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Friday Fun Thread for November 15, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Any S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fans out there? 5 days until release of the long-awaited sequel. The newly updated system requirements dashed my hopes for launch, unfortunately.
But GAMMA's latest update is launching on december 3rd, and it's a big one. Huge changes to artifacts, gear, damage system. And tooltips that are actually accurate and descriptive, for the first time ever.

Those sysreqs sound like they're giving up on their traditional audience playing games on PCs salvaged from an eastern bloc computer lab. Unless I'm behind the times and all the Estonians are rocking 3090s now.

I enjoyed the original pretty happily during initial release (and played and enjoyed with caveats Clear Sky), though I never got too heavily into the modded sphere. There was always a bit of tension between the different gameplay components -- the full Roadside Picnic where impatience was your worst enemy, the horror bits of a bloodsucker popping up out of nowhere, and the 'puzzle' of 'use sniper on guy' outdoor warfare always ground a bit at the edges -- but it was pretty enjoyable for what it was.

Not sure if I'll get the sequel any time soon, but good to keep in mind.

Guess I'll need a new gpu first. Frickin Unreal Engine. Might look pretty good but never runs great. I might hate it even after the gpu upgrade. Something always feels subtly off about UE's first person camera.

I've bought an AMD Ryzen 9800X3D and will be building a pretty monstrous pc soon, but will wait until the Nvidia 5000 series before getting a new gpu.

I like the idea of Stalker far more than I enjoy playing it, though, to be fair, I've only played the Anomaly mod which is a markedly different experience from vanilla in many regards.

Still, I expect that the devs have probably taken a hint from the things the community tinkered with over the decades since the last release, and I look forward to giving it a go.