S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 - gamebastion.com

Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl has been in the wild for almost a week now, and it’s a great, if predictably somewhat shonky time, is the word on the street. Literally, that’s what the streets are saying. “It’s good! A bit shonky, though!” opined my postman this morning, enunciating each syllable by yanking the package further from my grasp. “Don’t worry!” I said. “A patch for the FPS is coming next week”. “That’s cheered me right up, that has! Thank god for games journalists!” he replied. Then the whole street started cheering and bringing me various baked goods. It was a delicious time, and here’s the notes from the delicious patch:

Crash Fixes, including:

Main Quest Progression Fixes, including:

Gameplay & Balance Adjustments, including:

Cutscenes & Visual Fixes, including:

Softlock Fixes, including:

User Interface Improvements, including:

Noted to be addressed in future updates:

That’s a fair few key issues targeted, which is reassuring, although I do get the sense the series’ history with bugs has primed the audience to be a little more forgiving this time around - understandable given the extraordinary circumstances that GSC Game World faced during development. Personally, I only have one request: please do not patch out this guy’s dodgy teeth:

I’m not sure if the screenshot fully conveys what I’m talking about here, so do have a look at the Gameranx video where I found the footage. And, yes, I admit this is a strange thing to get excited about, but I’m genuinely happy to see such imperfect, yellowing (even if it’s partially the flashlight) teeth in a game. It’s the sort of realistic touch that feels incredibly minor until you realise just how few games actually do it. Like, I say 'dodgy', but they're not even dodgy, really. They're just a normal bloke's normal, imperfect teeth.

I haven’t spent enough time with the game yet to tour its full menagerie of miscoloured mouths, although after reviewing the game, James tells me that dodgy teeth aren’t