To each their own, I suppose. I love GOGs efforts, and I love the convenience of being able to purchase old games there and know they are pre-patched (sometimes with unofficial patches), made compatible with modern systems and play-ready. Their launcher/store is whatever, but I don’t think I’ve ran into any game where it’s required to run it to launch.

Bad customer service is unfortunate, however. I’ve never personally had to deal with them but that does suck.

And that’s very deliberate! There are a couple of key rolls very very early that have positive outcomes if you fail them. They’re supposed to teach the player that failure is okay. But it turns out many many people are too afraid of the dangerously red button and the low percentage number so they never even try in the first place, thus also missing the lesson.

Also that sequence you’re talking about is one of my favourites in the game, it’s so damn funny. Another classic failure is the ice-cop-hat-fuck-show.

It really is the best book I’ve ever played.

I actually think an argument could be made for Disco Elysium not being one of these games actually. I’ve seen people bounce off it because they went in with the wrong expectations. The game doesn’t really market itself correctly: it claims to be an isometric RPG and a detective game, but it could be argued the game is actually neither. Also lots of people miss out on a lot because they weren’t aware of the fail-forward design principle.

Might finally make me play it again, at least to fuck around with some new builds.

Dividing my time between playing STALKER 2 and modding it. There is a really great game underneath the surface - at least the potential of one - but it’s a shame it released in the state it did. The A-life offline simulation being turned off smells of console constraints and/or a forced release after they ran out of possibilities to delay further. I really hope they’ll be able to keep working on the game through patches because it has the potential to be truly fantastic.

Also still playing Deadlock, a game or two a day or so. It’s an often frustrating experience - as MOBAs tend to be - where matchmaking still has a huge impact on your fun, but the core gameplay is just so damn good. I just wish I was in a skill bracket where people are actually using mics and coordinating and communicating. Partly an EU problem though I’m sure.

A heathen I might be, but I still prefer BG2 over BG3. And Jon Irenicus might just be one of the best video game villains of all time.

No, but I would have if I had fewer hours played just to get a proper experience from the start and consequently less of an item stockpile etc. Grok’s less loot in stashes won’t apply retroactively for example.

They’re definitely not pushing the engine to its limits and it’s a shame. No Ray Reconstruction for example and no hardware ray tracing. I was wondering why shadows and reflections lacked clarity at first. This is apparently why.

It’s a weird one though because despite all the flaws I can’t stop playing the game. Maybe I just love STALKER that much. I also have a bunch of mods installed, granted.

I recommend going through what’s trending on Nexus and seeing what appeals to you. Apart from fixing the timescale I installed some rebalancing mods that make enemies less bullet spongy and combat more lethal, as well as a mod attempting to improve A-life and stealth. Also installed all of Grok’s mods. and this Medkit and Consumable rebalance.

As long as they’re not lying about the existence of A-life in the first place I’m hopeful. If the framework of it actually is there but not working I have hope they’ll fix it.

Otherwise yes, I’m still enjoying having more STALKER after all these years. I’ve installed maybe a dozen mods and am now having a lot of fun with the game, but even so there are a lot of things missing and/or lacking. Even stuff like factions. You can’t see the faction of corpses anymore when you loot them, and you can’t keep track of your relations in your PDA. Aren’t factions supposed to be important? Puzzling.

What makes the older STALKER games special is the way the zone lives its own life independent of the player. That’s what makes you feel small and insignificant, just wandering a hostile wasteland. As you’re heading to your mission you hear gunshots in the distance, NPC Stalkers are fighting bandits perhaps? As you head over you arrive as the fight is over and they’re looting the bodies, after which they start heading off towards the nearest encampment. Unscripted stuff like this is missing in the game right now.

I’m so glad you’re enjoying it! It’s a damn shame BG3 took the world by storm last year, as I felt AW2 truly deserved more awards, including Game of the Year. BG3 is good and all but at the end of the day it’s just a really well made RPG. AW2 is doing something bold and interesting with the video game medium in a way that deserves to be celebrated. It topped Jacob Geller’s yearly list for a reason, and I think he put it the best in his video:

“Is Alan Wake 2 the best game I’ve played this year? No. But it’s the most excited I’ve been to be playing a video game this year.”

Also it should have won the Game award for best soundtrack and I’ll hear no arguments.

The devs kinda have to put their money where their mouth is in terms of A-life. Most of the other issues are already being addressed via simple .cfg mods so they should be easily patched (though I have no idea how some of them ended up in the game, was it not QA tested at all?).

A-life is what makes the Zone feel alive in all the previous games. The devs have said it’s not working right, so now they actually have to prove that the framework is there at all and can be fixed.

I’m praying the successful sales gives the team the resources to fix the games many problems in coming patches. Unlike the author of this article I have a lot of issues with the current state of the game and find many design decisions to be not in the spirit of classic STALKER. Finally, the broken at best and absent at worst A-life (simulation of what NPCs and mutants are doing off screen for those unfamiliar) is a massive issue.

The bones of a great STALKER game are there, but it’s quite a ways away from it in its current state.

Mods are already out to fix it, but it’s not unlikely they tied a bunch of functions to timescale so that longer days screw up AI/Emissions/Quests etc.

The keybinds are absolutely atrocious and I was staggered that so many were unable to be re-bound. Quick Melee is “V” and you can’t change it??

The beefy mutants are absolutely a problem and made me actually switch from Veteran to Stalker difficulty simply because those bullet sponges are not fun gameplay. Otherwise in the long sequence of inane design decisions the absurdly fast timescale (24h in game in a single real life hour!!!) is pulling me out of immersion a lot as well. I hope it can be modded without breaking everything because I just want to be able to savour these beautiful areas and weathers for a bit while exploring without weather changing and night falling every 5 minutes!

Lastly, and I haven’t gotten far enough to see much of it yet, but most importantly will be the A-life implementation and how much of it is actually fixable with patches. That was what made the other STALKER games feel alive, and the devs have at least acknowledged that it’s not working at the moment. Hopefully that means the engine for it is actually there though and can be patched. Unless they’re lying to save face, I suppose.

I have a 7800X3D and a 4070TI, running the game at 3413x1920 with DLDSR on my 1440p monitor with everything on Epic and DLSS on Balanced. For the most part, I’m sitting at 65-85 FPS. However both frame drops and stutters are pretty bad, and performance tanks in the populated first town area (forgetting its name), regularly hitting 45-55 FPS. To note also, frame gen doesn’t seem to work for me. It works for a couple of minutes, then it starts behaving like a memory leak: getting me down to sub 10 FPS until it crashes or I reboot the game. This doesn’t happen with frame gen off.

On that subject though, I’m getting frequent crashes anyway. The first two hours yesterday were fine, but I’ve had 4 fatal error CTDs today. Very disappointing.

Was it worse than last year? I haven’t played this year’s edition but F1 Manager 2023 was a pretty fun game, albeit lacking the depth of something like Football Manager or Motorsport Manager.

It breaks my heart to read about all the bugs and performance issues. Not that they were entirely unexpected - especially since it’s a STALKER game - but I was hoping for a miracle. I really, really want this game to succeed and the game itself sounds like they hit it out the park. I just hope launching in this state doesn’t ruin the game’s reputation and sales.

That’s fair, it was completely unacceptable. And the game itself was so shallow and lacking that the hype for '23 never really got going, despite it actually being a significant improvement.