Hey!

Is anyone else excited about this release? It comes out today, in only a few hours. Previews have been mostly positive, and what gameplay has been shown looks very promising. The original, and its two additions, created an atmosphere I never experienced before in a shooter. The sense of peril, exploration, and having to scrounge and save resources for unexpected encounters was really something else.

Will this game jive with more modern gamers, used to simpler fare with lower difficulty and more hand-holding? Will the old fans return this time around and get the sequel? Thoughts on average score on MC?

Personally, I'm very much looking forward to it, but I have a few worries concerning performance. It looks like a juggernaut when it comes to system requirements, on higher settings at least. Most UE5 games have the same issue, it seems. As for Metascore, I'm guessing it will land somewhere in the 80-85 range, points deducted mainly for performance and slight lack of variation in enemies.

I do wonder what kind of demographic they'll manage to snag, and with the troubles the developers have been through, I hope they get decent sales. Could this be this year's sleeper hit? None of the previous games sold exceptionally well - they were more cult classics after the fact.

I hope to get around to playing a bit this weekend, maybe I'll throw in some screenshots as well. It's a real looker, according to most!

Open world exploration is one of my favorite things in gaming so I'm definitely keeping an eye out. What I've seen so far looks positive, especially the dynamic nature of the world where things can alter from one playthrough to the next.

Meta might be a bit low if the mechanics differ from the average shooter. As long as there aren't a lot of technical problems I think sales will be good on PC and it will have solid legs just from the STALKER name alone. Absolutely no idea how it will perform on consoles.

The environments looks very good, the weapon look nice, the NPCs look passable. I really want to see more combat against other humans. I'm hoping the survival elements aren't too intrusive or annoying. Radiation and hunger are fine as long as they aren't constantly pulling my attention away from the world.

Mod support is a BIG factor for me so I hope they deliver on that front. I'm thinking that the developers are going to put far more effort into supporting this game than most so I'm hopeful that most issues will be addressed even if everything doesn't go smoothly at first.

Going to wait for reviews from trusted sources and actual users but right now I'm really hopeful.

I haven't followed development of this one, but I really hope they went the route of retaining what made the original great, and not pandering to mass market.
STALKER, and even to higher degree Boiling Point before it, were one of the first in that elusive open world FPS-RPG hybrid genre.

The games foliage look like terrible, zi'd not be able to play this game as there is too much detail and it sickens me to look at in motion. I hate this new sharpened look, if that's the way video games visuals are going to go I'll have to give up on my favourite hobby cause in no world will I ever get used to the extremly sharpened look and over detail. As for the game itself, it looks very dated, might aswell be Metro Exodus 2.

I also hope it stays the course, STALKER became a cult hit due what it was, and from differentiating itself from the competition. No other FPS game has offered me the same mix of curiosity and dread as the original game did.

I already bought the game years ago to support the developer. It's not up for download/install yet. No countdown, last news was November 8th. You sure it's coming out today?

However a year ago I decided not to get a new Windows gaming laptop anymore so will see how it runs on an old 1060. My time and patience for games have also changed a lot since 2007. It's been 17 years! Survival games are not my favorite anymore so I'll see how it goes this time.


This is what it looked like in 2007, in 1280x1024.

The game has been in my top 5 most anticipated for a long time. Can’t believe the day is finally here!!!

No idea how accurate or useful this is, but...

...here are the launch times. I'm not informed on what S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 even is, though I did find this on Google.

edit: I have no idea why the image looks so awful Lol, so here's a link to where I found the image.

Odd, after I checked your link, now the image is sharp in the quote, still a fuzzy mess in your post. The internet is falling apart :p

Anyway 11 AM here Steam should add the download option I guess, less than 2 hours.

Ack 160 GB, that's not gonna fit on my old 256 SSD drive, got to clear up space on the 1Tb HDD. Damn that's gonna be a long download.

(Image turns fuzzy again after posting, wth)

Sitting 72 on metacritic so far -

https://www.metacritic.com/game/stalker-2-heart-of-chornobyl/