First 30 minutes impression from massive S.T.A.L.K.E.R fan

[Magpie]

I just finished SoC Vanilla and CoP Vanilla (just FoV fix for both) in the last four days in the lead-up to STALKER 2 release. I've finished them (and Anomaly) before but i wanted them fresh in my mind.

My first impressions are as follows;

#1 This game is unfinished.
It runs really badly and it's because there is a lot of work left to do that wasn't completed. There is a lack of occlusion rendering planes hand-placed throughout the levels so a lot of stuff you can't see is being rendered all the time and tanking performance. This is basic optimisation that occurs towards the end of development. I'm not sure they ever made it that far. You should not need to rely on DLSS/FSR and FrameGen to compensate for your unfinished game. This is like Alpha Escape From Tarkov circa 2017. Massive spikes from 100fps to 50fps and back are unacceptable especially on console where things need to be consistent. Microsoft will not be pleased.

#2 It's 'floaty'. It feels bad.
This one is kind of subjective, but then, why is there different mouse sensitivity values for each axis? WHO DOES THIS?! Do the developers even play FPS games? Not only does the game run terribly but it also FEELS bad. Everything is 'slow' and 'floaty' with terrible UI and first-person animations on everything. Running and jumping feels bad. The older stalker games are snappy and responsive in every way. When you press a button, instant feedback.

#3 keybinds
X is walk, not run? Why change it from the older games? You can't re-bind most keys? What even is lean? What a joke. Unfinished game for $90 with $100+ pre-order deluxe-smuluxe editions available.

#4 difficulty
I found six 100% durability rifles in the first 10 minutes on maximum difficulty

That's it! So far I am tempted to refund and I've been playing STALKER since 2007 when SoC came out and I got it for my birthday. Most people aren't going to hold it to the same kind of standards because they're not OG fans and don't care because it's the latest flavour of the month and they must CONSOOOM but for me, a true oldschool stalker fan this game seems... bad.

[Djura]

Originally posted by Paradoxicc70:

Don't worry the game resets your progress after the prologue. I had your same issues in my mind also.

But what is more concerning than that is that A-life is not in the game

It is in the game. Its simply not working properly, becuase its broken.

[The Chosen One]

Do you have Nvidia? Because AFAIK only Nvidia has problems with performance.

[Xedius]

Just the fact that it has mouse smoothing incorporated and the x and y sensitivity are not the same tells you this is a straight up port from the consoles.

Even Starfield with all its problems didn't have those issues because ID Software helped them with gameplay related to a FPS game while the team focused on xbox.

Here? all development feels like it was done on xbox and ported to PC. You just can't make a shooter and have those mouse issues. Even Ubisoft's FarCry doesn't have them.

[Set-115689]

Floaty can get fixed with settings. Loot drops can probably be modded if random.

In the starting area don't worry about all the stuff you pick up. Starting area was meant to be very generous. You'll figure it out.

[Kashra Fall]

You found 6 100% rifles in 10 minutes? Prologues are generally generous with their weapons lol. Once you get into the lesser zone, you get red/yellow durability weapons pretty much non stop, but there are some good 100% ones to find if you go to some stashes.

[Magpie]

Originally posted by Paradoxicc70:

Don't worry the game resets your progress after the prologue. I had your same issues in my mind also.

But what is more concerning than that is that A-life is not in the game

I'm browsing the forums and came across that thread, it seems A-Life is not in the game at all. You can see enemies spawning/despawning. Yeah... going to refund this. How disappointing. They lied to all of us.

[Otterking]

Don't worry, you lose all items you find in the prologue and start the real game with just a makarov like god intended.

[Magpie]

Originally posted by The Chosen One:

Do you have Nvidia? Because AFAIK only Nvidia has problems with performance.

7900xt, 32gb RAM, 5800x CPU on Linux. Game 'runs fine', doesn't crash, compiles shaders etc. It's just messy. Consistently. Frames spike up and down all over the place because the game is unfinished not because people have weak computers.

[karphead]

i'm an og fan and i've played about 6 hours so far, it is definitely a worthy contender in the series and has all of the feels as the rest.

there are already guides out there to help optimize the game. it ran like crap for me to begin with but I read up on some of the threads for tips and got it running fairly smoothly on high settings

floaty is subjective but this isn't mirrors edge and you weren't exactly graceful in any of the other games, it's always been a little clunky jumping

congrats on finding good ♥♥♥♥, i'm mostly finding broken garbage

[DRunkCoWBoy]

Originally posted by Paradoxicc70:

Don't worry the game resets your progress after the prologue. I had your same issues in my mind also.

But what is more concerning than that is that A-life is not in the game

Completely false, A-life 2.0 is very much in the game and have seen it create many different encounters. And dont understand why people keep complaining about performance, getting over 100 fps constantly with my 3080 and my 3 friends with 3080's are getting the same. Just more people that make a hobby out of review bombing great games and spreading lies. Get a life. OP clearly doesn't know what hes talking about either, it feels exactly like the old STALKERS which is why people are loving it.

[Kozzy]

30 mins isn't enough time to judge it. Once you get out into the open world after the prologue, play another 2-3 houss and then make your opinion, the game gets better 10 fold. Getting side quests, finding loot and new locations on the way to a side quest, so dang fun. Stalker is back and as good as its ever been.

But everything improved a TON after the first 40 mins once I got out of the prologue.

[(TTV)OnBrandRP]

1. We've all pretty much came to the conclusion that the game still needed around 6 months to be finished. Also no form of optimization is 'basic'. Optimization as a whole is a lot more than just removing polygons from models and objects, part of it is the scripting itself, which is primarily handled by the SSD, CPU and Ram, whilst optimizations for the graphics themselves are handled by the GPU. From what I can tell, the games biggest issue is that it forces raytracing to be turned on, and there is no option to turn it off. The game uses raytraced shadows, reflections and global illumination. I suggest turning all of those options to low until they add support to turn off RT or a mod is released that does a similar effect.

2. Different sensitivities per each axis is a very normal and modern feature of first person shooters. Some people enjoy having a quicker horizontal sensitivity but a slower vertical, so they don't aim up high if they play on a DPI higher than say, 800.

I don't really understand where you're saying the game speed itself feels slow, the running, walking, jogging and jumping all feel like STALKER to me, the only difference I found is the animations make the game feel more 'heavy'.

3. In the keybinds settings menu, click on 'keyboard settings' you can adjust every single keybind your liking, however I think they could of done a better job at providing the context menu to click on it.

4. You don't keep those guns, they're for the prologue only. Once you actually dive into the zone you start with a pistol, knife and bolts, if you talk to the right people you also get some medkits, ammo and water for free. The prologue experience takes around 30 minutes to complete. Once it's over, you can head straight to a firefight and grab some banged up SMG's and a Boomstick. The difficulty itself I can't really tell what actually changes (I play on Normal), what I can say is that once you unlock the open world itself.. it is not as easy as the prologue. That said, it is more casual oriented, you don't have to manually fill mags or anything. I imagine GSC World will eventually add a 'Ranger' equivalent difficulty that adds a bunch of hardcore/realistic features.

or just wait for mod tools to get released in a year or two and we'll eventually have Anomaly 2.

[Magpie]

You guys should probably go launch Shadow of Chernobyl, the original, and run around for 5 minutes before you shoot down my criticism so readily. When was the last time you actually played the OG Stalker games? This game 'feels' like crap at all times compared to those.

I would gladly relaunch SoC vanilla right now than continue this crap... I'm going to refund I am not playing past the prologue because 'it gets better'. Besides, I DOUBT IT. And yes there is no a-life it's just modern AAA A.I garbage like in any other FPS.

[Magpie]

Originally posted by Kozzy:

30 mins isn't enough time to judge it. Once you get out into the open world after the prologue, play another 2-3 houss and then make your opinion, the game gets better 10 fold. Getting side quests, finding loot and new locations on the way to a side quest, so dang fun. Stalker is back and as good as its ever been.

But everything improved a TON after the first 40 mins once I got out of the prologue.

TBH I could tell in the first 5 minutes something was horribly wrong. I watched the end credits for two of the three OG stalker games in the past four days, just look at my steam profile. I am comparing them directly. A game from 17 years ago feels better as an FPS from the get-go than this game that released in the past 24 hrs.

[Arbadacarba]

No Alife is what killed it for me, they even removed it from the store page