A fun but unstable anomaly
As the Fallout series has made infamous: War, War Never Changes. And when it comes to STALKER 2, no other quote is perhaps more apt. The world is a bleak, inhospitable wasteland, full of miserable people requiring you to traverse a miserable landscape in search of more miserable people within a miserably optimized game. And within all this misery, is a surprisingly moreish and eye-wateringly brutal First Person Shooter.
This long-awaited sequel takes all the ingredients inherent in the STALKER series and throws them into a brand new adventure, set with plenty of missions to complete and areas to explore. The setting, as mentioned earlier, is the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, which is a stunningly realized, bleak wasteland. This very much feels reminiscent of the emptiness inherent with games like Fallout 3 (I’ll stop mentioning Fallout now, don’t worry!) and the colour palette ranges from murky browns and muted greens, across to light dashes of red. And a whole smattering of grey. Lots and lots of grey.
The reason I mention all of this is because STALKER 2 is absolutely gorgeous to look at. The emptiness of it all, in itself, is definitely a core feature here and it’s going to be a love/hate experience for some because there are definite stretches of this game where the word just feels completely empty. Conversely though, it definitely sucks you into this as a believable way of showcasing just how devoid of life the Exclusion Zone is.
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The world is its own character but the one we follow across the bleakness is a guy called Skif. The early hours quickly set up a betrayal which leads our titular character on a wild goose chase, across the wide, open map, navigating past mutants, other humans (both friendly and hostile), along with navigating wild anomalies.
The game ties into the first a little, but you don’t necessarily need experience with that one to get invested in the story. There’s enough here to entice you in and as the story starts to ramp up in intensity and depth, it also introduces an organization called SIRCAA and the military known as the Ward. I won’t spoil anything here but suffice to say, there’s enough to keep you going but nowhere near the level of writing to urge you onto the next set piece. However, the story alone will take you around 20-30 hours to complete – and that’s without deviating and going into side missions or exploring the world.
Furthermore, there are some key choices to make along the way that will alter what sort of missions you’ll receive, although most of this is railroaded into the same ending. However, the path up to that point can deviate and it’s testament to the devs that they’ve managed to weave these changes so organically into the plot without a simple black or white choice leading to a “good” or “bad” path.
Because to be honest, most of the people you meet in the wasteland are of the latter category. There’s just different degrees of bad, ranging from those who curse you out, others who shun you and others still who will straight up antagonize or attack you. Regardless, you do need to be prepared to die. A lot.
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Newcomers to the franchise are going to have a hard wake-up call here as the difficulty spike is intentionally brutal. Mutants will immediately drain all your bullets, enemies have pinpoint accuracy and feel like bullet sponges, while the resources you find out in the world are scarce and easily consumed in a short span of time. And yet, through all of this brutality is a sort of beauty to the madness. It really does sucker you in and make every fight – even one against a lowly human – all that much more intense.
This means that you really need to manage your resources effectively, and figure out what to take with you – and when.
In terms of your gear, items are separated into different categories, with bandages used to resolve bleeding, Med-Packs to heal your HP and Anti-Rad Medicine to stave off the effects of radiation. There’s no hard or fast rule to the way you engage with the world or what resources to prioritize, and this is both STALKER’s strength and weakness.
The game doesn’t feature a level-up system per-se, and instead relies on you finding better gear and extra modifications for your weapons to make them more powerful. This approach is an interesting one and for the most part, it does work quite well. There’s never a time where you really feel overpowered against anyone (in fact it’s usually the latter), and it also feeds into that idea of exploring the environment carefully and engaging in certain firefights for the hopes of obtaining extra gear to make yourself just a little bit stronger for the challenges ahead.
It’s a system that takes a while to get used to but if you’ve got some patience and time, this one definitely rewards your efforts with a surprisingly engrossing and immersive experience. Unfortunately, it’s also quite clunky as well and the game certainly isn’t going to hold your hand and explain how to pack effectively for the missions ahead. There are certain workarounds that can be used to exploit the system (if you load a dead body full of gear and run with it, you’ll go further than trying to stagger while over-encumbered with gear).
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Speaking of systems, the real elephant in the room though comes from the enemy AI. There are different difficulties available before you start, but even on the lowest difficulty, this is an absolute challenge to get through. It’s almost borderline a chore at times. The enemy AI ranges from walking into doorways and unsure how to proceed, to straight up Killzone-esque brutality levels of flanking and firing on your location with supressing fire while their teammate sneaks up from behind. This makes encounters that much more unpredictable than they should be. And that’s before mentioning the mutants which are just straight up bastards and so difficult to take out – especially early on.
That’s really not helped by the fact that stealth is, well, non-existent. Good luck sneaking up on anybody and enemies are even able to see you through walls. Some of this can be combatted by the game warning to put your weapon away inside different bases, but given how antagonistic a lot of the humans are in this game, sometimes it doesn’t even make a difference.
Not only are the rewards quite poor for killing these guys (and the mutants in particular),the game itself is lacking any sort of consistent balancing either. The economy system is pretty much useless. The cost for buying bullets is vastly overpriced. While repairing your weapon gets brutally expensive the longer you play. The game really does railroad you into finding the best gear out in the wilderness, but the trouble is, once you find a weapon you like, the game punishes you for sticking with your trusty piece.
Unfortunately, this is only compounded further by the fact that guns break quickly. There’s a lot of jamming going on too (the gun variety, rather than the musical type) and it can happen way too often, especially for those not accustomed to the STALKER type of gameplay. Some of this is combatted (no pun intended) by the excellent gunplay. Honestly, the fighting in this game feels so damn good, even with the issues that combat is plagued with.
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The guns all have a good kick to them (when they don’t jam, see above) and you’ll quite quickly find those that feel good to use and stick with them for your duration of time across the wasteland.
Unfortunately, where STALKER 2 really slips up is with its performance. I was playing on a rig with an Intel Core i9, 32 GB RAM and a NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4070Ti and I encountered a litany of issues. Not only graphical glitches and framerate drops, but also technical hiccups too. While there wasn’t anything as bad as outright crashes to the desktop, I’ve had enemies and NPCs not spawning, freezing between missions, and at one point I had an enemy just spawn on top of me and kill me immediately for some reason.
With all that being said, STALKER 2 then is a bit of a mixed bag. I really want to recommend this one, because there’s a lot that this game does right. The atmosphere is excellent, the gunplay enjoyable and the progression system for upgrading gear works really effectively in the wasteland. However, wonky AI, unoptimized systems and some awful performance issues and glitches hold this back from being a more stable venture into the wasteland. Your mileage with this one will definitely differ depending on your tolerance for this sequel, but this is one anomaly that’s a little too unstable to be considered a must-play diamond in the rough.
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