Fifteen years after the launch of their last major release, GSC Game World is back with their most ambitious game to date: Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl. In true STALKER fashion though, Heart of Chornobyl is full of heart, offers an oppressive world, and — of course — has plenty of bugs.
Whether it’s the incredibly hostile geopolitical environment(in game development), the common and recurring issues we’ve seen with Unreal Engine 5, or just the insistence on staying true to the experience, Stalker 2 remains faithful to the franchise even at the cost of some jank.
Heart of Chornobyl
Compare the reviews of Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl to any mainline entry in the series, and the trend remains largely the same fifteen years later: ambitious over-polish continues to define the franchise. Fans expected nothing less and took to the subreddit and forums to express their initial impressions that line up with what we’ve been expecting.
”I’ve got 10 hours so far and,” said Reddit user voice-of-reason_. “Aside from the random bugs and performance issues, it is exactly what I was expecting.”
It’s clear that Stalker 2 offers an experience that’s hard to come by in the AAA space with a focus on survival in a hostile world, immersion thanks to its jaw-dropping visuals, thick atmosphere, and organic encounters that happen every 20 feet. Even when pointing out the many bugs and technical issues with the game, there’s always praise sprinkled in for the many things it gets right.
“They definitely did make a unique and captivating experience that players will remember despite launch bugs,” said another user. “The game is amazing.”
While it might be a bit of a shock for newcomers to the series, this is basically what the fanbase expected from the new release. If you aren’t seeing a ragdoll possessed by Pazuzu, are you really playing Stalker?
Let’s not forget how the original releases are still riddled with bugs that the community has managed to fix over the years thanks to extensive mods and fan patches.
“And honestly,” another player reflected, “it would have been weird and not felt like a STALKER game to me if it didn’t have bugs and janky moments.”
That’s not to say every issue can be lovingly overlooked as there are several technical problems we’re confident will be addressed in future updates. Stuttering and sudden frame drops are common in other Unreal Engine 5 titles as well, but these aren’t impossible to fix.
While the game has an extensive shader compilation process at each launch, that isn’t enough to fix every instance of stuttering. What’s more, there are frequent crashes that can occur for a variety of reasons, both due to the choice of the engine, and due to some obvious optimization issues.
Modders have already taken posts and are doing their best to optimize the PC version with configuration tweaks. We’ve been able to tweak Stalker 2 as well to improve the experience by disabling the vignette effect, adjusting the FOV, and disabling mouse smoothing as well.
The Road Ahead
GSC Game World announced that they’re aware of the many problems players are facing and are listening to feedback to squash bugs and improve performance.
Despite the rough edges, Stalker 2 has already sold over one million copies across all platforms in two days, which is a monumental achievement for the studio that only released “cult classics” until now.
It peaked earlier today on Steam with a smashing 117K concurrent player count and has a “Very Positive” review rating from Steam users. It’s a miracle that Stalker 2 is even out, especially considering the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia.
While Stalker 2 definitely could be in a better state, we’re just glad to see GSC Game World push through and release their most ambitious title to date.
