S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2

[eny]

I have played the originals to death over the 18 years since the original was released, but even I have failed to be held enough to complete the game yet. There is a lot to be said for this game, it is a phenomenal realisation of what we have pined for for years. If you enjoyed and played the original I would say get it, and try it, because when the SDK is released the mod community will polish it like nothing else. The first 100 hours have been beautiful for me, I just needed a break and have yet to go back...It is very difficult for the first 20 hours, but I've had some fantastic firefights when I was the most vulnerable...just like the first game.

[Lenny Solidus]

Appreciative of all the feedback chaps, ty. I'll pick it up today.

edit: Bought, only cost £29 from eneba.

[Animalmother]

Please post regular updates on your progress/thoughts on it. Be interesting to see someone's take on a game that's has thousands of bug fixes since release.

Also a recommendation is to not bother repairing any damaged weapons (red) you find, no matter how much better than your current one they might seem. It's an utter waste of cash.

[Lenny Solidus]

F.L.O.A.T.E.R 2: Shadows of Rawmouseinput

So I've sunk a little under three hours in thus far and thought I'd pop on while waiting on some clothes washing and shopping to arrive to quickly jot down and share some early impressions then.

Spoiler

As everyone knows I have quite the lengthy history with the Stalker series, I used to share a fair bit of heavy word salad with poor grammar/spelling included but was always severely invested in what any game back then could offer good bad shit or just plain broken - everything deserved an equal pop and an equal pop did everything receive. Boiling Point? I loved that janky shit...a technically severely compromised/unrestrained game experience with countless areas of the map copied and pasted like a child finger paints high on ice cream, but there was never any denying that it gave us an early peek directly through the looking glass as to what the many open world adventures which would come years later that became the very foundation for much of the industry as they are today. The point is I made enough of an effort that anyone who read my thoughts knew everything they needed to know as to if they themselves should take a punt, and I'd say more often than not once they did the reception they would give in turn would mostly be positive with perhaps a few caveats here and there as expected. The original Stalker captured many of us back then as a distinctly unique yet harrowing game experience, little mercy was given to the player from all corners and it has long remained something very very special to many of us, myself included.

Now here I am in 2025 and have finally jumped into the one game I'd dreamed about for decades to be right there present at my fingertips, after buying it initially convinced it would run on my old 1060 (!) purely out of wanting to support the devs for their inspired efforts and dedication I of course ended up refunding it and holding out for a brighter day. That day turned out to be yesterday now running a new 3050 (the cards have a terrible rep I know but launch price aside so far it's been more than a worthy upgrade) and I kept any and all expectations in check when firing up Stalker 2 many months after launch and a boundless stream of patches and updates. I knew I had to have my Afterburner overlay on just to get an idea of what I was working with once the shader compiler completed (took a few minutes compared to well over half an hour on my previous PC thanks new nvme) and once I was in I was hitting a fairly respectable 56fps when I could not manage anything above 23fps previous. The magic of course of moving from a GTX to an RTX is enabling DLSS and frame generation, which saw my frames instantly go to my max monitor rate of 75...good times I thought. Let's get some radiated muck on my shoes.

My joy was short-lived however, though my frames remained firm the input lag on my mouse hit me like a dirty nappy to the nostril...the fuck is this I thought to myself...why are the controls so fucked and floaty? I immediately entered the controls option and ramped things up, still no joy, I enabled exclusive full-screen, nope, disabled nvidia reflex, no, nothing I did made a single bit of difference the floaty lacking precision and unresponsive feeling gun on my screen that mocked me continuously as I attempted to get it to feel right...straight away then I knew that my first ever enemy engagement on Stalker 2 a game I'd waited most of my adult life for...was going to be a bit shit and it was. Raising my gun to the three enemies now on my ass I tried to target the first and my aim was so shocking I paused the game for a moment and laughed. Zero tension, zero cool factor, just poor precision, and I was dead before I even got to the third twat now poking his weapon through a wall also seemingly mocking my weaponry skills. I can't play the game this way..., what in the dusty bin 321 fuck do I do here if I can't even take on the first enemies in the area properly because it feels like someone has strings attached to my guns and are pulling them as I try to fight? Come on game, help me out here.

As it turns out there are a few ini "fixes" out there, but the prominent control issue seems to be baked into the game engine itself, I detest Unreal Engine 5 immediately sprang to mind. I've still not managed to fix it and am floaty aiming my way through the game which is making every single new encounter already feel like a severe chore as there's no saving during engagements and I so often end up luckily perhaps killing a few then wanting to turn the weapon on myself what bloody difference would it make also go fuck yourself death counter I'm officially ignoring you from now on.

I did somehow manage to get through the first few encounters as the games death counter increased exponentially pointing at me that I'd now died 47 times, and I'd hardly got a sniff of what deadly shit was out there waiting for me and my floaty weapons to arrive and be instantly eradicated - I won't even get into how many times I've been killed by a cardboard box to the temple. I was looking forward to seeing some form of A-Life in action though what I experienced wasn't exactly what I had in mind either...namely a large pack of mutie dogs running around in auto circles a few feet away as I hid crouched inside the back of an abandoned bus reserving my ammo and wonky aim and just madly slashing away at any that came close with my knife...some actual feedback for this would have been nice though as you can't tell if you made contact or not at the best of times.

So there it is, my first three hours on F.L.O.A - I mean S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. Had the controls matched the games looks and unexpected great performance I'd be spinning you a pretty solid positive yarn right now, instead I'm kind of dreading booting it up again later today knowing what I went through with it yesterday in a resounding conflicting mass of frustration knowing I upgraded and all only to be met with yet another unwelcome obstacle. I've looked on Nexus and I've tried several so-called fixes but as yet nothing has helped my specific predicament that will let me actually properly enjoy my dream Stalker game and get out of it the experience I can tell is right there before me yet just out of reach.

If anyone knows of any valid fixes or went through the same and managed to counter it please do share them won't you. Mwa.

Edit: Clearly I was caught up in a somewhat muddied mood out of pure frustration with the technical stuff I had the first few hours...I've moved beyond it now thankfully so don't read too much into all of the above.

[Sly Boots]

Hm, sorry, can't help there, controls felt ok to me!

[Lenny Solidus]

I'm going to give this a shot...no pun intended.

Description

Stalker 2's default settings ship with asymmetric sensitivity scaling, where the vertical (Y-axis) sensitivity is different from the horizontal (X-axis), leading to frustratingly inconsistent aiming and camera control.

What This Mod Does

This mod adjusts the game’s sensitivity scaling to ensure uniform input response across both axes. By balancing the X and Y sensitivities:
Aiming and camera control feel consistent, improving precision.
Fixes the vertical sensitivity multiplier to match horizontal sensitivity.
While created with M&K users in mind, it also works for controller input. However, this mod doesn't fix the game's dodgy deadzone settings for controllers—though I may look into that next.

The game shipped with movement parameters `BaseTurnRate = 40` & `BaseLookUpRate = 30` by default. This mod sets both values to 40—simple but effective.

https://www.nexusmods.com/stalker2heart ... yl/mods/57

[Lenny Solidus]

Reading my very quick off the cuff impressions above I know I make it seem like I completely loathed my time on the game, not the game just the control scheme and key bindings. I'm also glad to report that the mod above worked wonders, pretty much a night and day difference far more in line with how the older games felt now though could still do with a little touch up here and there. We all know a game has but one chance to prove itself upon first impression and while I may sound cynical or even resentful towards Stalker 2 just now after testing the game being able to actually precise shoot something which attacked me randomly...felt so good. Performance is solid, the tone is excellent, the classic brooding atmosphere is most definitely present, liking the writing and quests so far and now with my mouse reacting as it should I'm going to go into it once again with a fresh mindset tonight and actually fully enjoy what it has to offer.

We are all well aware with what the devs went through to get this game in our hands, which means I sure as fuck can overlook a few technical niggles and allow the game the time and patience it deserves, whether I get to end up playing 50 hours or 150 remains to be seen, but I can and will appreciate every hour I do get with it.



The 3050 in question with zero external power connectors.
https://imgur.com/a/rlugruy

Anyway, you all know by now my form and style of written word better than anyone else, and opinion can and does alter drastically from one day to the next. Let's get this journey on the way then, Stalkers. The Zone awaits.

https://imgur.com/NUPsZoS
https://imgur.com/thUJojs

[Hatredsheart]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... 0326924398

[Lenny Solidus]

Yep, the game is now 155Gb in total on my drive and just as I'm still only really starting to sink my teeth into it leaving the Lesser Zone behind during my last session. I did at least have a ton of fun clearing The Sphere though beforehand luckily - mainly after Snowy mentioned to go and locate the AKM-74U that I had somehow overlooked in a hidden stash early on, I ended up in a great encounter there.

https://imgur.com/rkK2CEx
https://imgur.com/4djCWg3

Spoiler

https://imgur.com/NdL56E5

Survived my first emission last night too, fun times. edit: Hobbling fixed, something had altered my Nvidia app settings.

[Lenny Solidus]

I'm still but ten or so hours in and still note padding a lot of thoughts for later, meanwhile I've also begun tinkering with the Nexus mod scene and here's a few I have installed right now...

Backpack -animation mod (for quicker access)
Faster ADS/Equip/Reload mod
Maklanes Better Weapons 3.0
Maklanes Better Mutants v1.7
Ledge Grabbing (Stalkour) mod v1.3
Stalker Optimisation and Graphic Mod v1.2 (High/Medium/Low).

As for the game, well. Let's just say it rather quickly seems to divert from excellent to great to unfinished and buggy af which is classic Stalker, so even with the amount of huge post release updates it has received I'm finding it difficult to contemplate just how incomplete the game must have felt at launch. Unreal Engine 5 is definitely not suited to the game in a lot of ways but has strengths in others, I do wish they had opted to use Cryengine instead however.

NOTE: I'm yet to actually try the game today with most of the mods above installed though, so we shall see what we see later tonight the game loads up with them just fine, happy that modding the game is such a breeze.

[Animalmother]

You mentioned faster reload mod there, one of the things that drove me to despair was the lack of automatic reload in some instances. Boss fights in particular were a chore where taking damage immediately cancelled the reload. I died countless times to being unable to use my gun in a fight.

Do mutants still hide around corners once you get a height advantage?

[Lenny Solidus]

I believe so, though keep in mind I've only had minimal chance to play with these mods installed thus far. Yes the game is overwhelmingly intent on making any reaction as purposely slow and at an immediate disadvantage as possible when you are already pretty much going to struggle to get out of a typical encounter as it is. Enemies don't miss, grenades land directly at your feet every time, weapon jamming and environmental hazards while in an encounter etc etc. Just the quick inventory, fast reload and parkour mod alone very much change up the game vastly for the better. The weapon mod makes fights feel far more balanced now, I can finally hold my own against an entire pack of enemies and come out the other end feeling as though I earned it.

I must say too that one of the most perplexing ideas in Stalker 2 is the breakable crate system, the amount of times I've broken them open only to be completely unable to loot their contents due to the awkward angle or stacked crate placement. Truly a baffling game design decision that they have still yet to remedy, unless I'm completely missing something.

Also, the constant kicking cans sound effect drives me nuts.

[Animalmother]

The fucking can thing drove me mental!

[Hatredsheart]

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app ... 3580720341

[ManBearSquid]

After ditching this game back in February or so, I came back to it after patch 1.5.1. I knew that if I'd kept at it during my original run that I'd be so disillusioned with it that I'd never finish it or come back after some fixes.

Well, I'm really glad to say that I'm loving it this time round. The emergent game play feels much more on point with the updates to A-life, I've had such great moments, witnessed cool things from afar, or even got stuck into the fight amidst the chaos.

I started again from the beginning (I was only about to leave Garbage) and I've also modded it much less than before. I'm mostly using mods via steam workshop, along with a few from Nexus. It's also predominantly small QoL things, like: no headshot sound, better flashlight, better blood splatters, better wounds, no auto-lean, etc. But the game changer for me is the better animations mod from the workshop; this adds so much to the gun fights when enemies die in more interesting ways than the same repeated animations. I could happily play without most of the other mods, but this one is a must in my opinion.

Now that The Zone feels more active and alive - rather than it spawning enemies into the game in bullshit ways - the atmosphere is heightened tenfold. Is it perfect? No. Overall, it's a much more rock-solid experience to me, though.

I look forward to further enhancements/fixes from the devs themselves, but now felt right for me to try again and I'm so glad that I did.