Video Gamers Podcast
[Deep Dive] S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl - Gaming Podcast
Mon, 09 Dec 2024
Gaming Hosts Ryan and Josh are back and we’ve entered the Zone as we’re deep diving the recent gaming release of Stalker 2! A video game we knew very little about but now have a LOT of thoughts on. It’s another awesome video game review episode from your favorite gaming podcast! Thanks to our MYTHIC Supporters: Redletter, Ol’ Jake and Disratory Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/ Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What are the expectations for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2?
to itself, like the world itself is absolutely beautiful and it's definitely updated from that, but the feel itself, it just gives you that old kind of gritty first person shooter from like the early 2000s is what it felt to me and I felt at home, honestly.
Du, das ist so lustig, dass du das sagst, weil als ich angefangen habe, habe ich, du weißt, die Leute sprachen über Performance-Issuen und oh Mann, die Spiele fliegen und es läuft nicht gut. Und das war legitimitär der erste Tag. Es kam wirklich nicht zu sehr positiven Reviews oder Antworten von Gamern.
Ich weiß, dass ich mich selbst den ersten Tag, an dem ich auf dem Platz saß, vier Mal fliegen und dann einfach abgab. Legitimativ habe ich gesagt, oh Mann, sag mir nicht, dass es eines dieser Spiele sein wird, in denen ich es nicht mehr spielen kann. Ich weiß nicht, was passiert ist. Übernachtlich kam ich zurück am nächsten Tag und dann, du weißt, es hat nicht mehr gebrochen.
Nun, es hat wieder gebrochen, aber nicht wie wiederholt. Du warst, du warst auf die Pferde, Alter. I don't know what I was doing. Um, I, I am with you when you mentioned half life. I do think that there's definitely some old school, like fallout vibes to this game as well with like the characters and the kind of how they're always like talking to you and they want to send you on this mission.
And it's like, you go fetch something or do something or, and then you come back and the guy's like, Oh, you're back. And just there, there was some kind of like fallout vibe to that. Um, Aber der beste Weg, um das zu beschreiben, ist genau das, was du gesagt hast. Es gibt mir dieses alte Gefühl eines Spiels, das nicht deine Hand hält, nicht wirklich sehr viel zu dir erklärt.
Halb die Zeit sterbst du und du weißt nicht mal, warum du gestorben bist, Mann. Ich kann dir nicht sagen, wie viele Male ich von etwas getroffen wurde. Und ich bin so, was schmerzt mich, Mann? You know, and I'll be honest, maybe it's because we're older gamers, but there was something so endearing about that to me that it just instantly kind of resonated.
And I know there's like a lot of people out there that were like, dude, this game's broken. It doesn't, I'm dying. I don't know why. I, you know, I don't know where to go. Am I supposed to explore all these places? Why is there not tutorials and all this stuff? And I'm just sitting here like, this is great. Yeah.
You mean I gotta actually talk to the other characters?
I gotta explore?
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Chapter 2: How does S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 compare to Half-Life?
Es ist lustig, wie viel Nostalgie dieses Spiel für mich zurückgebracht hat. Ich weiß nicht, vielleicht sind es nur die Gamers, die sie waren, als sie das Spiel entwickelt haben. Ich weiß es nicht. Es fühlt sich so an. Es ist Stalker. Es wird Jank haben. Das ist garantiert. Wenn du einen superpolischen Spiel suchst, suchst du in den falschen Ort, weil das das Stalker-Feeling ist. Ja.
Und ich konnte es nicht ganz verstehen an der Zeit. Und jetzt, dass wir es gespielt haben und ich es verstehe, ist es wie, das ist nur old school Jank. Wie jeder Spiel ging so. Ja. They kind of just went, the game works, ship it. And we got used to that kind of stuff because, and I'll be honest, man, like one of the things that I actually really enjoy was that there was zero handholding.
Yeah, I'm with you, man. And not to just keep piling on Dragon Age Veilguard, but coming from that game, where it was so dumbed down, and everything was just straight told to you, versus jumping into Stalker 2, where nothing is told to you, was actually kind of refreshing for me.
Dude, I'd get on SideQuest, not even realize I was on a SideQuest. I'm thinking I'm on the main objective, and then I'm doing all these things, and then I'm like, Oh wait, that's not even the main quest. And I had a blast. It was fun, but it wasn't even the main thing. So you have to really pay attention to exactly what you're doing. Like you said, there's no handholding.
If you want to streamline the campaign, you got to pay attention and know what you're doing.
Yeah, we'll get into some specific examples of like some some things that, you know, maybe were frustrating for somebody at first until they kind of figured it out to give a little bit better idea. But we'll get to that in a minute. But Ryan, we always start off our deep dives in a kind of are talking about a game. By mentioning the standout, what is the thing that stood out to you the most?
And we've had this kind of cover so many different things lately. We've had audio, graphics, gameplay, atmosphere, scale, that kind of stuff. So A lot of times you and I will kind of talk about this first and kind of come up with a consensus. Yeah. But we did not do that this time. Because I'm actually really curious what the standout thing for you was.
And so we intentionally did not talk about this. So I want to hear, like for you, what is the premier thing? Like what is the thing that stands out to you about this game?
So for me, I had two things that stood out above kind of the rest on the game that you experienced. One was the gameplay itself. The gunplay and the overall just movement through the world and how you experience the world, I thought was really neat. I thought it was done well.
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Chapter 3: What are the standout features of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2?
Ich denke nicht, dass sie so viel Zeit dazu verwendet haben, wie sie es wahrscheinlich haben sollten. Es gab ein paar Probleme. Modders mussten etwas ändern. Es gab ein paar Dinge, die fixiert werden mussten. Aber im Allgemeinen verstehe ich total, wie du dich fühlst mit den flotten Kontrollen und bestimmten Dingen auf der Leistung.
Aber im Allgemeinen, wenn es um Crashs geht, hatte ich nur ein paar.
I will say, I had the crashes on the first day and I just gave up. I went to bed, I tried it the next day, I wasn't crashing. While I did have some performance issues, for the most part, this game actually ran pretty well for me. I expect, when I go into a big town with 30 NPCs and a bunch of buildings that you can actually go into and stuff like that, the frame rates are probably going to drop.
Why am I not running 80 frames, bro? I just don't... I get it. And you and I have very good PCs. I mean, I'd say almost top of the line PCs that we are running. And, you know, it's like the game... We just talked about it, man. It's that old school jank. Like, if you're playing this game... You're not really caring about a drop in frame rates or the occasional crash.
You know, this game has quick save and quick load. I love that, dude. I think the reason that we had quick save and quick load back in the day more often was because they knew that the game was janky and you just would quick save a lot of times. And if something bad happened or you crashed, you would just quick load it and you were right back to where you were.
So while I did experience performance issues and I can say, listen, Maus-Schwindigkeit, Alter, ich weiß nicht, wer da eigentlich überhaupt Maus-Schwindigkeit will. Das ist das schlimmste Setting, das ich je gehört habe in meinem Leben. Es ist im Grunde, für diejenigen, die es nicht wissen, es ist wie eine Software-Schwindigkeit deines Maus.
Und so ist es fast so, als würdest du überstehen oder auf alles übertreiben. Wenn du deinen Maus bewegen und stoppen, bist du gewohnt, dass der Maus-Kursor einfach zu einem toten Standstill schnappt. Und mit Maus-Schwindigkeit fliegt es das Ganze. It's the most annoying thing in the world. So I could care less about the crashes.
I could care less about the memory leaks because I just restart the game and that would fix that. The mouse acceleration was the one thing that drove me bananas, but there was a fix for it. And then honestly, for probably the next 15 hours of gameplay, I had like zero issues. So I don't know if the game just kind of had to load assets or get past a certain part or something.
I will say there was one area later on in the game and shout out to Jiggle Puff on this one because he said, hey, I don't want to spoil anything, but if you guys are crashing in the sewers, just turn your graphics down to low. And I remember I got to a spot where I kept crashing and then the light bulb went off and I was like, wait, I'm in some sewers. I wonder if this is what he was talking about.
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Chapter 4: What performance issues did players experience?
Es gibt die Möglichkeit, das zu tun, was cool ist. Ich mag die Möglichkeit, mich mit den Leuten zu verabschieden. Ich fühle mich mit diesen Leuten mehr als mit diesen Leuten. Oder diese Leute sind ein bisschen Idioten. Ich will mit diesen Leuten hier hin. Ich mag die Möglichkeit. Es war lustig, dass du sagst, dass es schwierig war, zu folgen. Denn am Anfang...
I'm going into that first town and I didn't realize, I'm like, I didn't realize I was going to the first town. So I'm sneaking. I got a silencer pistol and I'm trying to take out other stalkers like, and they all like attacking me. And I'm like, why can't I beat all these guys? Why are there so many?
Dann habe ich gemerkt, dass ich meine Pistole weggezogen habe und ich dachte, oh, ich bin in der Stadt. Das ist, warum sie mich alle attackieren. Also bin ich so, warum funktioniert das nicht? Aber ja, also es ist, einige der Sachen sind ein bisschen schwierig zu folgen in der Anfang, wie wenn du herausfindest, wo du bist und was du tun sollst.
Und besonders wie uns, wir haben nicht in diesem Welt, wir wissen nicht über die Zone, du weißt. Also, äh, Ja, es ist eine ziemlich wilde Geschichte. Es ist ein bisschen schwer zu beurteilen, aber es ist definitiv in allen Arten von Verrücktheit.
Ja, ich meine, das, was mir stand, ist, dass du getötet wirst. Du suchst jemanden. Wenn du herausfindest, was ihm passiert ist, führst du dich zu dem Mann, der wusste, was ihm passiert ist. Und wenn du diesen Mann findest, will dieser Mann, dass du dir ein paar Kingpins auswählen kannst, um dir ein paar Informationen zu geben.
Und dann musst du dir die schwierige Wahl machen, ob ich Kingpin A auswähle, ob ich Kingpin B auswähle, oder ob ich einfach diesen Mann auf den Gesicht schiebe, hier und jetzt, was ich optiert habe, zu machen. You know, and that kind of stuff. So, you know, the story in this game is pretty massive. There is a very wide cast of characters.
We were talking to Jigglepuff again because he's 40 plus hours into this game. And it was funny because the other day he mentioned he was like, has anybody else made it this far? Because I just found out. Ich bin nur halb so weit. Und das ist, als mein Gehirn explodierte, weil ich dachte, du, das letzte Mal, als ich 80 Stunden in ein Spiel verwendet habe, war, glaube ich, The Witcher 3.
Das ist ein riesiges Spiel, aber das ist ehrlich gesagt das, was dieses Spiel ist. Es ist großartig. Du kannst absolut 80 Stunden in dieses Spiel verwendet haben und wahrscheinlich auch noch Dinge entdecken. So, in regards to the story, I'll say there is one there. I'm not sure I really cared about it or followed it very much.
It's just enough to kind of guide you through the world so again you can just experience this world that you're in and that they crafted for you and let the game play just kind of tell the stories that you need to be told. So, Alright, we're going to get into one more topic and we'll touch on that a little bit.
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Chapter 5: How does exploration work in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2?
Chapter 6: What gameplay mechanics define the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. experience?
Und das ist für mich ein bisschen negativ, weil es ist wie, ja, ich hätte nur ein paar Häuser besucht, aber es ist wie, es fühlt sich fast an wie eine Verantwortung, um Ja. Ja. Ja, sicher. Ja.
favorite thing i'm with you just the random things that happen in this game the finding pipes that i could run along and figuring out how to go up on this building finding an invisible poltergeist that absolutely was intended to be there and wasn't a bug in the game um coming across two different factions having an all-out war i mean how many times did you come across guys that were just having a gunfight where it was like six dudes on either side just lighting each other up you're like oh
Yeah, I would just sit there and watch it though. Or maybe try to sneak in and loot one of the corpses after they were dead. The world is alive. It's a janky life, but it's alive.
Did you do the one with Lex the Legend? Nein, ich erinnere mich nicht an Lex.
Das ist es.
Ich bin ziemlich sicher, dass es Lex war. Aber du gehst und manche Leute sagen, hey, komm her. Und du machst einfach eine dieser kleinen Side-Missionen. Sein Meister oder sein Lehrer hat ihm gesagt, dass es dieses Ding da ist. Wir können gehen und wir können ein Artifakt bekommen. Und dann sagt er, aber du kannst keine Essen haben.
He's like, I learned how to do scent control, but if you have food on you, you know, that's no bueno, you know, you gotta get rid of it. So I go, and there's a van, and I'm like, alright, and I just drop all my food. I have all this food there, and I just drop it all. I go, we kill a few things, and then the thing ends up not being up there, and I'm like, oh, you gotta be kidding me.
So I go back down, I collect my food, and then I walk over... You know, lo and behold, this is the little hideout with Mr. Lex. And he's just, he's swindling everybody, like acting like he's some big time stalker guy. And he's teaching them all and he's charging them money. I ended up killing them all. And then I got the PDAs and I got all their loot.
So it was way better than killing that one creature. But these are the weird, crazy experiences you run into. Just that, like you didn't even... And I'm sure there's a bunch that you did that I didn't do. And you didn't even run into this one. So that's what's crazy about the environment.
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