IN THE ZONE

STALKER 2: HEART OF CHORNOBYL is beautiful, brilliant, but a bit busted

- By Joshua Wolens

I admit it: I was scared. The gleaming trailers, the Microsoft showcases, the Unreal Engine 5—STALKER 2’s marketing didn’t look like any STALKER I’ve known and loved. Had GSC Game World traded in all the series’ beloved jank in pursuit of streamlined console success? Had it made Metro by another name? Well, never trust a trailer.

It might be shinier and it might have gamepad support, but STALKER 2 is still STALKER down to its bones, that unique and unreplicable mixture of FPS, survival horror and immersive sim. Whether X-Ray or UE5, the game’s ambition still strains against the seams of its engine. It’s still filled with systems —factions, artifacts, anomalies, a world filled with people going about their business and the staccato thuk-thuk of Eastern Bloc weaponry—that at times push the whole thing to breaking point and beyond it.

It’s excellent, and undoubtedly my personal game of the year, but here comes the caveat. I meant what I said: STALKER 2 is STALKER to the bone, and that means the bad stuff too. There were errors, crashes, progress-halting bugs and at-times hilarious glitches in animation and AI, plus minor stuttering that I just came to accept as the price of admission, even at 1440p on my 3700X, RTX 4080, and 32GB RAM-equipped machine. And though a meaty day-one patch has helped a lot, the game still feels rickety: a bit stuttery, with AI that still sometimes fails to distinguish between friend and foe, and so on.

Lord knows I can’t fault the devs—that the game exists at all despite its home country being invaded partway through development is a miracle—but it does mean the whole thing feels like it hasn’t quite set just yet. Do I love STALKER 2? Yes. Does