Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2: Heart of Chornobyl Review (So Far) - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

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What's up and welcome to the Kind of Funny Gamescast live for Wednesday, November 20th, 20th, 24. Of course, I am your host, Tim Gettys. I'm joined today by Paris, Lily. What is up? How you doing? Greg Miller. Tim? This is not an Xbox. It's not an Xbox. It's Cole, everybody. Cole is joining us live on the set. And round out of the group today, we have Snowbike Mike. Tim, what up? Thanks for having me today. Really excited to talk all about Stalker 2 today. Remember everyone, this is the kind of gaming games cast each and every weekday.

We get together to talk about video games. So it's at my front door. He's got a ring alert. Now I'm part of Mike. I know that we are a silent society. I want that on the record. But again, with the power of the Xbox cloud,

if I'm playing Starfield over here, I got to be able to hear it. I got to crank it up. I got to unmute. We're in Vegas. We're waiting in line for a taxi. And the man in front of us, his cell phone rings louder than I've ever heard a cell phone ring.

And it is low rider. And everything in life just felt right. And I looked at Mike. And I'm like, Mike, it's not a silence. society. Not in Vegas, baby.

20,000 people pack in the sphere only one man's cell phone rings. That shows you we're in the silent society. This is the kind of

funny games cast. Every day we get together to talk about the latest in reviews, previews and big topic discussions in the world of video games.

If you love what we do, please support us with the kind of funny membership on Patreon or YouTube to get all of our shows ad free. Watch us record them

live and get a daily exclusive show. For a chance to be part of the show, submit your thoughts and opinions as YouTube super chats as we go. A little housekeeping for you. Roger's been working on our kind of funny highlights channel.

That's YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny. He's been posting some of the best moments throughout kind of funny history. He's been focusing on some of our reaction content in the last couple days posting things like the very first time we saw Keanu Reeves come out for Cyberpunk 277. The first time we ever saw the PlayStation 5, the box itself.

So go check out some of those old school, classic kind of funny memories. Remember, we are an 11-person business, all about live talk shows. After this episode, you're going to get a stream of Greg and Blass learning Magic the Gathering. Snowbike Mike is going to teach them the ins and outs of how to actually play the card game that most of us have heard about but have not ever actually played. How exciting. I'm going to use my Ghostbuster cards. Yeah, we'll let them slide those in.

Thank you. I believe that. Thanks for taking care of me. Yeah, yeah. And we just didn't know what to carry you in Vegas. Thank you. You know, no one fed me in Vegas. I hate you all so much.

I'm like, I never thought I'd hate you. You know what I mean? I thought you were the chosen. Go watch the podcast right now, ladies and gentlemen, to find out why Tim didn't feed me in Vegas if you didn't hear. And then he's like, do more work, do more content, make more content. Sounds like me, right? Swing the golf club. Games Daily that we did today was me and Bless breaking down all of the latest in the cloud gaming situation, both PlayStation and Xbox. It's going hard, and it's a great, beautiful thing.

Thank you to our Patreon producers, Lady Twining, and Carl Jacobs. Of course, if you're a kind of funny member, you can get today's Gregway, which is going to be all about. TBD. TBD, everyone. I had to go to the doctor this morning. I had cold. It was raining. I had to drop Ben off.

There's a million things going on, so I didn't get my normal time to make the Gregway. So now you get an afternoon Gregway. What's it going to be? Who knows? I want to see what we get to in here. Because I want to talk about Starfield in these updates, but if you got,

if we got to hear about stalker. We'll see if we get it. It sucks. Everybody hates it. Why do we talk about game people love like Starfield? Oh my God. Today we're brought to you by Sonic and Top Golf, aura frames and the visual triangle merch that I'm wearing right now.

everybody you can look as cool as I do but we'll tell you about that later for now let's begin with what is and forever will be the Roper Report Tats Tats Tats Tats There was no games cast docks so I'm looking at this I was looking at the Daily one everybody

Ladies gentlemen NBs he's only worked here six months So the lack of a doc it really really fucks him up He's got no idea what show it is What's going on? I have to remember stalker too Sitting on his throwing a burgers over there We'll give you one

We'll give you one starving a death Paris, I appreciate your parents. Tim sucks. You broke him. You broke him. You want to take a break to them? I appreciate parents' parents too.

Patience is the word I was looking for. But shout out to Paris's parents, everybody. Okay, settling in here. The topic of the show. Stalker 2. All right? Heart of Chernobyl. I'm struggling.

I don't know where this is all coming from. Stocker 2, Heart of Chernobyl, a 2024, first person shooter, survival horror game coming to Xbox, Series X, and Series S, and Microsoft Windows. Of course, it is also on GamePass, if you have that service. Greg, have you played any?

I have not. It was one of those, obviously, I'm not a big FPS person, and so then the whole post-apocalyptic, it was one of those. I know previews were positive to a degree of what was happening, where it was going, but I wanted to get to this, this here review and find out what Mike and Paris thought before I committed any time to it.

Paris, how long have you played? About 11 hours. I have obviously not completed it. I'm going to name drop for just a second because I was in Dallas, Texas, doing my JFK conspiracy theory dreams, and I got to see Mike Tyson's cheeks in person. So, you know, that was my weekend. I didn't get a lot of time. Then Mike, what about you?

Tim, I have played eight hours of Stocker 2. and unfortunately I had to put it down. There is a push and pull that we'll talk about on this review where I want to play more. I wanted to see this through, but I just simply could not play anymore. Interesting. I can't wait to hear what that means. Of course, because they have not be this.

This is more of a review and progress review so far, given our thoughts and impressions on our experiences with it. Paris, let's start with you. I want to hear what you have to say about your 11 hours so far with Stocker 2. So it's interesting because I did the preview. as well and I got to obviously replay a lot of what I had already done in the preview, which was about three hours and I've gone beyond that to about 11. And during the preview, I was very high on it. I was very, very positive about stalker two because I called it like a difficult

fun and it is it is a difficult game. You're going to die a lot playing it. I love this open world that is the zone. Um, but what I've found is as you progress further, story is, story is, isn't grabbing me the way that I thought it would. And there's a lot of technical issues with the game. It's very buggy. I played it on Steam on PC, DLSS-S-3, frame-generate, like all the bells and whistles enabled. And it's a very pretty game visually.

But there's a lot of pop-in that was happening, blackouts in the game, odd bugs with objects, things like that that kind of threw me out of the experience somewhat. But I will definitely continue to play this to completion because I do. There is a day one patch out now that I've seen some people comment about has resolved some of those quirks that I had playing for the previous 11 hours. But I can tell this is not a game for everyone. And I'm actually very curious to hear what Mike has to say because this is my entry into stalker.

And even seen some of the comments today, a lot of people are saying, well, it's a start. It's kind of like the Bethesda thing where people are like, well, it's a star, it's a Starker game. Of course it's going to be buggy. It's going to have quirks. But not everyone's going to know that, right? For a lot of people, this is going to be their first time putting hands on the game being introduced to this world. And while I'm sure everyone is sympathetic to what GSC game world has gone through, you know, with that Russian invasion into Ukraine and the displacement. Yeah, yeah. And the delays and everything. Because obviously my heart goes out to all those people that have made this game and to actually deliver it is an accomplishment. But I feel like,

And we'll see with this day one patch. I can obviously only comment on what I've played. But it almost feels like this needed more time. Can I ask you a question right away? Sure, sure. You said, you know, this is not a game for everybody. If the bugs hadn't existed, would this be a game for you? No, it is a game for me.

I'm saying that even despite the bugs. This is definitely a game for me. I like this. I like that something's trying to kill me every two seconds. I like that. I like the survival aspects of this scrounging, you know, for weapons and supplies and all that. I love that this exists in an open world setting the way that it is.

I think the story, we'll see as I continue to go along, the story isn't grabbing me, but I like the concept of the stalker world for sure. But what I am saying is, even if the game was perfect, I still think this isn't for everyone. I think a lot of people are going to this going, well, look, damn, why am I dying every two seconds? Why is this? Why is that? What is the story about? I don't think, because even the metro.

games, which obviously this team, you know, splintered off from, you know, their DNA is in both of these games. Metro isn't for everybody. And I think this is even a more hardcore version of Metro in that respect. So I get it that this is not going to grab everyone, but people go in knowing that this is a first person survival shooter game and play it that way. I think there is definitely some fun to be had. Again, visually, it's very impressive. I mean, Unreal 5 is on display here for sure. But, there's bugs, there's issues. There's enough bugs here that it can take you out of the experience. And like I said before, we'll see you with the day one patch, what it does.

I did not play it on Xbox, so I cannot comment on how it runs on console, but even on PC, there was definitely issues. Mike, what did you play on? I played it on Xbox Series X, and I can't comment on it did not run well. Of course, I started at the top of the show. I played eight hours of Stocker 2 on Xbox Series X, and I had to put it down, due to so much performance issues. This is a game that is not ready for prime time, unfortunately.

It is a game that really speaks to me, as Paris brought up a first-person, open-world, hardcore survival game. There are moments in this game where I wanted more. I wanted to really dive into this. But I was hit every single moment, almost every second, every minute of texture pop-ins, characters loading in. When you talk about a hardcore survival game,

and there are moments where the environment has all these hazards, and they just pop in out of nowhere and you die or an enemy will just show up by your side and start shooting you when it's still trying to load the game. It's a major just, oh, this is frustrating. And I really put myself through the frustration for all the eight hours trying to just keep trudging along, but I just simply could not.

From character pop-ins, dialogues that would just cut out, characters just not even giving you dialogue. I was on fetch quests with characters that would run into a tree and just get stuck there. And it was like, okay, well, this quest is now over or I have to reload to, you know, a lot of moments where when you're fighting your opponents, I would have either them not show up on the screen. I would have moments where I'm shooting at the opposition and it wouldn't register for two to three seconds. So they would look at me. All the bullets would go off.

Nothing would happen. And then they would get shot a bunch. And it was like, oh, this isn't right. And when we talk about how hardcore this game is, it is extremely hardcore. normal. I mean, two to three shots, you're going to die. A couple environmental hazards, you're going to die. And so when you have all of these major performance issues racking up, it just doesn't lead to the best situation there. And so, yeah, for me, this is a game that on the positive note is really speaking to me. I like this open world. I like this weird world

that they've created with the anomalies out there, with the zone. I want to get to know more. I am enjoying like the small story thread. I don't think it's anything wowing and amazing, but you understand what's happening with the story and where your character is going, who some of the bad guys are and some of their subplots are. And it's keeping me going where I want to see more of the zone, but I just simply cannot play any more of this at this time

unless a day one patch drastically changes what I'm seeing. Was there a breaking point for you? Was it just chip damage of little bugs out of now? I mean, I should have stopped after hour two. I knew after hour two that this was, not going to be a good experience and I should have stopped right then and there. But I really wanted to keep going for this review and also because I was having a little bit of fun with the idea of this game. But it's just chip damage. It's just moment after moment of

texture's not loading right. The screen just wobbling performance from my frame rate dipping to players dropping in and out. It just wasn't a good time. So then the same question for you. If you removed all of these, would you be having a great time? Would you this game be super high? I think I'd be having a good time. Maybe great if I got really into it. This game really speaks to me as a first person shooter guy. I've felt moments of escape from

Tarkov with the really extreme intense survival situations to trying to loot bags and going into the grid loot system, moving things over. I love the open world. I like the setting, calling back to Metro and like original PubG map where all these things started

to speak to me. And I liked the gunplay, but man, Amanda, I have issues with gunplay as well. There were moments where it felt like the auto aim was on, the auto assist, and my gun would just start moving. And I wasn't touching the controller. I wasn't looking at anyone.

These were just moments in the game where I'd be moving from point A to point B and the gun would just start rocking and moving out of nowhere. And it was just frustrating, unfortunately. Hmm. So where do we go from here, Paris? Like, are you thinking that the patches might be able to solve it enough? You get back in there?

Like, do you see yourself completing this game? Yeah. I want to complete it and we'll obviously see with the day one patch. Like I was even just kind of looking at the chat while Mike was talking. And I think people have to understand that this day one patch only came out today. So I don't have any time with it. So I can't even comment on it. So you can only comment on what you've played.

And to Mike's point, I've seen a lot of the same type of bugs and issues. Like even during dialogue scenarios, the characters looking off to the right or the left instead of looking directly at me. things like that or you might be outside and there might be some anomaly weather event going on that's so loud and intrusive, you can't even hear the dialogue that's happening. So there's all these quirks. Again, with the weapon aiming, things like that that need to be ironed out.

I can't imagine that everything's going to be perfect because of this magical day one patch. So it's probably going to take some additional time to iron those out. I kind of feel like, hey, let's see what the day one patch looks like, see if it's fix some of my bigger issues with it. If not, I'm probably going to put it down for a while and just wait and see if those can get to iron out. There's a good game here. And it's unfortunate that there's enough technical issues that prevent, there's going to prevent some people from wanting to experience what stalker is all about. I've heard so many people that are stalker veterans that were excited for me to want to get into this universe, get into, of this world and I can see the potential of it, but I need a playable experience. It's not

100% unplayable. I don't want to condemn it that much, but it's unplayable enough that you feel like you're fighting the game to enjoy it, right? So I don't want to do that. I want to just be able to play it and enjoy the experience that I'm having. So bugs aside, it sounds like you both aren't high on the story and this being a single player game. I feel like that should be high up they're in priorities in terms of something that's like keeping you going. Mike, can you speak to that a little bit about like what are you, do you feel like the story of this needs to be great or I mean, I think the gameplay is going to speak for itself with the open world survival tendencies. I think that's going to carry it to greatness. But like the story to me reminds me of, um,

dying light where you're invested in it or it's like, uh, it's just kind of there and we're just moving from plot point A to point B. That's how this one felt. It did feel like some choice. Paris, maybe you can follow up on this one. I don't know what you chose, but it did feel like you can side with the stalkers or you can side with, we'll call it the zone, this military group that's coming into the zone to try to take a little bit away from the stockers and establish what they want to do in that zone.

And it felt like they give you an option early on of you can go help the stockers here and climb up to a blimp to get a radio call out, or you can go work with the police and they'll give you a different way to go to that next step. And I was like, oh, that's interesting. I chose the cops just because when you have the two markers on the map, I was like, which one am I running to? I chose left instead of right.

What's closer? What's closer? I don't really care of this. Remind you, no fast travel, right? This is strictly like, you're going to go out in this open world and you're going to hustle. You're going to move there. So it's a lot of stepping, a lot of walking. Is that fun?

Is it engaging? It is fun and engaging if the game weren't just not right technically because it's cool of you are always on a survival mindset. There are crazy routines of enemies walking around. They're going to survey the areas. There's going to be crazy rats. There's going to be a giant dog. There's going to be invisible, scary monster chasing you.

So there are moments where the tenseness is always there. And Tim, if this game didn't run so poorly, there are beautiful moments in the environment. There are really cool storms and environmental hazards. There are anomalies that will pop up that you have to kind of be mindful of and search for. So, like, there's a lot going on in the open world. that will always keep you on the edge of your seat, keeping you moving and engaged from point A to point B. But, yeah, when it comes to the story,

it depends on how much you want to put into it. This is a dying light situation. Some people love those stories. Some people don't pay attention, and they just play the open world and have fun with it. My question here. I love, I'll just chime in really quick to add on to what Mike is saying. What I love about this game is the open world

because your head is constantly on a swivel. You never know what's going to be around the corner. you never know what type of enemy is going to pop up that you're going to have to engage with. And are you prepared to engage with that enemy? Do you have the right supplies? Do you have your med kits? Do you have your bandages if you're bleeding out? Is there so much radiation, which causes you to get more damage?

Are you able to suppress that? You know, right? Do you have enough bullets in the guns that you have? Like, there's all these things that you constantly to make sure that you're prepared for when you're going into these encounters. And if you're not, you're going to die. I mean, it's as simple as that. You're going to go down. But to the point of what we're saying here,

there's been instances where I'm getting shot at from a house and there's nobody there because I can't see the enemy. Because they're invisible for some reason. And for a game, obviously, that's hardcore. If you're going to take shoot shots, that sucks. Yeah, yeah. So it's little things like that that will frustrate you because obviously it isn't intended to be a part of the game.

And if they can iron that out, it'll just be a more enjoyable experience. So then my question comes back to this. Somebody who is not familiar with stalker. I didn't realize there was this like fan base for it in what it was. And I saw how I'm tweeting about like, or maybe blue sky and about how much, you know, he live with the first stalker and then the problems with this one. My question is this, we keep talking about being a survival first person shooter.

And I saw someone in the chat go by. I'm playing it. I'm doing the day one patch. I haven't had these things. I'm having a great time. I love that it's a survival first person shooter and not just a traditional shoot them up first person shooter or a game bogged down with RPG elements. So then I turn to you, Mike, and I say, what is a survival first person shooter?

Is it so there's, is it just like when you and I are playing any other survival game and I'm picking things up, but I'm not changing my, my XP? I'm not getting XP? No crafting. So like we're not building a base. So that was a big one for me. It's like my mind goes to the open world survival crafting games. There is no crafting.

I'm not building a base. you can of course you'll grab ammo you'll dehydrate and you'll have to replenish with a red bull right in there and then you'll be able to run for longer you'll also eat

you'll have small effects on your health bar that like hey I'm hungry or I'm overburdened and I have too much in my backpack I'll walk slower when it comes down to survival I think it is the hardcore nature of it that really speaks to me and speaks to what the game is

it reminds you of escape from Tarkoff where a couple of bullets is going to put you down and you've got to be mindful of corners, you got to be mindful of sightlines. You want to find cover. You want to take engagements the correct way. It is a giant open world like a fallout. Think of that kind of setting and

all the things you can do in that. That leads to this like... I like that. I think a lot of people like that will like that. But the moment you jump in and you find out how difficult it is on the normal setting, it will make or break you. And with what I had, I had 30 deaths within the first, probably

three hours. And it was like, it's frustrating because the checkpoint system is not great. You are going to die and you are going to have to really hustle. You're going to have to save on your own. You're going to have to be mindful of that because the checkpoints did not do me any favors and really were breaking me over time. But I liked this open world that reminded me a fallout. I liked this intense kind of hardcore survival nature of an escape from Tarkoff, an old school PubG where you have to be mindful and shooting the right angles. It's a fun game at its core and that's what I liked about it. I mean, I feel like I for a second, just want to

jump away from the game itself, but like more talk about the game coming out this way. Obviously, a lot of issues with development of this game that we totally understand. But thinking about Xbox moving avowed to give this more space, does that feel like it's hard to talk about avowed? But like does that feel like the right call? Does it seem like this game needed more time? Because it seems like to me, putting this game out for review without that patch seems like a very bad idea. I mean, here's my thought on it. And we obviously don't know with Obsidian, with a vowed, if they needed more time or if they could have brought a vowed out in November as it was rumored to do.

But it almost seems like those two games should have been swapped. And maybe Stalker got more time and didn't come out until early 2025. And maybe you did put out a vowed now. I mean, we'll obviously never know. But this for sure needed more time, in my opinion, because first impressions are everything. And again, I can't stress enough that we've not played the day one patch. And I'm seeing the chat saying some people aren't having these kind of issues, which is great. But this was the impression that I've had over the past few days of being able to play it pre day one patch.

And you want to make sure that these games come out in a playable state so that you don't run into this problem. Like, I know we're not talking about this, but even flights him, 2024 yesterday. I couldn't play it yesterday because they were having server issues. So I was not able to get in to play that game. So, you know, for better or worse, that's a bad impression on flights M-20204 to people that may have been excited to jump in day one to play it. Now they got to wait an extra day. I was able to jump in this morning and check it out. But, you know, there was a delay on that.

So I don't know. I mean, you know, you want these games to come out. You want them to come out as polished as they possibly can. And unfortunately, this is an example of one that just didn't meet that deadline. I mean, you know, unless this day one patch did did a lot of heavy lifting, which, you know, I'm a little skeptical on until I try it myself. Yeah, it's an interesting question. Again, not having played it, not being a fan or whatever, it's windy shit outside, I think, yeah. Yeah, it sounds like this place.

What is it? The Pacific Cyclone or whatever they're calling this one, God damn it. Anyways, uh, I think it's an interesting take and an interesting question of like, why release it in this state? But again, we're in this weird thing of did the day one patch fix so much of these issues? And I would hazard to guess, right? Even though Xbox cares, I don't know how much they care about the review scores for Stalker 2. Is Stalker 2 such a niche title?

So hard. So, hey, we're building something very specific here that the Stalker audience is going to love. We don't expect this to be a breakout thing. We don't expect this. That when they're on the tracks that have been laid of like, all right, cool, we send out review code here. And then they're like, shit, we're not, the game sucks.

We need, we're going to do this patch. It'll be late. Xbox goes, well, we're not going to delay, we're not going to put a weird, we're not going to tell, we're not going to send review codes. But I feel like that's the move though, right? Like, like, like, let's talk about that for a second. You're not wrong. I'm just thinking of it. Wouldn't that make way more sense?

Because like, why would they not put out review codes? Because all, then everyone's going to be like, oh, the game might be bad. It's probably bad because there's no codes. Well, now all the reviewers or a lot of the reviewers are saying, hey, it's a technical mess. Like, you should not play this game right now. Like, that's, that's very bad that I feel like, like, this conversation we're having here. here is not talking about how good the game is. The question could, I mean, the answer to that could be that they didn't know how bad it was.

Whoever's working, you know, uh, what developer, stalker developer? Why can't I remember their name? Stalkers developers are telling Xbox one thing and Xbox isn't in the weeds. They aren't the ones. GSC game world. Thank you very much. They're not the ones playing it, problem solving it. They don't know how rough this is going to go, how rough this is going to be.

Yeah. Maybe the day one patch was supposed to be way earlier. It was during review cycle or whatever. It just, this seems like the type of stuff. This is avoidable. That they need to avoid because Stalker 2, while I agree with what you're saying about genre-wise and what this game is, is a little more niche. This is also one of their big games that they are pushing with their Xbox game pass,

like the way that they're talking about what the Xbox game lineup looks like, right? Like this is one of the big heavy hitters for holiday. And like to start here, I mean, it's like, guys, we don't need these unforced errors. Like we need positive momentum. Like it just as an outside of this, somebody that is, not interested in this game at all, this just seems like missteps that they did not need to take. 100%. Mike, what do you think about that? I think that the general audience is probably still caught up with Call of Duty on Game Pass to even

think or worry about this, right? Like I totally get where you're coming from. And I think there's a small piece of the pie that is looking at this going, oh, that was a misstep that sucks. But I think the larger gaming audience is hyped up on the cloud adding more games on where you don't have game pass. There are excited of World Warcraft DLC, Diablo DLC, Call of Duty now being out. Microsoft Flight Sim,

even with its woes, is going to wow people over the next two weeks. So I think there's just so much in the Xbox ecosystem that small pieces like this that may seem like a big rake to the face are actually smaller in the grand scheme of things

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from your experience with Stalker 2 so far. Paris, let's start with you. So one thing that I, again, that I want to talk about that I love about Stalker 2 is some of the encounters that you'll have and not to get too spoilery about it, but I had an encounter that I did during the preview where I went to this tower and you got into this whole conversation, you know, with these bandits and there's a guy up on the tower that, or he sent you. up to the tower to go get the stash and all that. But I played it completely different than I did during the preview. And I got into such an epic and intense gunfight as a result. And that's, that's to me is kind of the secret sauce of Stalker 2 where you get these encounters where when it's all

working the way that it does, you know, like I said before, you got to make sure that you come into the encounter fully stocked, ready to go as far as supplies go, ammo. health kits, bandages, things like that, because you can literally get pinned down by the AI with stuff like that. And that happened in this scenario. And it was completely different than the way, the way than it was in the preview. So to me, that shows that there's definitely choice in the game, depending on the choices that you make, encounters can go completely different. So it's not just on rail static, no matter what you decide in a dialogue, the encounter is going to be the same. So to me, that's the big positive of this,

where you're going to run into these dynamic encounters in the open world. And depending on, you know, how it goes and how you're stocked up, you're either going to die or you're going to get into something really intense. I like that, Paris. Yeah, I had a good couple of moments,

which I'm going to talk about the positives and a little bit of the technical problems because there is some very interesting situations on that one. You have these fun choices, right? I had a bandit group that was holding up a guy inside of a building who had locked himself in, And they're like, yo, we're getting after this guy. And I was like, well, I got to talk to this guy because I need him to go pay this other guy because I get 20% of it.

So I need this guy to live. And they're like, no, he's going down. And so I blast all the bandits. I let him out. And he's like, hey, man, thanks so much. I'm going to go pay this guy. And I was like, actually, you're paying me everything. And then I just blasted him.

Right. So I really liked that. There was another moment where I went to go see one of like the stalker slash bandits, like big bosses at his base. right and I got in there. Everybody was cool and I'm talking with him and he's like, here's the deal. You give me, you give me 20,000 credits and we got no problem.

And then the other option was, or I kill you right now because I'm the boss. And so now you have these issues with the technical problems where there are a number of moments where you will choose, no, we're going to fight instead. And then all of a sudden, it breaks out of the fallout

or elder school's dialogue that you know. And it's like a pause, but the NPCs, are running at me with all of their guns drawn and my game is like slowly bringing up my gun. I'm like, okay, we need this to hustle up. And then I blast all of them. That's really fun.

I wish that they would dial that in because it is really tough, especially on normal difficulty to do that. But I love the idea of like, I rolled into this guy's camp. We could have made friends or I could have continued to side with the cops over here and I blasted him, which was fun.

I like the hardcore survival. game. I know I bring up escape from Tarkoff, but that's what it reminds me of is these extraction shooters that are like life for death, every bullet counts, your positioning counts. That's how this game feels every moment and just walking around and getting into engagements and kind of being aware I need to go or now I know I need to stealth these three guys. Then I'm going to climb up on the roof. I'm going to get a good survey of the area in front of me. I'm going to snipe a couple and then I'm going to run down there. I loved all of those moments. day. It was so much fun. Paris, I don't know.

If you got the big sniper rifle from one of the captains out there, maybe because I was siding with them, I got this guy's like special sniper rifle. And he's like, no, I did not. But I do want to circle back to that first scenario that you mentioned. That was the same exact scenario that I had, but it played out completely different. That's crazy. That's what you do. That's my point. So that's, I love the dynamic aspects of that, that these encounters, depending on who you side with, the dialogue choices that you can make can go completely different or can go sideways or whatever the case, right? So this is what we're talking about here.

I know we've really labored on the technical issues. There's a good game here. 100% there's a good game here. And like I said, once the technical issues are ironed out, knock on wood, maybe they already are with the day one patch. I think people are going to enjoy stalker too. I really do. Would I enjoy it, Mike?

Greg, you would not enjoy this, unfortunately. You would enjoy a certain half of this. But we just said sound is so cool. It sounds like RPG. If you put it on easy, you would enjoy this. I noticed on my hour four, I put it on easy because I needed to get through an encounter. And it is much different. But that punishing aspect is what's going to draw people and capture people.

Because when you do die over and over again and you feel that punishment, that's what we're going for in this game. That's what you want to play out of that. So I highly recommend it on normal. If you want to go down to easy for an encounter or just to get the story, that's great. But the push of this game is, oh, this is tough and it's punishing me and I need to be better. What do I got to do? Because, yeah, I'll tell you an environmental anomaly. If you step into one, usually on normal, it's probably going to take you 75% or possibly kill you.

If you're on normal, it takes about 25 to 50%, and you just kind of run through it. it's like, oh, that's nothing to me. And all of the game's mechanics kind of just drift down and they don't become part of the game anymore. So that's why going to a beginner is not the right move here. Okay. But man, I'll tell you what, this guy gave me his sniper rifle. And I was like, you don't want to give me your sniper rifle. He's wearing the bullet casing.

They have this big speech. They're like, you're going to give me the sniper rifle. And I'm a stalker and you're a cop and you're going to let me start shooting people with this. But you're wearing the bullet casing, people are going to come back to you. He's like, you know what? It's all good. I trust you. That was a mistake.

I don't even know what happens. That was a mistake. I'll tell you what, here's the issue. I've pulled that gun scope up, and it's sideways on the screen because the game is broken. Oh, no. And I couldn't shoot anything with it. And I was like, oh, that's so bad. But, man, there's cool moments.

You said I could trust her. Your gun jams, and you got to, like, there's just, you're shooting right, and then the gun jams, and you can't shoot. And you got to, like, re- reload, and he pulls out the bullet from the guns, and then you refire. It's cool. It's a really fun time. I mean, even on normal mode, you're going to get in the situation where I brought up with like the little crazy rats, right? There's a pack of 30 rats inside of this dead school bus area. And these rats won't leave me alone.

And I'm trying to shoot them. And there's so many of them. They're just eating me. There's fun in this game. And I want that. But here's the issue, Tim. I'm a first impression guy. And I got a thousand games to play.

I got 100 games as a service bringing me in. And this game speaks to me in a way. where I want more of it. I suffered through eight hours of it, knowing it was broken. And I would have kept going. But I just, now I have this moment of like, this game might just get put on the backlog and then even further

on the backlog. And I might forget about it. And that's unfortunate for me. Do you guys see that this is going to be a six months, a year from now, all the headlines? Stocker 2 is great now. Stocker 2 is amazing now. We're reviewing Stocker 2. Is that going to happen? I don't know. I think there's too many games. I rarely see that.

unless it's a classic or a great one, you know? I don't know where I stand with this leaving this review now, right? Like I want to get back to that. I want to see it because, man, Tim, another one is I love the world. I like the environment. As like dead of a zone that it is, it's like, you know, I brought up PubG, like the first PubG map, Arengall, right? That's Eastern European fallout wasteland where everything is kind of dead,

but there's a couple of big buildings that really are striking and cool POIs, but then there's these awesome weather events where they call you and they get on the radio and they're like, yo, we got something coming and you got to get in and all the NPCs will run into the base and you have to literally sit inside there and they're like, not many people live through this. Like you got to usually seek cover, but there are some people that could. And I'm like, am I going to be that guy one day? We'll see. But I love the idea of like there's this big world and a lot's happening from the cool

anomalies that you'll find. You can detect and you can get artifacts through them. you'll see the craziest, freakiest stuff that are like straight out of control where it's like, oh, it's messing with my mind, what's happening with gravity and the pieces of concrete are flying in circles to all of a sudden there's just a giant thunderstorm

and lightning bolts are hitting sideways all over the place and the map is completely dark. My one critique, give me a better headlight lamp. I don't know if you know Paris, but like a pen light, it's going nowhere. It is so dark in this game like 80% of the time because you are in like the darkest tunnel you're in an abandoned building.

It's nighttime. And they give me the weakest headlamp ever. It's like, yo, I just need you know you can upgrade that a little bit. It's not going to take away from the intense nature of this game. I got to be able to see. And I know the chat's going to get on me like Mike can't ever see. I mean, I got the lights on. I got the lights off.

My face is next to an 80s television. I'm trying my best to see this because it is so dark. And the lamp is cracked to 100. HDR cranked up. So, man, it's so much fun. So, Mike, you being eight hours in, Paris, you 11 hours in, how much of the game do you think you got through? Like, is there, how big is this game?

Maybe a third. Yeah, I wonder where I was getting to. I felt like I was getting to a pretty big moment, maybe the ending of the first third, maybe nearing the halfway points, because I was starting to mainline the story. Another great one. There's a lot of content here.

There's a lot of side missions. There's a lot of stuff to do. There's crazy stalker, little camp out hideouts that you can find with all of their gears. So you can find a lot of stuff if you want to slow down and explore the world. And it wants you to say, it sounds like the game you're describing would encourage me to go incredibly slow and salvage everything.

But yeah, I was hitting a big moment there. Yeah, I'll just say this as we wrap it up because, you know, I'm glad this game exists. We need more games like this. Obviously everything that GSC game world has been through,

you know, they have to be commended, you know, for getting this to the finish line. Sure, it is having a bumpy start, but hopefully they'll get that stuff quickly resolved. And I think to what you're originally asking, Tim, asking Mike, I think this game can have some legs if enough people, because we know Indiana Jones is coming in a few weeks.

I'm going to play Starger 2 here. I'm going to keep playing it. You know, bugs aside, I want to get to the ending of it. I just hope what we see in early 2025 doesn't bury it because we obviously know that February is going to be a monster year or a monster month I should say for a lot of games coming out. So it could kind of get lost in the weeds as a result. But I think if they can get enough of these bugs squashed early on, I think people again, that it's their type of game.

I would definitely recommend going to check it out and play it. Very cool. Any final thoughts on this, Mike? Yeah. This is a game that I really want to love, a game that I am interested in. It is a game that I just simply cannot play because it is not ready for me to jump in with all the technical issues. I look forward to seeing the update and people hopefully praising it and saying jump in and maybe I will. But for me, my life is moving so fast all the time.

It is, it hurts to say that I might not get back to this one. And that's unfortunate because I was viving with this. So jump in from a stalker two to start. Field. Oh, snap. Hello, how are you? I want to hear all about it. You yesterday will.

Will it into existence? Into existence. Said at the end to piss off my hot takes episode. I finish it off. I say, well, piss me off with a hot take. And I was like, they need to make more Starfield content.

He said, all right, you're getting there. And then what did we find? An hour later, they drop their November update. And if you haven't seen it, I understand. No big deal. There's a bunch of bug fixes and things like that. But what they, there it is. This is what I saw go through.

and originally on my feed, right, the new vehicle they have in there, right? The demog, as I'm going to call it. And I saw it and I was like, oh, somebody did a creation, obviously, mods are in Starfield now. Somebody did a creation of a DeLorean as a car. It's like, oh, no, that's an actual thing

since they've hit 15 million players. They're saying, hey, we're tossing this out there. And it is not, it's designed very much to be reminiscent of the Delorean the doors open up on the side. I've been playing with this since last night. Hell yeah. But for me, at least, more importantly,

they snuck a quest in there, a quest called the perfect recipe. This was at the very end of their thing is very much a seasonal quest, right? Their description goes, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, the perfect recipe invites you on a heartwarming journey through Aquila City, where the past and present collide in the hands of an unlikely dreamer. This character-driven quest line introduces you to Harb, a gifted mechanic with a hidden passion for the culinary arts. When you stumble upon a dusty recipe book during your travel, as you learn it belongs to him, a once hopeful chef whose ambitions are set aside for a more practical life. Return to the recipes ignites a spark,

rekindling old dreams of becoming a galaxy renowned chef. But could it be too late for a second chance? As soon as I saw that yesterday after the stream, I was like, hell yeah, throw away everything else I was talking about playing tonight. I'm going to jump in and do this. Yesterday's Gregway was... I didn't be a space chef. It was me.

No, I'm helping the space chef. I'm not the space chef. That's Harb's job. Don't worry about you. Yesterday. Exactly. Yesterday was me planted for Gregway in front of my TV, downloading this off of it, but then, I think, maybe more importantly, downloading the veil.

As I talked about a second there, of course, Starfield, what, the summer or right before the summer, their big announcement was, hey, we're launching mods, we're launching the creation aspect of this. You can go in, you can make stuff yada, yada, yada. And since that happened, I've been in there downloading stuff. Bethesda, even the quests they're doing, they're putting them into the creation shop, right? So you go there and you spend the credits to get them to go enjoy that, right? spend the credits. Right.

If memory serves perfect recipe from yesterday, completely free. Escape, which is their bigger one they put out, was in there for, I think, 500 credits, which is five bucks or whatever. And then they also launched it with some new stuff for the Vanguard missions, if I remember correctly, which I also think might have had money attached to it. But don't quote me on that. If anybody can look into that or correct me in the chat, that'd be great. Yeah, this is their whole, they have a creator's economy out there that you can do stuff.

Tons of stuff is free, but there is stuff you pay for. Anyways, when I was doing Greg away yesterday, I went in, downloaded the perfect recipe for free, downloaded the car for free, and then saw the veil there, which is not a Bethesda Game Studios creation. It is in fact a creation of Almighty SE, a Starfield creator out there. And I clicked on it and read about it as, you know, Barrett's going through right now, right? It's an actual full-blown quest line, join Emily Archer, a former agent as she follows a mysterious call from beyond the stars, confronts an advanced and powerful new faction and unearth ancient secrets hidden behind. I'm the veil. The veil is a quest featuring new locations, encounters and large battles where your actions influence the outcome. With a strong focus on action, the creation also leverages the POI system to make each play through more unique. It's fully voiced by talented voice actors. And so I read all that and during the thing, I was like, holy shit, this is exactly what I wanted of the creator's economy. It's nice to have a Mandalorian skin. It's nice to have the Batman skin. I'd much rather it be that I'm getting actual quests from people

putting them out there. So I forked over the five bucks there, downloaded this, as well. Jumped in last night. Did the perfect recipe. It was fun. It was cute. It's free again. It's a Thanksgiving theme thing, right?

If I'm on the kind of funny scale, reviewing that one specific quest, it's a six, five. Harb was very enjoyable as a character. This isn't, you're going out and killing a million people. You're not doing the space battles. You're not doing that, right?

Perfect recipe was you find the book. You go talk to Harb. He let go of his dreams. And now, guess what? He's like, I think I want to get back into it. So I run around, get some, it's a fetch quest thing. run and get some stuff, do some little things for her, have conversations with this one woman on a

date. Very, very weird. Because she was like, my date didn't show up, so you're going to be my date. And my wife, Andresia is standing right there. And I'm like, listen, I made it clear every time, Tim. I'm a man of Andreja. This is not a real, this is not a romantic date. Even when she started hinting around about dessert, I was like, no. No, ma'am. No, no, no. I'm with that woman over there. She'll stab you with her groat knife if I let you. I digress. Knocked it out, had fun. It was enjoyable. I thought, had a comical ending and it was very much the Thanksgiving thing of like, we're all here to support you, were your friends kind of thing.

So that was cute or whatever. Again, cute, whatever. It got me to turn back on Starfield, drive the car around, which I liked. They definitely built one of the fetch quest missions to be, hey, go use the car. Then I booted up the veil. Just I'm not done with it yet. So whereas the perfect recipe, I'm ballparking at 30 minutes, maybe less. You know, I'm playing and not really paying attention.

The veil I started right after. It must have been in an hour and a half, two hours. I'm still going up to the final thing here or whatever, but you want to talk about bang for your buck in terms of like, even the Bethesda escape mission that I loved so much was 30 minutes or whatever, maybe a little bit more. But this,

the veil, the voice acting, the choices, this is, again, I would say on the kind of funny scale, this quest, and I'm,

I'm pretty sure I'm about to do just the epilogue, where like, I've made the big choice. I lived through the decision. Now I have to go talk, like the deal to fall out and have the conversation with a couple of people. Like, I mean,

like, created thing. Holy shit. Because like you, this could have been slipped in and been like, oh, I would have been like,

oh man, the voice actors are wonky. Yeah, this guy didn't do a great performance. But when you learn, of course, it's all creators. It's all just mod community

doing this thing and putting out a quest this good that again, does what I want out of any of my RPGs, which is, hey, let's have some fucking choices. Are you going to go with this person or this person? You talk shit to this person or this person.

Deal with the, you know, fallout ramifications of that, let alone the big decision I just made here at the end or whatever, really top-notch stuff. And so for me, if I'm given the perfect recipe

a 6-5 saying it's okay, I would probably say, and again, this is within the world of Starfield, this is an 8-5 great quest. Like this is like, oh man,

like please, please, please give me more of these. I hope so much that, of course, the people who were involved with making this almighty SE, this is their first big quest. They have,

you have pulled up this companion thing. They've been creating for a while and obviously creations take time. This officially launched on October 1st, I hope to God, there are so many other creators out there doing it because when they announced the creation stuff, I'm playing and it was,

this would be my thing. But I know, I, first off, am not talented enough to use the creator to actually do it. And then secondly, I wasn't sure if it was actually able to do it. And now, still playing this,

but playing through this, it is possible. It is something that's out there. And I really hope the community that is there really rushes to make cool stuff. They don't have to be this long, but I'm really, really happy with it.

Sorry, is the community stuff, is that where the credits come into play? Yeah. So you have to, you pay, then do the creators get money at all? I do believe that's how this economy works. Yeah, yeah, you're going out there and supporting them. It kicks it back that way.

Yeah, yeah. But yeah, awesome stuff. Super excited for, for me, it's such a cool thing of a proof of concept of where we go from here and what hopefully gets added. You know, Blessing joked around when I interrupted Games Daily to talk about it. He's like, oh, so, you know, the creators are finally doing what you want a Starfield to do or whatever. And it's like, well, no, I've played 125 hours of Starfield, vanilla. I want people to get in there now and make cool shit to go. let me keep playing and do more with my characters, right?

Paris, does do anything for you? Yeah, I mean, I'm a fan of Starfield. I still have not played Shattered Space because you've been so busy with a thousand other things, but I love that they're continued to support the game, and we're getting this community created content. We're seeing all these mods that are making all these quality of life features to it. So yeah, I'm definitely on board. I just got to find time.

Of course. Yeah, big part of it, yeah. And, you know, again, I just, I can't say it enough because I think there are the people who have had bad experiences with in the past, which I totally understand. But again, how awesome the cloud is. Like, I don't, I can't, you know, I know we got great internet. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. The fact that last night when Ben was struggling to go down and Jen was in there, I'm not in there. She's in there. We're going in and out trying to get him down. I didn't want to go downstairs and lock in. So it was grab the backbone, toss it on my

phone, go in and like, again, for at least what I do in Starfield and even shooting in Starfield, feel so fucking good. Set it up the way I wanted to. Go sell these things. Go get everything. Go get with the ammo. And then getting here today and having, I got in earlier than I thought, right?

So to try to have it wrapped by this show, which I got pretty dang close. Like I said, I think it's going to be ending when I get back to it. Like just to sit there and play. And even Mike, where you heard the music cue up on my phone. He's like, you're back.

You know what I mean? It's just like, but there it is. And it's going and I drop in and it just fucking works. I'm so, I'm so impressed with Xbox on that cloud stuff. Very, very cool.

We got a couple super chats. I want to get to before. We close out this episode of the games cast and get to the boys playing some magic at the gathering. Casper writes in saying, would reviews have to change because of the patch for Stocker 2? Since they reviewed the game in a state that's different from what gamers will experience day one,

I mean, that's the problem with, you know, the way that review codes come out and the way coverage of reviews happens where, I mean, we just had a discussion here that we didn't put a score on it, right? This was a discussion about our thoughts and we even broke down how that might change with a patch over time. Other teams might not do that.

Other teams review the product that they're given. And I feel like, yeah, there's not a right way to do this, but I do think that when you put out a review code for people to review, that's what they're reviewing. And you can put all the asteris and copyouts you want on it. But, you know, the experience is the experience. So I don't think that it's on reviewers necessarily to go back and re-review a game. That's not how this works.

Yeah, you know, everybody takes something different with review and what that means. And we've learned definitely over our almost decade now of when we say review what that might cue to somebody else versus what we mean for it. And you have to take it as the creator who's creating it and what they review means to them. So it's not like there's a law to go back and redo it. I think another big wrinkle to this that's very interesting and maybe alarming in some ways for the dot coms and what we've seen in the industry and the video game press side is how

little I think reviews do matter. Or I say how little they matter, but how their importance is dropping. where it is so much a thing where it's like with fucking TikTok and streaming and social media and this like it's no longer IGN's word is the fucking word of God and whatever they said will make or break a game

right like it was when I fucking ruin some companies right it's the idea now that like that matters to a degree but it really is going to be the stalker podcast the stalker streamer the breakthrough this the person getting on

again getting on to GamePass today using it on the cloud and having it run flawlessly and have the patch and whatever, like that's what matters the most to Xbox rather than what the medic critic's going to be. Oh, we got it. Isaiah's saying that this maybe should have been an early access title. What do you think about that, Paris?

I don't think so. The game's final. It just has some technical shoes. I think that's kind of unfair to say. That's why I just think it just probably need a little bit more time of polish and it'd be fine. Joker Man says, always good to have Paris on a games cast.

And I agree with that. And then the last one from Trevor here, Mike and Paris, I want both of your thoughts on this. When I think of a rough launch when I had to drop the game, I think of cyberpunk, a buggy mess that I dropped after eight hours and waited until the big next gen patch. Would you say this is bugger than launch cyberpunk? No, this is nowhere near what cyberpunk went through. Cyberpunk needed years of polish to get to where it is today. This probably might have needed, you know, another month or two. and it'd be fine.

I agree with that. Cool. Well, there we go, everybody. Another games cast in the books are initial thoughts on Stalker 2. Let us know in the comments below. If you're going to play day one, if you're going to wait a little bit and see if it shakes out a little bit better, a little better performance as well.

And yeah, stay tuned. If you're watching on Twitch, you don't need to go anywhere. But if you're watching on YouTube, make the jump to the other YouTube link where the boys are going to play a little magic, the gathering, the actual physical card. game. Pretty cool. It's back. Visceral gaming is back. It's back, baby.

But yeah, Paris, thank you so much for joining us. Where can people find you? You can. I hate when you ask me this. You could find me on social media. I'm at Vicious 696. You can find me on Gamer Tag Radio, and you can find me here.

Kind of funny. And it's a great YouTube channel. He likes to hide it, but he has a fantastic YouTube channel. He can't remember any URL, but he tweets about how great it is. But he wants about it. Change the name to Paris. Go support Paris,

everybody. Until next time, have a wonderful day. Marcelo, get out of here. Hey, it's my name.