GSC Game World has released Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl‘s first big patch for PC and Xbox. It has over 650 fixes across the spectrum, including ones that would prevent the player from progressing and fixing an issue where corpses had terrifyingly long limbs.
The studio posted the Patch 1.0.1 patch notes Friday, and there are almost too many fixes to highlight. The lot features fixes to memory leaks and crashes, NPC behavior, movement issues, objectives that couldn’t be completed, and physics where objects would just float. There were also problems with character faces where eyes and teeth just looked … off. Fixes have been released for those, too.
Stalker 2 had horrible performance issues at launch, especially on PC, although a lot of this was understandable because of its troubled development. It had delays brought on by the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine. That’s before factoring in the size and demands of the game and the generally low bar for Stalker, where a level of jank is a part of the charm. Still, it made it tough to get through for our reviewer. Thankfully, GSC Game World released a patch during the review period that radically improved its playability.
A message from the GSC Game World Team.
Before you step into the Zone, we’d like to take a moment to share something from the heart. pic.twitter.com/wuLRAkq7Ba
— S.T.A.L.K.E.R. OFFICIAL (@stalker_thegame) November 20, 2024
GSC has also been working on hotfixes since launch. The plan is to continue working on these immediate fixes before switching to “larger updates that include constant improvements.” The studio will then transition into free in-game content. A precise roadmap is scheduled to release next month.
Despite all the problems, Stalker 2 still had a successful launch week, selling over 1 million copies in the first two days, according to GSC. That’s not including players who may have checked out the game with Xbox Game Pass.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.