S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 (Stalker 2)

Awwww gawddddd. I had my fingers burned playing Cyberpunk at launch. It was still a good game, but it became a great game which I then couldn't be bothered to revisit.

I think I know the sensible thing to do here -_-

I mean his review even says for "FOR NOW".

Well, reports on Xbox are that the initial install is the 150GB, immediately followed by another 130GB patch.

Think I'll wait for something stable version wise before committing.

Off to a good start after installing. Something went wrong. Had to restart my Xbox.

Bloody hell they don’t give you much room to breath. Literally right in there and stuff jumping out at you.

Playing on rookie and the game wants you dead as fighting the monsters take some bullets

Had my arse handed to me a few times already (playing on the medium difficulty). Reckon I may dial it back for the enjoyment.

Looks quite nice - though I was surprised to see it specced the graphics at epic even with DLSS. 1440pUW with a 4070. Will see how the frame rate holds up.

Make a lot of manual saves as the game does not hold your hold even on easy, you die so much in the first section

Had a few slow downs. Kind of feels like the OG Stalker with nicer graphics really.

Haven’t experienced any issues so far. About an hour. Series X.

I am farkin loving it at the moment. That opener was eerie as heck but after recently dipping into old school stalker anomaly it felt good necking some vodka, equipping the scanner and shuffling through the goop for an anomaly.

That stupid beast handed my ass to me twice because I've got toggle crouch and hold to run. Anyways I got it the next go and completed the rest of the prologue.

The nosey gamer in me located and cleared out 2 safes before the final cutscene ... Not a major spoiler but it bit me in the ass afterwards

Now in the open world and have been given 2 quests to head somewhere but there on my PDA is a stash ... must loot cos I only have a pistol ..

I've pushed on and came across 3 bandits unloading on a building. They killed me twice so I thought it was a teaching moment, basically you don't always need to engage. Force is too great though, so I crawled up into the top of a shack opposite and snipes one in the head while the other creeped around goading me. Bang bang! Dead. Yes baby.

Loving it. It's hard as fuck and I love it

Booted it up, played for about 10 mins. Looks nice - getting about 80fps on Epic graphics settings - but the broken controller support means I actually can’t play it yet. I’m just not keyboard savvy enough anymore to manage combat when I need to do more than one thing at once.

Metro 2033 Redux has a new gameplay mode that makes it more action, closer to Last Light. I might have to look into that too, as I remember finding the original a bit too tight. I did enjoy Exodus, so maybe it's time to try the Redux games.

No idea if it's important for the sequel, but I'd suggest giving at least Call of Pripyat a look. It's more modern than the first game, a bit more approachable, and the main quest is better overall.

For atmosphere, I think Stalker 1 is still absolutely brilliant, but it can be unforgiving indeed, especially at the beginning. Although, if you play cautiously, planning routes and choosing your battles, you might find it's not really all that hard.