I'm honestly slightly surprised they didn't update some of the assets with mods; it would only be fair after they let us play around with the source code for free all these years
I'm so upset over the console version. I got to the end and CRASH! Started a different saved file....CRASH. Went back and played several missions over again and as soon as I get to the same spot....CRASH. I can't finish the damn game!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'll have to purchase it on pc just to see the ending. What was the point of the console version??????
It's not a proper playthrough unless the show stopping bugs made you cry!!! That was truly my experience with the original release before any patches. I had a show stopper that made my game crash when leaving Cordon, was weeks if not months later I revisited when it was patched and got to continue
The bridge? :) I translated a German forum back then where someone figured out a fix using the .ini files. Never before in my life had felt so accomplished then finally crossed that threshold and the game didn’t crash 😂 Love these games but to say were ever perfect, belies someone who never played them back then. Except Pripyat, never really had any issues with it. Clear sky either tbh, but always saw that as more tech demo than sequel in any way.
Just played this for the first time on PC today, the entire day. Playthrough from start to finish. Had ao many questions about the story and lore. Its actully got an extremly engaging foundation on its lore, factions, motives, etc.. gameplay was great too. Only had one crash on PC, minor bugs that reloads fixed. Nothing game breaking playing it vanilla on windows 11, even on an ultrawide montior (cutscenes and UI will be stretched, but game renders as normal). Im eagar to play the other two and also the new one slated for this year. To be fair though, horror has never been my thing, and i genuinely had the hairs on my arms standing during many underground segments. Kinda hope the other two are more focused on above ground skirmishes, looting, surviving, but i imagine that would be missing a huge part of the forumula people love with STALKER
I had this amazing glitch in clear sky on console where a bloodsucker eating an npc would glitch hard and stretch and warp their bodys horribly like 5-6 foot arms and often sends the bloodsucker to space if they are outside and if they are inside its obscenely loud
Good stuff, have a sub bro :) I'm so surprised to hear about the console ports. It's so cool that more people can experience these games. I'm playing through the trilogy as well, but on pc, and I'm currently finally getting to COP for the first time. The atmosphere is just hard to recreate, it's immersive and addicting. I can't wait for the sequel!
going through the last section on Master is one of the most annoying times ive had with a game, but other than that i loved the game. Theres a certain element of dread this one has over the other two entries, feels a lot more mysterious
The sequels get more polished as shooters, but as the shooting becomes more reliable and they introduce various equipment optimization features, it seems to hurt the atmospheric dread a bit. The unreliability and chaos of the first game is what gives some of those early mutant encounters that extra oomph.
Dude, nearly noone realised that it was an Ukrainian Game in 2007 cuz of the Russian Language (which is btw still the most spoken Language in Ukraine, besides their Government tries to convince em to not speak it)... And its called Shadow of Chernobyl - they didnt change the Name for the new Editions. They Changed the Name for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. But tbh - good Review so far. :-)
They did change the spelling for the console re-release to "Shadows of Chornobyl", you can check the listing on either console's store. It's different in the game art and boot screen as well. I assumed to match the modernized/sequel spelling, but if you check the GSC Console version announcement on Steam someone asked why and they explained it as a better transliteration. I'm absolutely not qualified or interested in discussing their reasoning for that, or the nuances of languages and regions other than my own. You're right though, I went to a rural American public school so I probably thought of this game as just "Obviously Not American" in 2007.
@@JotunWarrior ah, i know what i made wrong... i looked for reviews on newspages instead the shop emselfes... i want to apologize for that mistake on my end. 😕 The reason why they did this is obvious from sad events i guess, so there is no need to discuss that. As i said b4: Good Review 👍. Wish they would have brought it also on Nintendo Switch - that have been awesome (Even Metro 2033 is running on it... would have been so cool to relife old times on Switch...)
@@JotunWarriordon’t want escalate this in any way either, but like in rural Canadian school when came out. Yeah, like didn’t know was geographically in ukraine until met someone from there in uni good while later who explained all that to me. When reactor melted down, it was part of the USSR, for sake of a lot of the lore in the game, that’s what matters, not modern geopolitical stuff cos entire game always been a parallel reality where the zone occurs. The army badges in the game though, are most deff Ukrainian armed forces though, but in that reality probably getting support from all sides of geopolitical spectrum; just to keep some out of everyone else’s backyard and the spread of relics beyond official govt study, under control. Barely delved into in the game, but that’s why the mercs are in zone for example, for rich corporations who want to get artifacts to study, turn into commercial products or w/e right. Which iirc, the entire body of the UN is dead set to prevent, hence the military cordon. …thx for coming to my Ted talk 😂
i'm currently enjoying SoC on my ps4 and was wondering should i wait to finish the game and THEN watch your review? I will have this saved on my stalker playlist either way, more stalker content is good for everybody
Actually wish they would release this console build on pc but it would have to be free for pc version owners so i quess they see no benefit for giving the fans something for free lol.
Same. It plays better on pc. I'm guessing they'll either release it as a 'remaster' right before 2 comes out, or next year for the 15th anniversary. But it'd be a nice goodwill gesture if they just upgraded the existing pc versions for free.
having done my first playthrough of SoC in the year 2024 after catching it on steam sale i had a great experience with it, its a good reminder how truly graphics dont matter and artstyle/athmosphere/feeling/lighting can do way more than visuals alone.
All without fancy modern Ray tracing or hdr displays. Playing through anomaly mod last couple years, even tho do update textures a bit, really made that apparent to me, what exactly it was that I fell in love with a long time ago, for a game that barely ran out of the box even.
Very good video, thanks man. I want to buy the whole trilogy but I'm still waiting for a PS5 update (I think the devs mentioned they'll do it at some point). The other deterring factor is that it's still quite expensive (on PS Store) for a very old game.
I grabbed the Legends of the Zone bundle during that last PSN sale and I think it was 35 bucks... Around twelve bucks a piece. Better than the unit price of buying them individually but it could sure be cheaper. A mod platform got added in last month but I hadn't seen anything about a "current gen" version.
The most polished one. I think CoP is way too easy, artifacts suck to the point where it's only worth it to run weight increase, pretty big areas but not much variety, main story is kinda unsatisfying, if you know stashes they make you mad OP fast hurting replayability at the same time. It's still a great game but it has some strange design choices which make SoC superior in my eyes.
@@sneakyleaky7670This guy knows what's up. Well said. Don't forget that basically every location is designed for a specific quest or event, and once you finish that part, nothing interesting can ever really happen there again because A-Life was gutted.
I'm working on a review for an indie rpg right now but I'll probably hit Clear Sky next. I just don't like to play an entire series straight through, it blends together too much
Death returning you to a checkpoint but not resetting the enemies was a bit of an odd choice, you could pretty much beat any level on max difficulty by just throwing yourself into it over and over regardless of skill level
Playing and almost done but biggest and sadistic by the developers were putting in ridiculous jumps in that you to have use double jumps and boost to get out of reach areas.. really, they suck!
another great review, i'm a fan! my only note of feedback would be the sound mixing. when you offered sound samples of the gunplay (which I very much appreciated!) i had to turn down the volume, then you started speaking and i had to turn it up again. other than that, keep up the good work 🔥
Weird west is a AA twin stick CRPG, very unique combination, it has a 15 hour main story and it took me just over 50 hours to 100%, incredible loot system for weapons
Can i ask what specifically jumped out to you about the loot system? I honestly don't recall it being very different from the standard Diablo-style design I normally see in arpgs
Hey thanks! I'd like to revisit r6v2 soon, I remember it having slightly better gameplay because of bullet pen and sprinting, but... I don't remember any of the campaign at all
I'd say the graphics are fine too. They aren't photorealistic but the graphics themselves add to the visuals, they give that charm that Titan Quest still has in 2024
Yep. Realistic folklore, without afro-americans in north mithos or world. Without fake afro-american comic-moronic social politics and appropriation of European medieval history. Just for that would be a buy. But no, the game is really good. Great mechanics, and great graphics. Must have.
Someone should make a game about African Tribes. Maybe it's like a strategy game like command and conquer. So hear me out. We put Asians, whites, wheelchair bound people and trans people in the tribes. At most, 33% are black. They all speak a real African dialect. The response we get is "this is cultural appropriation" but our response is "no, this is diversity!" 😂😂😢😂😮😂😊😂😊😂
Nice review, thank you! Quick question…. Is this a game you can play just using the mouse? I’m not a serious gamer with a great setup, I can’t sit at the keyboard… The game looks pretty fun though, I like to explore open world style… in fact the only game I play is Wartales!
I believe you can move, fight, and control all your abilities with the mouse. I suspect it would be a little clunky, but doable. You could grab it on Steam and give it a try - they usually let you refund a game if you put less than two hours in it, and don't own it for more than a week or two.
I like the game but some of the restrictions on modifying Mechs annoy me. I'm ok with the weapon type hardpoints its the restrictions on adding things like JUMP Jets I consider to be absurd. I'm a long time fan of the Battletech universe tabletop games including the RPGs, war games, and TCG, the PC and console games, the novels the whole goodie bag. Because of this I know my preferred Mech type very well. My favorite Mech type is a Heavy class Mech with Jump Jets, and nothing but energy weapons, though ammo based defensive systems are ok. The problem is there are no official mechs from the era where the story campaign starts meeting those criteria included in the game. There' aren't many official designs meeting the criteria that don't require tech not in production in the setting's main focus region when the story starts. And of the three I know of one is a variant of a Mech model not in the game, another is in the game but for some reason the lore states it didn't enter production until 3040 (twenty-five years after the story starts) even though its a field refit using components easily available centuries earlier, and the third was introduced in a book published about a year ago. What I used to do in the table top games was take a Mech close to the criteria the modify it to be what I want.. One of my favorite, and among the easiest to convert Mechs is the Warhammer-6D. Just remove the extra leg armor it has compared to the most common variant and add four jump jets. But for some reason the developers made that impossible and it still annoys me.
Yeah, it was a great game, but I think the design choice to have your special crystal give specific perks on specific alignment states horrible idea. You end up playing the game as what build you want to go as, not as what choices do you think are interesting/fitting. Might as well lock the specific build high end reward behind actually making specific alignment choices instead. But on the other hand, it is good lore, but maybe it's more fitting to harry potter setting, maybe it's cross contamination between fandoms. The, get lightsaber at 1/3 of the game was one of my biggest complaints as a child, but as manchild I got lightsaber as soon as I could. 5h might be the time required, although I think it could be done in like 3h or less if you really rush it and know what choices you want ahead of time. Both 1st and 2nd kotor had incredibly boring 1st few hours.
I actually liked kotor 1's opening area a lot, but kotor 2's feels like an extended tutorial. I'm sure you could get a saber faster than I did with better knowledge of the part placement.
@@JotunWarrior Kotor 1st tutoria; planet that ended with the race was a bit shorter. But kotor had 2 places. I liked kotor 2 on paper more, but it's longer and if you want to become "jedi" sooner, you get salty about the grind. I like the kotor 2 version because the asteroid was way more interesting. After that it's roughly the same. Do stuff on surface, help locals, find one of few factions that you like more, and go to another place to finally enable you to travel. Same thing for both essentially at that point. Oh except kotor 2 again has another layer with the 1 extra location. I think kotor 1 just gave you access to ship after like 2 hours. Maybe someone really experienced can do it faster. Asteroid was cool tho, a lot of flavor to it.
This is one of my favourite games of all time. By the way, have you installed the Restored Content Mod yet? It really fixes a lot of bugs, glitches and content that was missing in the vanilla game. For many gamers, this mod is virtually obligatory.
Yep! I played through with TSLRCM when I made this video. Only thing that I didn't really like about it was how it seemed to stack alternate takes of similar/same dialogue VO during a few cutscenes, but honestly that might have been in the base game and I had just forgotten it.
