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From: Rin Stowleigh <rstowleigh@x-nospam-x.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.action
Subject: Re: STALKER 2 is out
Date: Thu, 21 Nov 2024 21:36:30 -0500
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On Thu, 21 Nov 2024 14:40:14 +0000, Mr Rob
<noemailformethx@jsjsaiiowppw.com> wrote:

>On Thu, 21 Nov 2024 09:01:11 +0000, JAB <noway@nochance.com> wrote:
>
>
>
>>It seems a bit of a mixed experience so far from the reviews and a day 
>>one patch. I'm going to wait a bit for everything to settle down and 
>>even then my poor little budget PC is probably going to struggle. Then 
>>again that's what the Steam refund option is for.
>
>At least one Youtube review complains that the game is too long
>(approx. 30 hours)
>
>I well remember threads in this group bemoaning how short games had
>become. When RTCW was first released some posters lamented that it was
>'only 12 hours long'.
>
>The best Steam review in my opinion is here
>https://steamcommunity.com/id/reddlyb/recommended/1643320/
>
>It's a pure STALKER game. If you enjoyed vanilla Shadow Of Chernobyl
>then you will probably enjoy STALKER 2

I've only had time for maybe an hour with it (hopefully I'll have more
time with it this weekend), but I already like it... the immersion
alone is worth it and I can tell I will get some hours out of it.

However..and this is a big however...I'm breaking my multi-year streak
of not buying single-player games upon release.  The reason is I just
bought a new high-end rig, which is my first new personal desktop PC
(for my own use not including girlfriend or work related expense)
since 2018.  I bought the rig for reasons completely unrelated to
gaming as I'm doing more with video, music, and AI these days, but it
turns out this title landed right around the time the high-end rig buy
did, so of course I need to try it out the new shiny AAA titles. :)

I ran Stalker 2 on "Epic" graphic settings at 1080p, but in a few days
I'm going to switch that over to 1440p when the new monitor arrives,
which represents another shift for me, my gaming resolution is getting
upped.  Not so much because I find gaming at 1080p inadequate, I'm
just kind of tired of maintaining different setups for gaming and
productivity workload, so this is merging them into one... I need
1440p for everything but gaming, and in my increasing age and laziness
I'd rather do most of what I do on one PC rather than multiple.  I've
been on 1440p for work and 1080p for gaming for a long time now, and
its time the two shall merge.  Trend on Steam shows 1440p gaining a
lot of momentum as well, so I'm not going to be surprised if that
becomes the baseline in 5 years.

So Stalker2 is a good looking, fluid and immersive game for me, but
when I watched the review on Worth A Buy I was sort of appalled at the
visuals Mack was seeing on an i9-9990 with RTX 2080, it really looked
like a game from the mid 2000's by comparison to what I'm seeing...
and a bit flaky and jittery on top of it all..  I'm getting something
like 180fps average with everything maxed out, and as anyone who has
paid attention to my feedback here knows, low input latency and
overall fluidity of movement is an important aspect of immersion in an
FPS shooter for me.  The visuals are really nice on a PC that can
handle it, maybe not worth loading on a discount box.  So if anyone
with mid-range or lower PC specs are panning it in reviews then I do
get it, it doesn't seem well suited to older or lesser spec'd PCs.

Then there is the consideration about will it appeal to long-time fans
of the franchise, etc.. I don't give fuck all about any of that.  I
just think it feels like a breath of fresh air (so far at least) in
the sense that it seems to reach for what made old school FPS games
fun... avoiding the politics and DEI bullshit, avoiding the need to
endure endless cutscenes, avoiding lots of handholding, and so forth.