus into actual gameplay than just make open world first person shooter no. 12904 just now it’s set in the zone. The old games were just so much more.
@@thesidelines2125 Glad you liked the video!
The artifacts causing radiation is why you need to find the one artifact that absorbs radiation. It was the same way in the old games. Using artifacts without that is pointless.
There were also plenty of artifacts that gave no radiation in the older games too.
In SoC were
Radiated artifacts
No radiation artifacts
Radiation removing artifacts
Noone I knew used them and all trade em instead.
@@Strelokos666fools
@@Strelokos666 Honestly makes sense in SoC, foolish in other 2
Only in Stalker where bugs can be seen as lore accurate anomalies
Yeah anywhere else it's a bug, in any stalker games it's an anomaly having fun
That's how I felt while playing Into the Radius, lol.
Why complain about bugs when you can pretend they aren’t there? Pro gamer moves
It’s ok when GSC does it
Cope
A major incentive for artifact hunting has always been to sell them for a bunch of money instead of using them has it not?
In the first one , all artifacts had useful effects. Selling artifacts came more in Call of Pripyat. And it being the main source of money is more of Anomaly thing.
@ivanmonahhov2314 you definitelly havent played clearsky seriously, have you? Artifacts were only pointless to sell in the very first game since there was no upgrades and repairing equipment. Whatever you bought would be thrown away eventually anyways, so it was pointless to buy anything making money was only good for buying medkits and ammo.
@erencanayhan8514 played clear sky on release. Don't remember much aside from helicopter boss. The most forgettable out of 3
@ivanmonahhov2314 i dont think much of the game otherthan what you hear from one time players is rememberable to you. Let me remind you, 80-90% of the artifacts through out the whole series was to sell except for the first game where they were unable to implement alot of features about artifacts and artifact hunting. All the mods including anomaly tries to make artifacts more actively usable
@@ivanmonahhov2314They changed it to most of them giving rad poisoning because otherwise people just stacked on good artifacts with no drawbacks and speed blitzed through the mid to late game.
Im really enjoying everyone get mad about lugging atound tons of gear and being punished for it. This isnt skyrim
This is one of the main things I was hoping for. It breaks immersion for me when I can carry 20 bazookas and 100 rockets for each lol.
Sort of looks like it though lol
I appreciate them not watering the game down to make yappers like this happy. Dude was even dumb enough to play the game with English audio. "Boohoo a foreign country didn't cater to my language!" Yikes.
@PugilistCactus that's an absolutely dumb take to have. The entire reason of having multiple languages to help the player understand the mannerisms and context of a situation they are in. Which are entirely lost when you can't understand their language. The fact you don't get that says a lot about whoever taught you critia thinking. Or in this case, the lack thereof.
@@PugilistCactusim actually really glad they added english dialogue it kinda sucked not knowing what they were saying in the first three games and yeah the dialogues janky but once youve heard all the dialogue you want just switch it to Ukrainian like he said its more immersive
I was worried stalker 2 was going to be dumbed down like the last couple fallout games but I'm happy they didn't cave for people that weren't fans to begin with.
THIS
This
I get a sense it IS dumbed down.
@@crooster1 pretty sure it is too
An exact copy of earlier gameplay, word and concept, is a dumb down in itself. Original games where highly innovative and unique.
I might wait 6 months before trying this...
They are so dedicated to make it feel like the old game that they ported the bugs too
Vehicle?! My friend, the zone is known for having anomalies that pop up out of nowhere and turn you into a brick of fucking dry ramen. You can't drive in the zone!
Imagine driving and your car and it gets picked up into the air and crushed with you still in it, or it gets launched upside down or zapped and the engine breaks, would be annoying as hell
Don't ruin my dreams if stealing and selling other Stalkers' bicycles for vodka and sausages
Bro there are literally IRL videos of people illegally entering the zone with e scooters. It really wouldn't be that hard to even have a bike in the game for faster travelling.
in SoC the dev try to implement drivable vehicle but they had cut down and yes good luck driving on those anomalies that constantly spawn at random spots 🤣
what about death trucks and helicopters in the first game
I started an hour ago and not even 20 minutes in i get mangled by a bloodsucker. Yep, stalker is back and has its spirit still intact
Same happened to me. I didn’t even have enough time to pull out my AK and blam, another one claimed by the zone.
Dude they are everywhere...they take so many shots 😭
STALKER's soul is still there even in modern age, its heartwarming to see.
Ammo doesn't go far in this game.
The bloodsucker is a scripted event. There's alot of goddamn scripted bloodsuckers in stalker 2
„Its a 2007 game in a 2024 Shell“ and thats a good thing.
Its actually very, very bad thing.
@@lotovsvs Nah bro, 2020s games are the worst games i ever seen in my whole life, is just a good thing because its innovative in nowadays
I mean we got a good bit of really good games @@Malakaiii.u
Do you not like 2007 games?@@lotovsvs
@@lotovsvs No it's not LOL.
Majority of people don't want new games. They want the old games, but on the new graphics and new engines. That's why all the "remakes" are so popular, like it was for Warcraft, Far Cry, Silent Hill and many more.
As a stalker fan since 2011, i assure you that bugs and glitches are the least of our concerns regarding stalker 2
the fixes by 2011 wasn't that bad
What is of concern? As a non fan
@@GayActorMichaelDouglas666 Perishing to the zone. Multiple. Multiple. Multiple times
Bugs and glitches? More like "game features"😂😂
@GayActorMichaelDouglas666 that the games not good :D bugs and glitches will be fixed eventually l, the core has to be solid
"I assume British accents"
*Plays most American sounding guy of all time*
It's almost like there's more than one accent in the game.
@@Gggmanlives I dunno every voice so far has been American or an American doing the worst Russian accent they can manage. At any rate switching to Ukrainian is the exact correct advice anyway lol.
@Gggmanlives You touched on quite literally why there are more accents here tho.
@@Gggmanlivesliterally didn’t hear one British accent in this video
@@Gggmanlives☝️🤓
Moonlight artifact was nerfed way before stalker 2, even in clear sky it no longer gave you stamina, but just a lot of radiation and telepathy +2
Rip glorious stamina moonlight, behold telepathy and electric resistance wannabees
Don't upset the circle jerk 😂
-SkillUp said its beyond busted.
-ACG said he had a ton of fun even bugged.
Tie breaking vote: G-Man.
Drewski loves it beside the lacking A.I life compared to Stalker 1, which hopefully will get fixed or modded.
Splattercat also liked it.
But as always never buy any game on day 1 nowdays.
@@henriklarssen1331Ya Ive taken a more wait for a few patches approach to new games the last few years. But as a console player, as long as it doesn’t play like a 20fps flip book then I will be playing immediately.
It's a new vegas situation I'm calling it now. Busted at launch, masterpiece with a cult following afterwards just watch.
I couldn't take Skillup review seriously when he started complaining about encumberance while lugging around with half the USSR's AK-47s.
@@leobustos740 Kinda like cyberpunk lol. As long as the core elements are good I'm fine with technical issues and bugs, those can be fixed easily, a bad game cannot though.
That artifact hunt rant sounds like if you actully hadn't played all the STALKER games tbh, bc in every game they change what the artifacts do and every single one gives radiation that you have to offset with another artifact
Literally over half the artifacts in SoC don't give off radiation
@@xnour2 And you can find the kolobok in agroprom underground that gives the best radiation protection so you can equip 4 artifacts without having the worry of radiation
I waited for 17 long years. No bug will stop me from playing this, IDGAF.
Same here!
Like 3 years ago i replayed the old games.
Im hyped!!!
Download is going right now
Nice hopium. It won’t get any better with updates.
@JohnJoatan2 pal you have a misconception of the word "IDGAF"
@@potatohead5986 no he’s using the acronym correctly here
You people are starting to sound like Star Wars fans.
TL;DR Fans of oldschool Stalker will LOVE IT. Everyone else, same as before
as it should be
Wouldn't have it any other way.
Which is most likely why they took WelfarePass pennies instead of actually forcing Xbots to actually purchase the game.
@@lutherheggs451Pony spotted.
@@lutherheggs451your comment is written in a way that tells me you’re chronically online
I'm a huge Stalker fan. But this, still needs time in the oven.
- No Alife AI, Enemies just spawn 5m away from me. The world does not really feel alive and everyone is mostly there because of you.
- AlIfe was a huge deal for Stalker, it is really what made this game - Enemies organically living and fighting.
- Bullet Sponge Mutants and Enemies, It's just no fun especially early game, when a Flesh takes a magazine of an ak, or 3 hits of a shotgun
- Fighting with a double Barrel and an MP5 against a Bloodsucker is atrocious.
- Thanks to the approach to the AI and encounters, the world feels barren and often you just run through empty fields.
I really love Stalker but the current game feels like Fallout. I hope it will get better, or the modders will "fix" it.
exactly.
Lol enemies spawn in 5m. Due to your psi health. Didn't you wonder why they disappear after death?
@ No it‘s not the psi Health. It‘s literally the spawning/encounter System. Theo do not disappear after Death. I am Talking about regular enemies.
Hey, i found out that spawn distance is based on your render distance; you might want to give that a try. They spawn way further away and i got to use (and need) a scoped gun for once.
@@alejochol9397 Thanks for the heads up. My render distance is farthest, the point I was getting to though, was that this is not Alife.
What i can see from reviews that lot of people don’t understand concept of game. For example lot of people are saying that artefacts are useless and at the same time there is theese complaints that weapon upgrades or repair coast lot of money….and there is a thing…you go after artefacts to sell them and buy things what you need, including upgrades and repairs. It was like that in old stalker games. You still can use artefacts on yourself but that is second thing, you do that when find artefacts whats fits well together. It is not just a regular shooter…
Lol everything he complained about, the healing, fixing equipment, selling things, artifacts, enemy AI, etc. Is all how the other games are, and it's what people were hoping for so I see it as an absolute win.
Braindead take
@@rubber924 so dumb down AI is what people were looking for? You guys really can’t be that pathetic with these excuses
@@rubber924 old games didn't have respawning artifacts, if you sold one - it's gone.
Ai is serious sam levels of stupid.
Animations are bad.
Kekw.
@@guts2787Wasn't artifact spawns literally changed in Clear Sky and Call of Pripyat?
A. going to wait until a lot of the performance issues are patched
B. going to wait also until there is a solid modding community, which there will be, the original had a huge modding scene.
The performance issues have been so mild I was blown away that there are so many people complaining on the internet. This isn't Cyberpunk 2077 launch. It's way better and even better than Cyberpunk was a year after its launch.
For context I'm running the game on medium with an i5, 16Gb ram, and a 3060.
@@Wintercidecyberpunk was a whole other story with how bad that game launched. Honestly in a league of its own.
So you're waiting for it to NOT be broken
I guess people really liked their modded games like Anomaly huh.. though Gamma is a bit too tactical for me, but its great.
@@assaulthetz I did a custom setup using a lot of what GAMMA has but toned down closer to the original Stalker gameplay. It plays and looks great and is a lot of fun.
"i get this is similar to what stalker is"
*proceeds to cry about stalker 2 being like stalker*
It's called a review.
@@Gggmanlives yet you completely forget to talk about the fact that the developers of the game are living under russian fire...
@@6033Kainbrother he mentions it in the review. Please tell me you are rage baiting.
@@ASmileADay379a lot of these mouth breathers didn’t even watch the review. Keep exposing themselves for this broken ass game
@@6033Kain no they dont, I dont remember Prague is in Ukraine? Do they coding with 1 hand and shooting AK with another? Doubt that. Ive seen dozens of this emotional manipulation/guilty tripping argument. F off.
Being an incredible, unique, immersive, but very broken experience is just what STALKER does. I'm stoked for this one!
Cool to lay down. It's been YEARS. Push the date back, stop releasing broken shit
how can it be immersive if the AI is as stupid as a rock
I bet you didn't even buy
@@VampiricNightMachineyou just pretend like the Zone is making them that way! Immersion!
Why does this read like sarcasm?
You are aware they aren't using the Slavjunk X-Ray engine to run this but instead is using the uber modern UE5?
To the surprise of absolutely no STALKER fans.
Its Anomaly with a 4K texture pack and Reshade and a Story Mode. It really offers nothing new except that.
Its also not running in the clunky Eurojank X-Ray engine that needs the soul of a Dev to start up but instead is using the super modern UE5.
@@pilotmanpaul and compared to anomally.... Stalker 2 is shit
@@fugjewtube1822 anomaly is garbage, go play tarkov instead
@@pilotmanpaulLmao. Anomaly looks like shit, look at the static objects, they're low poly af
@@pilotmanpaul if what you wanted was anomaly 2 than yes, you will be very dissapointed
devs said multiple times they are NOT making anomaly 2
Been playing Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl for a few hours, and it’s incredible. The story hooks you, the Zone is hauntingly atmospheric, and the gunfights are intense. No bugs so far, just pure immersion. Huge respect to Ukrainian studio GSC Game World for delivering this masterpiece under such tough circumstances. A must-play!
I second this. Played for 17 hours so far and I'm hooked. Loving the grind and I have only noticed a few bugs. Nothing game breaking. The game is difficult but the payoff feels great when finding that new armor or weapon. For what it is worth I am playing on PC also.
if you run into bugs just remember, its part of the immersion and you just found an anomaly, in stalker there aint no bugs but just anomalies
In what other "difficult circumstances"?
Old Stalker games: I hope i don't run into more gunfights
Stalker 2: How long do i have to run just to get into more gunfights
These new people man, SMH. They bought the hype yet never bothered to play the original. The "bad" parts is what makes it good.
@@almostontimehero5415 I was just being sarcastic dude.
@@almostontimehero5415 What do you mean "These new people" brother if I have to run 2 hours just to get into a shitty ass gunfight than the game isn't good.
@@almostontimehero5415 this
How is a game being shitty a good thing this community is disgusting mediocrity is a cancer upon this Earth that needs to be snubbed out
Ok most important question: Is cheeky breeky in the game???
Da
Iv damke
Amen
no, head of studio came out and said in Russian , that there will be no Russian voice over , only Ukranian. ( head of the stuidio doesnt speak Ukranian ) . So no Чики брики
@@ivanmonahhov2314 I am gutted
There are definitely too many bloodsuckers, and they're too tanky. Way too many dogs too, I mean holy shit. Why am I fighting 10+ dogs every time I run into them. And the fact that there's no mutant loot means you gain absolutely nothing from fighting them.
Yeah beside wasting a bunch of ammo and healing kits
This reminds me of OG Stalker, Shadow of Chernobyl. Now I want to buy it because of this. It isn't about the efficiency about the game, its about the experience... and you'd die a lot in the Zone.
Welcome to Stalker
@@assaulthetzAnomaly shit on this
There are a lot of them, but the section he complained about them in particular is one where you don't even have to fight the bloodsuckers nor are you expected to. You can stealth past them there. Dying to 4 or 5 bloodsuckers should be enough to tell the player that they're doing something wrong. There's a lot of things like that people are getting tripped up on and then blaming the game for.
For everyone playing this game ukraine dub and english text made the game so much more immersive and feel like a stalker game i reccomend everyone do it this way
Yea, I honestly dont know why they even bothered to dub the game in any other language.
ukraine dub makes the game less immersive since people in ukraine hardly speak ukrainian dialect except for those in the far west of the country
@@MrJekken what shit you just said
@@MrJekkenwtf are you talking about
Very "immersive" since old Stalker was in Russian and at least 65% of Ukrainians speaks Russian. :)
Chernobylite : Wife is missing and won't stop haunting my dreams.
Metro Exodus : Wife won't shut up about the world outside the bunker.
STALKER 2 : That damn Artifact scorched my apartment !! The Zone owes me a new apartment now !!
In metro exodus your charter is the one who wants to see the outside world and your wife does not want too, then she gets sick trying to find a new bunker lol
It seems liek they completely removed A-life and all the NPCS are now stationarry and will only activate their AI when player gets near them wow that is dogsh*t
Oblivion radiant ai moment it seems
Big part of the Stalker games was the different factions fighting together in what felt like a living world that you are a part of, not the center of. Big disappointment for sure.
@@zackhawn5944went from a-life to a-lifeless
actual only real criticism of the game.
officially there is A-life 2
Man. I suddenly stopped playing this game one day, similar to how I once froze up on a jobsite and quit right then and there. Just put my tools down, took my hat off, and Charlie-Brown-walked pathetically to my car, never to return to that place. The sequence around 19:45 game me great comfort.
The agony.
Homie is showing the new LG monitor but all i can see is Shodan on that CPU cooler looking at my soul and now i completly forgot why i was here in the first place and i'm brownsing the net to find one for myself.
The game is not for everyone and Its a 2007 game in a 2024 shell, so basically GSC have nailed it.
Saying like it's a bad thing. 2007 is the year we got so many GOAT games. Finally immersive shooter with realistic visuals and minimalistic hud.
@@tomasjanak4113 'so basically GSC have nailed it' doesn't make it sound like a bad thing.
@@tomasjanak4113 looks like a Fallout mod to me. They even have the compass at the top that tells you where to go lmao.
@@GangsterFrankensteinComputer the original trilogy, instead of having a compass, has... a minimap with an arrow that tells you where to go. What's the difference?
@@tomasjanak4113 When I said they have nailed it I meant that's a good thing. That term as far as I know is a phrase meaning a good job, well it is in my country.
Man, this video made me realise how good Crysis 3 looks.
Once you've seen a forest irl they literally do all look the same as well.
Stalker has always been a pain in the ass to get into. But totally worth it.
Having to walk everywhere on a massive map like this would be more enjoyable if they had more npcs and better A-life.
janky ragdolls and goofy pathfinding just make it all the more appealing to stalker vets ngl
Exactly what i want from it, every game is the same now and it’s the goofy nostalgic feel I want. Bugs? These are simply anomalies
Yup. These are positives. Really.
Keep sniffing that copium. I bet you guys loved cyberpunk when it first released
@@XmarcX92 cyberpunk was an unplayable mess made by AAA developers, whereas stalker is completely playable with maybe a Ragdoll or two launching or bot getting confused (which is fun if u know what that is), no game breaking bugs that soft lock me or ruin it so what’s the problem?
Go sniff your Cheeto dust u grease warrior, bet you role play military games or gta with 100% seriousness cuz it makes you feel like the man, why try bully ppl u don’t know? it’s honestly just sad bro, get help
Damn It sucks I had waste a few mins and write all this for some crusty c@m sock who’s just looking for an argument, I need a shower now I’m feeling greasyyyy 😂 so cringy
nah ragdolls are awesome, they feel heavy and verstaile in reactions - and feel not like an empty image - the way it should be and th way most games don't have. All in great amosphere
1:59 thats an anomaly
i was expecting to see a funny bug instead nah dude it for real is just an anomaly lol.
It's the Zone, everything is just an anomaly.
gman: talks like he’s a stalker vet
also gman: whines about bleeding, carryweight, and item condition
and omg the sh*t take on preferring loading screens over traversal 😭 my guy you are definitely not a part of the core fanbase your opinions are dog water
I never said I was a STALKER vet.
Maybe the real artifact was the British we meet along the way
Fr
What the fuck are a mass of my countrymen doing in the zone?!
Colonising it??
I mean this sounds like PEAK voice acting compared to "Chernobylite"
Honestly doesnt sound that much different than chernobylite. The russian voice acting in that game was pretty good though.
Chernobylite has suchhhhhh cringy voice acting. The game is pretty in terms of graphics but just feels very undercooked overall. Some of the lines from this video did sound a bit familiar to Chernobylite though…
@@emilv22 English isn't everyone's native language, get over it.
a lot of these complaints unfortunately boil down to "skill issue"
The smartest thing said in 2025...
“The good, bad & ugly”
Proceeds to just only speak on “The Bad, Ugly, Why I’m bad, Why my gameplay reviews are ugly, More of that, less of the good, lesser than that, this is bad… I’m negative, that’s worse, more bad reviews… maybe I’ll say something good around the corner… nope, more poor takes…”
I don't know..the first Stalker SoC just feels better in so many ways (at least to me) - like the raw sounds, gameplay, overall atmosphere and so on. This definitely needs some polishing, or mods.
Sadly they used Unreal Engine which kills every game's aesthetic nowadays. Every realistic graphics game looks the same which is sad because not a lot of games held a candle to Stalker's atmosphere.
@@inoodlesi4459honestly its not even that good looking for unreal engine 5. Silent hill 2 remake however looked fantastic most of the time, even on epic it looks just bland with no real dynamics. And the performance is also alil wonky on my 3070 no matter what settings I play in it goes from a nice 60fps to 45fps at times. A 3070 ain't exactly the best gpu but its also not bad either, I expected at least a solid 60fps or more on high and this game is in need of a patch ASAP.
@@annielittlee9811 2 words.
Unreal Engine
@@inoodlesi4459 Should've used the CryEngine instead.
7:25 voice crack
Got emm
Shhhied missions
Pack it up fellas, whole channel is done.
Looking forward to playing this game, but the amount of people excusing bugs and shitty launches is why we get crappy game launches. "Oh the previous ones were buggy too!" Okay cool, they haven't improved I guess.
Whatever I’d rather bugs than something boring and soulless like Bethesda’s latest. Could easily say people like you are why we get pretty looking vanilla snorefests like Dragon Age Veilguard.
Pretty sure it is possible to get fun and engaging games that aren't a broken POS dude, but be butthurt someone wants something better I guess?
@@ZSTE you’re the one butthurt I’ll happily ignore those games and play this
Don't forget they lost a lot of their staff to the war so polishing was harder. They will surely be patching the game too, and using Unreal engine will make it easier for the community to fix things as well.
@@mikzin630 For sure, development hell sums it up pretty well to say the least, and I know they'll fix it too as the real only issues are bugs and not gameplay. Still wish they delayed it once again or had a beta or something to make the launch better.
The AI is the perfect point for the "games are evolving, just backwards" argument.
And I understand the AI was bad in the original games, but you know what I mean.
Stalker AI was never particularly good in combat either.
You thinkin about the modded stalker AI, not the og AI
Ive gotta say, one of the biggest problems ive noticed about stalker 2 is all the wasted space. The original games made the most of the the limited map sizes they could work with, and many areas were packed to the brim with points of interest, whether its a factory or a small stalker camp with a fire and a couple snacks sitting in a box. Stalker 2 on the other hand has so many spots that feel like theyd have something but dont. In one of the early missions i was in an underground area and there were some boxes stacked up leading to a platform, i went up expecting a stash or a medbox or something, but nope it was a dead end. They made a space and even set up objects to allow you to get there but then made it so there was 0 real reason to do so.
5:40 if there are artifacts about, of couse there will be british people in the zone.... what do you mean
Yep, an IRL zone would be crawling with ex SAS mercs looking to get paid to keep that bloodlust legal
so people turn the english dub and act surprised it sounds like actual english and not the stereotypical slavic strong man?
That wasn't "British" that was an American/Eastern European accent... he was talking about the fact they're apeaking English at all not the accents, although if they had an English accent rather than American he'd probably be more okay with it.
I absolutely hate how there's a cloud of bright red blood when you shoot an enemy, and it stays in the air for a second or two. It's so unrealistic and just stupid because that's not how bullets work. Blood should spray out of exit wounds, not where the bullet actually hits.
@@marfg12345 Overal it looks a lot more cartoony then the original games.
I was excited when Stalker 2 was announced but as soon as I saw this footage that and a lot of the gameplay seems to be copy pasted to stretch out the length m I'm not that interested anymore.
Definitely not worth a full price.
blood clouds/mists are realistic, but mostly when explosives are used, not just the usual bullets.
@@tomclanysbut its so bright makes it so cartoony. Its like playing cheap FPS game.
@@kevinfromsales9445 It reminds me of Dying Light 2. Gritty and realistic E3 gameplay trailers, but the finished game looks more like Far Cry 3 with zombies.
@@Emays24 tbf tho the og trilogy did really being to lean hard into the brown era of games
19:35 I would like to mention that it IS possible to sneak past them. They are sleeping, only 1 around them is awake and walking around…
That's what I did after they killed me for the 4th or 5th time
Just the quest complete tone alone is music to my ears
i love how the game is supposed to be realistic is this guy is really yapping about how a couple gun shots shouldn't hurt you as much.
True, ive seen a lot of videos of this guy that i liked, but this one missed the mark by a mile.
Contradictory points, issues that can be attributed literally to “skill issue”, excessive complaining about issues that aren’t really issues but core concepts of the game.
Terrible video.
I think they’ve made some changes. One specific one is that the dogs act more like the old games then they do in this footage. So obviously this isn’t on Gman. I’ve faced them like 5 times and every time they did the scrambling and hiding like they used to. It seemed natural and worked well. I can see why he criticized the way they all bum rushed in the version he played
The more game get release with Unreal Engine 5 ... the more I hate it. The sound staging feel cheap, the UI font and scaling is always the same it's so weird.
That's more to do with the devs than the engine. They can use any UI fonts and scaling they want, but they're copying Bethesda and Ubisoft lol.
This. Im done buying games that use this trash engine.
Sound is not handled by UE, its Wwise - separate middleware specifically for audio, can be integrated in any engine, i.e. Unity etc as well. But yes its also used in alsmot every AAA game nowadays.
@@defteame I think the sound in Stalker 2 is great, aside from the awful voice acting, but that's an acting issue.
All the common assets that Unreal uses sucks, every game looks exactly the same. Same shitty hair works with weird AI rendering artifacts, same environments, same stuttering and abysmal 1% fps. Bleh. Unreal is like a colouring in book; bespoke engines are like the Mona Lisa
if this game wont crash every 15min its already improvement compared with older games. God damn x-ray engine.
This guy gets it lol people crying about UE5 never experienced xray lol
UE 5, as realistic as it is, does not match the charm of good ol' Xray.
oh yeah, the x-ray engine was even more demanding for hardware than this game is right now, and even then just loved to crash every single damn hour or less.
Can confirm firsthand that the crying about performance issues is WAY overblown. It's very minor issues, no game breaking bugs for me so far, and the issues I have run into are completely unintrusive
I believe that the game works on amd GPUs better. Im having time to time stuttering on my RTX card, as well as my friend with another RTX card. My other friend on AMD tells the game works smoothly for him
Gman: Lauds games for having old school mechanics. Also Gman: hates on games for having old school mechanics. Never change my Aussie friend.
To be fair to him, it's why Bioshock works so well, and Atomic Heart doesn't. He has a point, albeit an obscure one.
@@Ramonatho Not always...
If you line up Gman's criticisms here, they don't make much sense in the context of the game. The things he highlights as negatives are game loops, and that's ignoring the fact that alternative/solution to alter the game loops are almost all in the game but are not mentioned here. If I took all of Gman's criticisms of S2 and corrected them the "problems" in game it would be a very bland, uninspired and odd game. Convenience and hand-holding in videogames is generally just boring because there is no challenge. On the other end of the spectrum, knit-picking how mechanics in S2 are not "realistic enough" or "immersion breaking" is just doing yourself a disservice because it contradicts the points about the outdated, hardcore game loops like stamina, weight management, bleeding etc. Well? Which is it? Do you want a hardcore military sim with all the pain mechanics or do you want the slime rancher game with no pain at all, for babies? Well, s2 is neither - it's a mil sim rpg more on the hard core spectrum, and it is it's own game, and that game is very good, in my opinion. Exactly what I was looking for in fact...even more than I'd hoped, as an old school fps fan myself.
All i am hearing is that its a stalker game
Honestly I wouldnt be shocked if some of these issue stem from them trying to at least make the game playable for modern audiences, but also probably a lack of being able to get proper QA.
EDIT: or also the fact its UE5, UE5 is kinda hot ass lmao
How shocking that they would try to appeal to a wider audience to actually sell the game, not just the handful of idiots who think they're all the devs need from a game franchise that EPICALLY BOMBED
@@lutherheggs451most modded game in existence, even new Vegas was said to be a terrible game when it first came out.
actually ue5 is very very good
you just have to understand what your doing with it
you can do quite alot and have it run fairly well to very well this seems like they really just had no experience with the engine and this is their first time using it
alot of devs are making ue5 look like shit because its so easy to use anyone can throw a game together but they dont put the effort in to smooth it out and go deep into it
it has the whole feature set an entire toolbox and a good base to stand on devs just cant fucking use it properly but indie devs have been kicking absolute ass with it lately
@@themetasora1331yeah that's the problem they are having, anomoly legit probablly out down loaded every single game they have ever made, new Vegas made a bunch of money all there old games didn't I legit only bought this cause ive played the shit out of anomoly and modpacks but never even went near the old games cause they just look trash to me, but I also wouldn't be surprised if I couldn't even run this with my 3060 and my i7 9700f, just downloading the game is making my pc slow
@@dd805100lmao, you'll be disappointed. This is for the OG enjoyers, not for western goobers like you
"It all looks like the same looking forest" Well yea thats what that area in Ukraine looks like lolz
Next gen, hardly any loading times replaced with 48 hours to download and instal followed by shader cache shiiiiiiiiiiiit
Unreal 5
Since it's a UE game just wait until the patches come. For every patch the game will have to rewrite that 160 GB game size every time regardless the size of the patch.
@@abstr4cted496 thats quite unreal...........high five
@@abstr4cted496what the sweeney??? why?
@@abstr4cted496Not necessarily.
It depends how the game files have been packed, it's just unfortunately common for devs to just have one giant .pak file instead of multiple smaller ones which causes the download issue.
Just want to thank you for putting timestamps as I do not really want to be spoiled on the story but I do care about your review
There is no story, silly😅
Unreal engine is one of the worst *game* engines of the modern age. Movies, animations? sure. but games are just same looking, same feeling, poorly running crap, and Stalker is a highlight of that.
I don't understand how we got from Crysis, and the insane boost in performance in the past 2 decades, only to end up with barely better looking games that have to render at a resolution for ants, then AI upscaled to render properly..
yep. every U5 engine game I have played has been a buggy mess that takes forever to load AND stutters like fuck. yet every other game engine has been fine
@@ryanwood6754yep.. doom is a great example. Beautiful looking game, runs perfectly with one 100 FPS at all times
It's not the engine, it's the team, and management
@@archiemisc and you base this on a dream you had?
The team clearly lacks the required skills to be at the top of the game and the management has a literal war to worry about. Are there faults there? Sure, even X-ray ran on vodka, hopes and dreams, but it's still UE that's to blame because it allowed for such bad practices in the first place. Every piece of crappy code that was ported over just got additional layers of abstraction and complexity to it.. If Epic didn't know it's engine is was crap there wouldn't be so much focus on upscaling, frame generation etc.
there's a lot of complaints here about features that are actually just mainstays of the series.
It's not 2007 anymore.
@@Gggmanlivesgreat, so you had 17 years to learn how radiation and artifacts work...
@@Gggmanlives I appreciate you being honest. Don’t let these mouth breathers tell you otherwise because no one should accept a half backed game when the predecessors were much better.
@@Gggmanliveswomp womp, 99% of this sounds like obnoxious knit picking and the rest of sounds like you want a brain dead looter shooter........shall i suggest fortnite to you?
@XmarcX92 i have no issue with his honesty, my issue lies in the fact that A.) You are led to the conclusion that game is half baked when the team literally went out to pripryat to recreate an entire city and B.) All he did was whine when he titled the video (the good, the bad and the ugly) only highlighting flaws in something expansive.
There is nothing wrong with pointing out issues that need attention but there comes a point where this guy is just another throwaway games journalist that only complains. They released a game despite some really harrowing odds.
14:50 corduroy arteries
The game was promised to be released in April 2022. When the military conflict began, the game should have been ready. And the development studio moved to another country in a few months. They have only two reasons why the game is so buggy. They lied about the readiness of the game and the fact that, according to the head of the studio, they are involved in the development of weapons for war.
I feel like the huge map is a bit lifeless without the random encounter.
Exactly nothing is going on.
Yup
There are random encounters, but its nothing like previous games, sadly. Instead they just spawn a random trio of baddies 40 feet away from you or a pack of dogs, or a trio of good guys to help fight in whatever encounter you're in, etc. etc.
I find it's got open world syndrome where everything only happens on the (?) and then sometimes nothing but loot there... and then not even good loot
2:00 :"The Zone contains potassium benzoate"
thats bad
Can i go now
literally just sounds like 30 minutes of complaining about STALKER for being STALKER
Dude the last game came out forever ago you honestly think there was no room for improvement? Fanboys man…
@jeremyterkelsen2518 there's improvement then there's making something that's not true to form
@@jeremyterkelsen2518 what would you improve ?
What game is better?
@ Idk maybe start with the massive amount of immersion breaking bugs and glitches? The performance? Are you serious rn? I can’t enjoy a game when everything good about it is ruined by massive technical problems that should’ve been fixed forever ago.
@@jeremyterkelsen2518 the dude in this video never even said the bugs were his biggest problem
i wasn't saying that the bugs make it stalker dude was complaining about the way the inventory and interfaces, the combat even, work
things like that and have been that way since the first game that make the game good
5:14 You’re highlighting a crucial point. As a Ukrainian, I feel that a significant part of the game’s perception comes from its voice acting, which loses its authenticity when adapted into other languages.
it's mainly how bad the voice direction is for english. Some sentences have pauses in the wrong spots or weird cadence. In Ukrainian it sounds like natural speech.
I'm always baffled how native english speakers cannot comprehend what "dubbing" is.
We are so spoiled that we don't seem to understand that sometimes English isn't going to be the primary language in a game. Non-English speakers constantly deal with poor dubs over to their native language, I think we should be able to handle it once in a while without crying about "terrible voice acting."
Why are people acting like these devs had to shoot rifles and also program at the same time? You realise they weren’t programming the game in a Warzone😊
Most of these dumbass shills really think that the devs programmed this game in a dark bunker in Kyiv, dodging bombs and bullets.
Yeah, it's like using C*vid as an excuse for making shitty games 4 years later.
They actually all got killed in the war, the game is being released by their loved ones as a tribute to their sacrifice and to help pay for the funeral cost.
@ literally
Well, Ukraine wanted to be separated from Russia for centuries and they chose to do it by becoming a part of west/europe. And because of their current underdog situation they get lots of symphaty and positive attention from west. Westernes on average a very arrogant and you can say everytnig as long as it don't challenge their worldview. And Ukranians abuse the fuck out of that pity system. I mean, if you can get your product to sell more by making puppy eyes then you must do that.
I genuinely despise unreal engine. I remember when it was new and cool and looked great. Stop using it all the time.
That’s what happens when the industry becomes a revolving door, can’t spend time training temp hires on a proprietary engine or else you get Halo Infinite.
It’s not even the engine that irks me as art direction and “look” isn’t dictated by an engine, it’s the monopoly that Epic will have if the industry keeps heading down this route.
I bet most developers would love a fanbase a fanbase this forgiving. Any other game would be torn to shreds by everyone, but nooooo, Stalker fans are here to save the day with “i AcTuALLy LiKe tHE bUgS”.
In all honesty, being 6 hours in and I have yet to experience game breaking bugs, I've only seen very small bugs, I dont know if I'm lucky or what but so far it is surprisingly stable and consistent
He probably played the press version a week or two beforehand. Since then, they got a few patches that overall smoothed out the experience. But there's still a long way to go.
@@aftertwentea yeah dont get me wrong there is plenty of room to enhance this game, but the reviews that claim the game is a buggy mess and should be avoided are, imo, simply untrue. 13 hours in game at this point, and the worst I've had are bugs like not being able to upgrade a weapon.
"My experience is YOUR experience"
@@ChosenChicken "I dont know if I'm lucky or what" then proceed to.... "the reviews that claim the game is a buggy mess and should be avoided are, imo, simply untrue", its other experience my guy, that means youre lucky.
That "let me sleep" cutaway was hilarious.
Journalist stashes are the gear given by ordering anything above regular edition. That's the reason they're so good
a lot of cope for this game. its not goty and its buggy as fuck. not saying its terrible as the bit i did manage to play was decent. but all these people acting like bugs are not a thing or are "ignorable" when they have literally been crashing peoples games including mine or so atrociously bad that shooting is made a chore because of the constant frame dips and texture pops is just serious cope.
Is it a bad game? no def not. Is it goty? fuck no not by any metric. is it a decent mid game that would please the old fans and maybe get some new ones? sure
What games are you playing to make this a mid game. I wonder
Just played for about 10 hours and the only bug I experienced was someone half glitching in the ground during dialogue.
You can fast travel with the guides at the various bases
I know.
The game was originally scheduled to come out in 2022 even before conflict started. They delayed it like 4 times and people still ate up the technical state with "haha well its Stalker its supposed to be like that", when the reviews for other games like this were scathing. It feels insane to see this. Game is fun but its not polished or optimized, and some of the gameplay elements have huge issues. And mods we dream about already are not even out, nor is there an official mod support.
I agree dude. If this was ANY other game people would be roasting it.
It's hard to roast it when we are having so much fun.
Good for you.
@@1GTX1 "Make everyone believe I'm having fun,Make everyone believe I'm having fun,Make everyone believe I'm having fun,Make everyone believe I'm having fun,Make everyone believe I'm having fun." 😂
@@blurred8343 Sorry to hear that you are not having fun.
Suddenly every fps youtuber uploads a stalker video
Apparently there was an embargo on review copies. So they all had their video ready to go at the appointed date.
@@SPTX. The embargo being last minute shows how devs themselves knew the game had issue, giving people less time to refund. Thankfully steam let me refund mine
cant wait to watch the casuals cry
Almost like it just came out... Weird...
@@MeadeJ67 and thats why everyone uploads like the same hour? Yeah ok
Artifacts are unsuable until you upgrade your armor to negate their radioactivity.
I had very good armour so no.
Like with the upgrade for the lead case on your belt to have a artifact be carried without any rads, and additional pouches to have anomaly’s that remove rads from other anomaly’s?
@@Gggmanlives You're wrong here. Mid to late game armor will have lead lined containers which will negate the radiation completely. Also, there are artefacts you can find in chemical anomalies that negate radiation effects completely. You did review the game, but you didn't do your due diligence in this mechanic. I'm sure you got to the point where you just wanted to be done with the game and didn't explore these mechanics further. It's fine to dislike the game for what it is. Maybe take into consideration that when you report these mechanics as being pointless, but they aren't, will ruffle feathers of fans. It also makes your review for this game less credible, especially since this video was ready to go on release day.
Bro, artifact hunting is the best way to get cash and upgrades dude. If it wasn't a challenge, what's the point? If it's useless but worth tons of cash, SELL IT.
But the development studio has been located in the Czech Republic since May 2022, and they were quietly developing in Ukraine until February 2022. What difficult conditions are we talking about in this video?
1. Covid, forced fwh can disrupt productivity. 2. Yes, but thery had to excute a quick, unplanned relocation of the entire team complete with economic and legal chellenges, surely to also disrupted productivity for several months.
@@vladimirrodionov5391 I agree, but I think they were planning on releasing the game in april 2022, I think they said it was ready.
It took them 2 years to finish a finished game even with all the complications?
@@iValeriiPandamic welcome to modern game development. Also the stalker development team has always been plauged by genuinely godawful leadership who incentivised personal profit and wealth over making a polished game. It's the whole reason the metro games even exist they are the og stalker devs who were forced out because they wanted better working conditions (they had to work without heating in the winter moths and deal with frequent power outages due to the studio being in a state of disrepair because the high ups kept gobbling up any profits )
Damn, stalker fans seems to have very low standards regarding the quality of their game 😅
Every complaint youve listed is things I love about stalker, and is pure skill issue
@@simulacra7885 didn’t know shitty AI and sound/graphical bugs were a skill issue. Keep drinking that copium bud
@@XmarcX92 Stalker 2 was always marketed as a stalker game, not the best game in the world. Look at Cyberpunk, how the devs absolutely overhyped it from the start, while it was in much worse state than Stalker now - and yes, I still played it through and I'm a Pole. The jank is on predictable levels for a first game of the studio, on a new engine, in more than 10 years.
@@tomclanys Then why not do the right thing and delay the game when it's ready to come instead of doing a review embargo 2hrs before the game release? Why do you people accept anticonsumer practices just because they made a few games you like 14 years ago?
@@XmarcX92 they're out of money, with the moving out of the country, c0vid and then there's war. So yeah, they cant delay it any further. The franchise was very niche, and this is the moment when your niche game went mainstream. Dont even try their old game you will absolutely hate it.
About the performance yeah i cant argue with that, but everything else is just the stalker experience from the old game.
@@KABLAMMATSI’m currently playing Stalker Anomaly Custom mod, feels like an actual sequel compared to whatever nonexistent AI game they released. Whats sadder are all the fanboys making excuse when modders have done it for free
There's so much copium when it comes to broken ass games. People need to respect themselves and demand better products.
These are gamers, it's literally impossible for most of these incels to function like rational people
Same.
@@ShirleyTimple No. those are casual Tourist. Gamers wouldn't accept this shit.
They're just trying to convince themselves they didn't pay hundred bucks for a game that's still in early access.
@@lienomzekon4763 looking back at CoD, BF, other mainstream AAA Games, nah its gamers, they cant help themselves and the main cause of why studios release half baked game , paywall, ridiculous prices, obnoxious preorder feature, etc. Its them that allows it, supply & demands concept. No demands, no broken game release, simple, gamers at fault.
Seeing as mod support was immediately mentioned as a big focus, I'm just excited to see where the community takes this game. If Anomaly is an indicator of how passionate the community can be, this game is going to be the basis for something incredibly special (not that it looks bad, mind you, it actually looks really good. But that's just where my mind goes)
Thanks for being awesome as always GmanLives ❤😊
When the hell in the old games where you getting into combat every few minutes?? I'm at Call of Prikyat and combat only POSSIBLY happens when you reach a mission location and in the middle of the objective.
@ 19:50 theres a really good strat for this, its called Hodor doorway. The first doorway before the double door one and with a pump shotgun with slugs is best.
What is really putting me off the game, is the grenade spam! Like, even the shittiest bandits have grenades without limit, and they just keep lobbing them... hope it gets fixed soon.
It probably won’t, it’s like that in every stalker game, just be happy that at least in this game you only get one enemy throwing a nade at a time
@@lecheifton1237 well in Clear Sky the grenade spam was crazy
it actually sounds like they're taking some stuff from Tarkov that everyone hates and cranking it up to 11. yeesh
@@weeklyfont Sounds more like Anomaly to me, which is either good or bad depending on who you ask
I have absolutely no idea what you're claiming they've taken from Tarkov. The game plays nothing like Tarkov and shares very little in common. It plays like a Stalker game. It's near identical to the originals in its mechanics. Combat, economy, progression, all of it is the same as it has ever been.
As a new fan, personally, this game is what he said:
Fun, depressing, but beautiful. There is a bit of jank, but on my playthrough so far, I've had almost NONE.
It will vary from person to person.
Modders added ledge grab to Anomaly, so hopefully they can add it got his too.
Modders gave the game life. This is on life support the minute it was released