Hello! Here we are again with another round of updates. You may already be seeing some review outlets publish their assessments for Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, yet unfortunately ours won’t be included just yet. We wanted to share where things stand with our review, along with why it’s taking a little longer.
To put it plainly, we need a bit more time with this release for two main reasons. First, Stalker 2 is a very substantial game, and we simply haven’t spent enough time with it so far. Because of that, we’re giving ourselves extra days to ensure we can produce a review that reflects the full experience.
The second reason is both more urgent and more worrying. Right now, the early review build of Stalker 2 provided to us by developer GSC Game World is running into several serious technical difficulties. We’ve been told that a Day One update will go out alongside the game’s official launch today, and we want our review to match the version you’ll be playing yourselves.
With that in mind, we’re planning to publish our review on Friday November 22nd, at which point you’ll be able to read our full impressions of Stalker 2.
Technical problems are, of course, common during big launches like this. And when it comes to Stalker 2—developed during Russia’s invasion of Ukraine—that reality is unfortunately not entirely surprising.
Still, some of the issues we ran into have been too pronounced to brush aside. During our time with the game, we saw NPCs get caught in whirlwind anomalies, only to keep spinning upward into the sky after the anomaly faded, rather than returning to the ground. We also encountered characters trapped within walls, violently flailing, and at times they simply wouldn’t show up at all—resulting in conversations with floating headphones. One Stalker we were traveling with even collapsed on the spot for reasons that weren’t clear.
We ran across plenty of audio problems as well. Dialogue lines sometimes didn’t activate when they should have, radio chatter could sound as crisp as if the speakers were standing right next to us (and the reverse happened too), and there were moments when the subtitles displayed didn’t match what was actually being said on-screen. On top of that, we hit a recurring problem when using one of our weapons, where gunfire would cut out for long stretches.
There were also multiple instances where Stalker 2’s bugs disrupted our quest progress, caused our deaths, left us genuinely confused, and overall made the game harder to play.
I should note that our review copy has been updated several times while we were testing, and that many of these problems are being worked on by GSC Game World. Even so, until we can properly evaluate what the Day One update delivers, we felt it was the right call to hold off on our final verdict so we can examine it more carefully.
In the meantime, I suggest you read Rick Lane’s in-depth Stalker 2 preview from last month to get some helpful background. You should also take a look at GSC Game World’s own documentary on the game’s development, War Game: The Making of Stalker 2. And if you haven’t yet, you can confirm your PC meets the requirements by revisiting Stalker 2’s PC specifications. Keep an eye out for more updates from us soon, and thanks again for your understanding!