This game looks impressive! ^_^

I'm so excited to play this.

£94.99!!! That's an event price for sure, wow...

As a STALKER fan from the very beginning, I highly recommend Anomaly. It's so easy to download and play, and it looks fantastic and has a ton of gameplay.

It should hold me over nicely until STALKER 2 is released.

Use the link that .Keys provided up there. Download it, extract it, make a shortcut to the .exe and you're ready to play!

It looks like an eastern european take on Fallout 3+ to me

I would totally get this... if my computer was capable of running it. Sadness.
This setup was once a real beast, it's still capable of running several new games, but it has now hit 11 years of age.

I am surprised this PC is still alive because i think 10 years is almost the magical limit for high performance hardware used at least 24h a week or running almost daily; above this the stability or worse than this may get a real hit. I get a new PC every 6-7 years, and a GPU upgrade in between, but it is clear... not everyone can afford it. Now my PC is almost 2 years already (yeah... time is a mess), next and only upgrade probably 5090 and this will have to last for at least 2028-2029.

However, i think any PC not older than around 5 years with 8+ GB VRAM or powered the same as a PS5 (non pro) or XboxSX can absolutely play this game, which means a 2070 (6 years of age, around the performance a PS5 got) or better/newer should be more than fine. Of course not at "rocket settings"... needless to say. So the demand is not exactly above the bloody peak. Because this is the hardware specs it has been optimized for as a "minimum requirement" at 60 FPS and around low to medium settings, i guess.

Looking at the new gameplay footage, the game surely is impressive in many ways, so it is a game i look forward to it and i may even get it at launch on GoG; not happening to often anymore. Indeed, i simply can see the high amount of work and details in so many aspects, so this got the potential to become one of the best shooters, in this case survival-shooter, ever made.

Besides, there have been A LOT of delays with its release but i think the current release date may not become delayed anymore because it would be bad delaying it beyond Christmas 2024 and looking at the current footage it is probably not very far from a complete shape (without expansions) anymore.

Just a friendly reminder. The moment the dev team advertised console controls being used. Was the advertising of imminent design failure. Sure new players will buy into it. But it will still never know the success of a pc design.

FPS games using game controllers are broken by design. Baked in cheating or terrible difficulty in absurd ways.
An example: Make a gun with your hand. Aim and wave it around at distant objects. Now compare how fast and accurate you are to how rediculous this would be in a game using a crappy analog stick. Its bad....no cure for this as they have to design the entire game world around this dumpster fire.

"He brought a knife to a gun fight." seems appropriate. Unless someone redesigns the entire game world, to accommodate the controller scheme...it just will not be a Stalker game. FPS games and console controllers are oil and water. Shake all day long, it dont mix bro!

I am open to "both approaches", means, i am a long time console gamer and game pads are enjoyed a lot. Still true, some games, in general First Person Shooters and certain Strategy, for example RTS... as well some space sims, can be played much better using a mouse. Most critical for sure on the FPS genre.... at least if we have a "classical approach". There is the difference, because Stalker 2 is, as far as i am able to judge, NOT a classical approach and not even a typical FPS anymore. Some sources call it "survival game" but this is still a shooter, a rather slow paced one... so the typical "fragging" is not a critical game component anymore. Fragging, i do describe as simply "killing as many targets as possible in a very fast paced way, which needs excessive and very fast targeting, only doable by a mouse." This type of game is less about strategy or tactics, way more the reaction time... and tagging time... simply fragging, is the main gameplay component and what is able to give success,

On console... or using a gamepad, those old Stalkers games are nearly unplayable, because simply not designed for.

So, The "good old" Stalker games was true FPS with those FPS traits. The newest title... from what i can see (still never played it... i can only check out the things that have been said so far), is not anymore a true FPS, is it more of a survival-shooter (i do call it shooter in order not to mix it with FPS... i already told how i see the difference).

Whats the difference? The difference simply is, the whole gameplay is not anymore focussed on the "fragging" but instead way more on exploration, sheer survival (yes there are many of those components) and tactics (so you make the right move at the right time, it is not a sheer reaction game). I think there is even some adventure elements inside, as we may experience a lot of tasks and quests that may have some deeper gameplay, including interactions, by itself, typical for adventure games. Ultimately Stalker 2 simply is not the "good old shooter".... a FPS, anymore... instead a "survival shooter" as i name it. It is not good or bad, it simply is a different game and a different approach. What truly makes this game great is what they finally make out of it.... how it has been designed using this new shape. There are probably even RPG elements inside, which means there is some custom which can be used in order to gain a advantage and to make a design which works best for the individual approach, so there is not only one valid way, which i do consider great because i love RPG elements and many custom.

It is difficult to say how it will finally affect the gameplay and how much fun it may become. The only thing i can say is, so far, the stuff which have been shown to us.... is of great quality, so i think there is a lot of potential.

^^^

Even playing similar to capcom games like RE4 or later games in the series. Its still a coin toss between cheating or unplayable difficulty. Auto aiming and gimping the enemies are some of the primary suspects, in getting console structure fps games to a play able state. It very clearly aims at being an fps. It literally is in first person and the character shoots stuff lol

I think if the game had stuck with what fans made as a base, that was what people wanted. Will it sell? Yeah, probably. But this thing will not be good. Im tired of developers cash grabbing. Seriously. Misery would be a step behind in what fans want, yet even Misery has better mechanics under the hood. If they even looked at the interest the fans had. The devs would have made a vastly superior game by even doing a half assed version of Misery or Anomaly. In either scenario, it could be modified to be something better. Because the framework would be there.

But not now. The framework is console crafted.

Plus it annoys me they make political changes. I dont care about politics and agendas in my games I play. Another annoyance is the graphics. Giving little more than a steep graphics bump to old models is just lazy. We have that from the fans...for free. Its a tough sell. Why would I pay $100 for an inferior product, that ignores the very people that supported the series since 2007...wth!

The people known as fans which are excessively supporting this series are a huge minority i guess. This game strives to serve the "mainstream" and simply a huge crowd. It is still a FPS in some term, simply not the typical fast paced FPS usually known on PC and enjoyed by those fans. There will be way more snipping, so there is not a very fast targeting needed... and actually way more realistic than the good old "fragging-style" which is, if we judge its realistic approach... simply insane. I think they want to make the newest title more realistic with a broader approach how things can be solved.

We had some comparable discussions related to Baldurs Gate 3, with many of the "good old fans" even turning pretty hostile regarding the new changes which was more suitable to a broader crowd of gamers. Ultimately the game was very successful and one of the best selling games ever; indeed with high quality and good gameplay. It was not the "good old Baldurs Gate", simply a modernized and different version which is true to the studio involved and i would say it have been done well with great results.

I think, almost the same can be said regarding the new Stalker 2. We live in a pretty heated up time, so the crowd is not anymore in demand or in favor of the "good old recipe", instead most of the gamers and even devs are in favor of a more sensitive approach with a way broader way on "how to solve things". It simply will lead to a different Stalker, not worse one, simply different, i feel. Most likely it may turn out great, kinda the same way it have been experienced on Baldurs Gate 3.