S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2: Heart of Chernobyl

Armenius said:
The game is running perfectly fine on my PC with Epic settings and DLSS Quality. I am not using frame generation. I am not experiencing any microstutter or load stutter whatsoever. It feels so smooth. No bugs or crashes in 4 hours. I honestly don't know what all those reviewers are talking about. This game is excellent. I didn't want to stop playing.
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the framerate starts tanking around bases/settlements (or areas with a lot of NPCs).
 
chockomonkey said:
From what I've read, they had played and prepared their review videos on an earlier release of the game. Then, when the embargo lifted they published their vids. Shortly after release GSC put out a massive patch which addressed most of the things. Kinda feel like they shot themselves in the foot with that gameplan = /
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if they knew the game had major issues pre-Day 1 patch it makes zero sense why they would allow reviewers to post their reviews prior...I'm waiting to see what Digital Foundry has to say as they are not in a hurry to post their reviews on Day 1 and usually wait for any post-release major patches to drop before posting their full performance reviews
 
why is Chernobyl spelled as 'Chornobyl' in the title of the game?...if Chornobyl is the local Ukranian spelling than why isn't the English spelling the same?...seems like a minor thing
 
polonyc2 said:
why is Chernobyl spelled as 'Chornobyl' in the title of the game?...if Chornobyl is the local Ukranian spelling than why isn't the English spelling the same?...seems like a minor thing
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Because in ukranja cyrillic its really more like Chore no byl

Russian is Cher no byl

Or close to that
 
Armenius said:
The game is running perfectly fine on my PC with Epic settings and DLSS Quality. I am not using frame generation. I am not experiencing any microstutter or load stutter whatsoever. It feels so smooth. No bugs or crashes in 4 hours. I honestly don't know what all those reviewers are talking about. This game is excellent. I didn't want to stop playing.
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Seems like plenty of Steam reviews cite performance issues. So it isn't just major reviewers. I wonder if the day 1 patch helped, and they somehow did not get it, and if they did not upgrade drivers. Though people point to other issues, even in this thread. Hopefully most of the performance complaints were fixed in the drivers/patch.

polonyc2 said:
why is Chernobyl spelled as 'Chornobyl' in the title of the game?...if Chornobyl is the local Ukranian spelling than why isn't the English spelling the same?...seems like a minor thing
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That is the Ukrainian spelling. They changed the title after Ukraine was invaded again in 2022.
 
Flogger23m said:
That is the Ukrainian spelling. They changed the title after Ukraine was invaded again in 2022.
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yup the original title was spelled as Chernobyl and only after the invasion did they change the spelling...so it's definitely either patriotic symbolism or a message
 
I picked it up today. It's going to take a little getting used to but my first impressions are positive. I'm playing with a 4090 and a 7950X3D with 64GB of RAM which is probably what the game was tested on during development but I have to say from my experience, the game runs really great. 110 to 120 FPS at 4K with max everything including HDR. I haven't gotten very far but I haven't had any problems with stutters or graphical glitches at all. I did the intro mission and then started exploring around a bit. I'm sure the game has bugs just like the first one did but I haven't noticed anything yet. I've only played about an 1.5 hours so we will see. I'm going to keep it because I see no reason not too. The game looks to have delivered a more modern stalker but it's going to take some time for me to get used to the controls and the way the gunplay works. Getting my ass handed to me on the hardest difficulty. Which is a good thing.
 
For the most part seems good.. from some YT peeps I follow talking about it... not perfect by far, many skyrim worthy graphical glitches, [edit: but some good Bethesda NPC vibes..] Apparently the radiation effect adding film grain type stuff to the screen is disliked and you can't disable... I had the busiest day, no way I can take time off until next week with my self review due Friday and lots of work to wrap up before Thanksgiving week. I think I am taking all M-T-W off next week though.. should get some solid gaming in. and maybe they'll have a patch out?

Watching some Doc Disrespect stream and DL'ing this beast now..
 
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Flogger23m said:
Seems like plenty of Steam reviews cite performance issues. So it isn't just major reviewers. I wonder if the day 1 patch helped, and they somehow did not get it, and if they did not upgrade drivers. Though people point to other issues, even in this thread. Hopefully most of the performance complaints were fixed in the drivers/patch.
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If you're willing to watch a 16m vid, this seems like a pretty good summary of events so far.


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIVTAsJtTe0

He goes over updates from the devs, various experiences that folks are having, and which reviewers may have played with/without the patch (to help explain their takes). Apparently the patch did help but there definitely are still bugs regardless, although some folks may not have experienced any so it may be something that varies per person/config. But I don't think the presence of bugs in this game would be surprising - in fact the opposite would be true - so it's not a slam. Just really hard to believe that everything is perfect for all on day one, but I'm impressed by what I'm seeing so far (especially knowing lots more is coming).
 
According to MSI after burner my system peaked at 20GB of system RAM usage and 16GB of video RAM usage over the two hours I've messed with it. Pretty demanding if you are pushing things to the max. I do have one bug that I can report. The audio that is coming through your communications device, sometimes loses it's effect and the person sounds like they are in the room with you talking to you. I'm sure it will be fixed in time. In fact, I fully expect a game like this to have problems. As long as they fix them like CD project red did with Cyberpunk, I'll be happy to own it.
 
I'm heading into the game. As soon as I booted it up , my fans started going crazy.
 
Woohoo! To my surprise it was done downloading on this crappy hotel internet by the time I got off work, took about 8 hours. Hope my laptop can get it going well enough, hopping in!
 
So the game runs well until you hit the first main base then performance tanks hard. Similar to what happened with Dragon's Dogma 2.
 
OK, so got fps meters going. Surprisingly, my little Ally X + 7900xt egpu is scoring 70-80 fps @ 4k all epic with AFMF and FSR.

I opted to reduce the Ally X's vram to 1, leaving 23 for the system and that helped. Going to see how bad the town tanks me.

Some of the mutants are jerkies.
 
I have everything on epic, dlls3 enabled, 4k.. HDR... it looks great, plays great... happy so far.

def has a new vegas meets oblivion vibe so far.. although the flashlight access tab + e is totally weird.
 
For all the complaints about performance floating around, everyone here seems to think it runs pretty ok, it seems...
 
revenant said:
I have everything on epic, dlls3 enabled, 4k.. HDR... it looks great, plays great... happy so far.

def has a new vegas meets oblivion vibe so far.. although the flashlight access tab + e is totally weird.
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Middle mouse click enables/disables the flashlight by default also.
 
Damn skill up is my most trusted reviewer If he says wait I would wait

I was actually looking forward to this game not many games get my attention.

I'll watch his review tomorrow.
 
xDiVolatilX said:
Damn skill up is my most trusted reviewer If he says wait I would wait

I was actually looking forward to this game not many games get my attention.

I'll watch his review tomorrow.
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He had a very frustrating experience and he shows the kind of bugs he's encountering
 
socK said:
For all the complaints about performance floating around, everyone here seems to think it runs pretty ok, it seems...
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It runs good enough for me on the old ass hardware in my sig. It's a single player game, not a multiplayer game. You don't need as much framerate although consistent framerate is definitely welcome.

Compared to Misery mod on Call of Pripyat, Stalker 2 runs like a bat out of hell. The original X-Ray engine was single threaded and did not scale well at all on modern hardware.
 
Maybe they just don't make pc gamers like they used to.

I don't expect anything to run right when it first comes out... but that's offset by a healthy dose of determined tinkering to make it work. Old-school pc gaming taught me a certain skillset... yadda yadda.
 
To be fair the original three games were riddled with bugs, of which were mostly patched.
Give it some time, and at a minimum at least we have something that will provide even more lore to that world! ☣️
 
w35t said:
Middle mouse click enables/disables the flashlight by default also.
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Ohhh... tyvm.. works like a charm.

didn't save my invert Y axis setting between game launches.. interesting.
 
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Red Falcon said:
To be fair the original three games were riddled with bugs, of which were mostly patched.
Give it some time, and at a minimum at least we have something that will provide even more lore to that world! ☣️
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The originals were also quirky which I found added to their charm. The jank seems missing from the new game. I guess that's to be expected. Still, I miss the jank. Nostalgia is a bitch sometimes.
 
I tried 4k with all epic settings except motion blur with DLSS Quality and FG and it maintains around 75fps.
I've had slow downs in random areas to about 20fps and just turned around and started in another direction and it shot back up to 75fps.

I've unloaded 3 AK 's and dropped them to have them follow me like balloons for about 2min than they just hit the ground.
I think I'm going back to 1440p since it plays a lot smoother than 4k besides the screen tearing I get, no VRR here.

The hit boxes are classic STALKER with great headshots but spray and pray for any other body part, pistols are my best friends.

The game looks old and new at the same time. Reminds me more of Metro Exodus than the last 3 Stalkers honestly.

I agree with others in it having a memory leak, especially respawning right after you die. I've had to shut it down twice and restart to get it back to normal.
 
Got the GoG version installing now, very nice to see a new AAA release on that platform. No DRM and no launcher requirement FTW! Can't wait to experience The Zone again, it's been awhile.

Of course I'll be doing testing with various HW configs. I've got the main gaming system (14700KF + 3090Ti + 7900XT), workstation (5950X + A380 - the latter is below min requirements and I'm curious if a $110 6GB Intel GPU can eke out a playable experience), and the benching rig (12900KS) with A770, 3070Ti, rx5700, 1080Ti, and rx580 at hand.

At what point did I go from playing games to just using them to test hardware :LOL:
 
Flogger23m said:
No Nanite is a huge disappointment. Would have been wonderful for this game.

Found one review where someone said they were struggling to get 60 frame rates at high settings with a RTX 4070 and 5700X3D. Will probably have for a few patches.
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Nanite is shader mesh, traditional LODs are going to be more performant than Nanite but not look as pleasing generally. If you think performance was bad without it, I have bad news. Eventually stuff like this will be industry standard and cut down on artist time, but we're not there yet.
 
NattyKathy said:
Got the GoG version installing now, very nice to see a new AAA release on that platform. No DRM and no launcher requirement FTW! Can't wait to experience The Zone again, it's been awhile.

Of course I'll be doing testing with various HW configs. I've got the main gaming system (14700KF + 3090Ti + 7900XT), workstation (5950X + A380 - the latter is below min requirements and I'm curious if a $110 6GB Intel GPU can eke out a playable experience), and the benching rig (12900KS) with A770, 3070Ti, rx5700, 1080Ti, and rx580 at hand.

At what point did I go from playing games to just using them to test hardware :LOL:
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Honestly, might be the most fun part if I had the gear.
 
Initially I was dissapointed in the performance on my 4090, but after changing frame generation from ON to Auto things have smoothed out, and I am getting about 100 FPS with everything on Epic except shaders and post processing set to high. Think I'm going to have some fun with this one as I loved the previous Stalker games. I've died 25 times already though exploring areas that I shouldn't have! Haha. So I'm having a hard time finding one of the stashes in the first zone after the prologue. It's called "Sheltered Stash" and has a note that it is "Reliable as a Swiss Watch". It's nearby a swamp with a bunch of radioactive vehicles on the map. I can seem to find any stash in the area though. Any find this?
 
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