Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl was in a little bit of a state when it launched earlier this month, as developer GSC Game World was all too conscious. It took lower than a day for the studio to acknowledge the post-apocalyptic shooter’s “tough edges”, and it has been flinging out fixes since then. And at this time brings a 3rd patch, this one weighing in at round 20GB on PC.
Patch 1.0.3 (which totals a quite extra svelt 7.91 GB on Xbox Series X/S) is not, maybe, as horny as GSC’s first, which got here with the eye-catching promise of over 650 fixes. Improvements are nonetheless enhancements, although, and this time the studio has set its sights on crashes, reminiscence leaks, management changes, mission and aspect missions, plus stability and AI.
Additionally, replace 1.0.3 addresses a probably heart-stopping difficulty that was inflicting participant saves to fade after a tough reboot of their PC or Xbox. “Thanks once more to your help,” the studio concludes in its launch notes on Steam. “We will proceed engaged on future updates, studying your feedback and suggestions, and fixing ‘anomalies’ in the event that they happen.”
Stalker 2’s vital technical points had been highlighted repeatedly at launch, regardless of an in any other case stable essential reception. “It all hurts the sport’s pure playability fairly badly, even whether it is usually humorous”, we mentioned in our three star overview – so hopefully GSC can get its shooter to a spot the underlying expertise is extra readily in a position to shine.
Not that bugs have stemmed participant enthusiasm for the developer’s long-awaited sequel; GSC introduced Stalker 2 had offered over 1m copies simply days after launch. Its large recognition does, nonetheless, seem to have made the Ukrainian-developed recreation the goal of a brand new Russian disinformation marketing campaign, falsely claiming it scans gamers’ computer systems with a view to assist the Ukranian authorities “find residents appropriate for mobilisation”.
