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It was nighttime and I was creeping through grass of S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2‘s digital recreation of the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. I needed to meet up with someone, but getting anywhere in the “Zone”— the eerie, desolate, but oddly beautiful irradiated setting of the game—is dangerous. To make sure I was going the right way I pulled out my map and plotted out my next path. And then a large feral pig slammed into me out of nowhere and nearly killed me. I got up, fired a few rounds at the hog and healed, right before another pig barreled me over.
Then the framerate dipped, my game crashed, and when I booted up my save it crashed again. I loaded once more, and was surrounded by more pigs popping out of nowhere. Another crash. I sighed because this was far from the first time Stalker 2 had frustrated me with bugs, crashes, or performance problems. It’s a shame, because when the game works it’s a special and challenging survival experience that forces you to think twice or be killed in seconds.
Still, in many ways it’s a miracle that I’m playing Stalker 2 on my Xbox Series X at all.
The long, painful road to Stalker 2‘s release
The open-world FPS survival game was first announced in 2010 with a 2012 release date. But developer GSC Game World collapsed in 2011, and that version of Stalker 2 was canceled the following year.
Then in 2014, GSC Game World was rebooted and the team developed and released the RTS sequel Cossacks 3. In 2018, this new version of the studio announced plans to make Stalker 2. Years later, the sequel made an appearance at E3 2021 on Microsoft’s stage. Things were looking good.
Then in February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, the country where GSC Game World is located. This disrupted the lives of the devs and threw a massive wrench in the development of Stalker 2 as people tried to escape the war or left to fight back. Eventually GSC Game World moved development of Stalker 2 out of Ukraine and into Prague, but had to recast some actors due to deaths or people disappearing. Stalker 2‘s December 2022 release date was delayed into 2023, then 2024. A September release was planned, then delayed to November 20, which GSC was able to hit.
I say all this because I want to make it clear that the very fact that Stalker 2 is a game you can play right now on Xbox and PC, and that it looks good and is mostly functional, is an impressive feat. GSC Game World and its devs deserve a lot of credit for shipping this thing.
Stalker 2 is an impressive and janky experience
However, that said, at the moment Stalker 2 is a mess. On Xbox Series X/S I’ve encountered numerous bugs, including (but not limited to) flashing textures, wild pop-in, enemies randomly appearing out of nowhere, crashes, performance dips, controller input issues, dialogue not working, audio problems, and quests breaking. I’ve talked to others who played the game on PC and while things seem better over there if you have a solid rig, it’s also a mess. I mean the most popular mods for Stalker 2 right now are all dedicated to making the game run better.
And yet, I keep coming back to Stalker 2 because there’s a really immersive and tense survival game buried under all the bugs, problems, and jank.
In Stalker 2 every firefight feels harrowing and dangerous. When you hear a gunshot in Stalker 2‘s photorealistic wasteland, you don’t spin around and run toward it like you might in Fallout or Borderlands. Instead, when I heard gunshots, I’d creep away into a bush or delapidated building and try to see what the hell was going on. You feel very vulnerable in this world. Enemies can take a lot of damage, mutants can kill you in one or two hits, and bullets and health items are limited and precious.
At one point in Stalker 2 I was so desperate for ammo that I was unloading enemy weapons after killing someone in the middle of a gunfight just so I had a few more bullets to use. Crawling around in the mud, in the dark, scrambling for a few stray rifle bullets while I bleed out slowly and don’t have a bandage to save myself is not an experience you’ll find in most open-world games in 2024.
So it’s a shame that during that firefight my performance dipped into the mid-20s or so, and when I was done the quest marker didn’t disappear on the map. 20 minutes later the game crashed again, too. (That’s become less common since a Day 0 update, thankfully.)
Stalker 2 isn’t ready for primetime, but you might enjoy it
It leaves me in a weird spot. Recommending Stalker 2 right now seems irresponsible. I’ve not encountered such a broken and janky video game in a long time. GSC Game World sounds committed to improving and fixing Stalker 2, and considering that they were able to ship a game like this in the middle of a war, I don’t doubt things will get better. Eventually.
But this is also a game that I couldn’t even get close to finishing for a full review because I got it only a few days before launch and a myriad of technical issues and performance problems frequently stopped me.
And despite the hardships the devs went through, it’s only fair that I make it clear that Stalker 2, especially on Xbox, is a wildly broken and wonky thing.
If you can stomach all the bugs and performance issues and are craving an open-world game that isn’t just another RPG-lite collect-a-thon like Far Cry, then you might want to check it out. (The game is on Game Pass PC and Xbox.)
For everyone else, it’s probably better to wait and see how future updates and mods improve Stalker 2.
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Kurt Indovina
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