Review: Stalker 2’s best ideas are undercut by a stale plot and constant performance problems
No discussion of Stalker 2 is possible without the real-world situation facing the development of the game. Before this review begins we’d recommend reading our recent feature on our trip to the now Prague-based studio, as well as the studio’s own documentary about the making of the game.
That being said, this review will heavily reference a litany of technical problems that we faced while reviewing the game. While we are not hand-waving them away due to the circumstances, we feel it’s important at the beginning to acknowledge the unique nature that Stalker 2 finds itself in at launch.
Stalker 2 is oppressive. From an opening that barely tells you what to do and expects you to die before you ever see a checkpoint, to the taunting game over screen that tells you just how many times you’ve succumbed to the zone.
Every enemy encounter could spell death, every new location could be teeming with anomalies. It’s a game world that effectively communicates that it doesn’t want you there better than most in recent memory.
Stalker 2 is a hardcore shooter born in an era where they’ve largely disappeared. A new player approaching Stalker may expect, from the outset, a modern FPS RPG like Fallout or Far Cry, but quickly they’ll have reality coldly slapped into them.
Stalker 2 is all about survival. You arrive in the Exclusion Zone, tasked with finding out more about anomalies, which are otherworldly occurrences that have appeared throughout the world.
These can be things like electric fields that shock anyone that enters them, or whirling vortexes of wind that will throw the player across the map with ease. This is set against a background of political strife in the Zone, where limited resources, food, and weaponry make interactions with the people of the Zone pivotal to how your story plays out.
Stalker 2’s greatest assets are its location and characters. While the overall narrative isn’t massively compelling, the smaller character stories are, and paint a story of survival that isn’t
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