S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PC

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 will be a good game. Possibly even a great one, especially for those who like their post-apocalyptic, sci-fi tinged survival outings to be tough-as-nails, demanding harsh resource management, and forcing difficult choices on them at every turn.

Unfortunately, at launch, it is not that good, possibly great game that it could, and hopefully will one day be. It's an incredibly buggy excursion into The Zone, the nuclear wasteland first established way back in 2007's S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chornobyl, one where the challenges to your continued survival aren't so much the mutated creatures or heavily armed rivals, but rather the litany of glitches that sometimes make progress impossible.

When S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is at its best (read: working), it does a magnificent job of drawing players into its horrific yet beautiful world.

We're talking early, game-breaking bugs, too. "Walk too close to a wall and get stuck in place" bugs. "Thing you need to pick up to proceed in the tutorial doesn't spawn" bugs. "Guns won't reload even when you have ammo" bugs. It's immensely frustrating at almost every turn, and often requires liberal reloading of saves to get past the glut of errors. Mercifully, autosaves are frequent and manual saves can be made at almost any point.

The challenge of mechanically playing the game are all on top of how wilfully, intentionally demanding it is. Even on lower difficulties, enemies are typically bullet sponges in a world where bullets are rationed. One of the very first monsters you'll encounter can turn invisible, with only the very faintest hint of spatial distortion around it as it zig-zags towards you to slash you to pieces. You can frequently be blindsided by foes, if not killed outright, without ever knowing where the attack came from. Oh, and then there are the psychic monstrosities that can turn your grey matter to mush and the reality-warping abnormalities that can tear the environment to pieces.

That challenge is part of the appeal though, at least for survival fans. As protagonist Skif, you're left for dead after an early excursion into The Zone, with only a meagre pistol to defend yourself, and having to overcome everything from radiation exposure to hunger. It makes every small victory feel hard earned, even if that victory is simply finding a med kit or bandage before bleeding out. Even as you progress, gaining more powerful weapons or more durable armour, you never feel like a titan as you might in something like Fallout.

And, when S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is at its best (read: working), it does a magnificent job of drawing players into its horrific yet beautiful world. Not only is The Zone a vast and richly detailed open world to explore (at your peril – the environment itself often wants you dead), but it's filled with multi-layered plots and quests upon quests that flesh out the setting and the rival factions battling for control over it. Every decision you make over who to align with or who to betray splinters outcomes into endless fractals which (again, one day) make for endless replayability.

But then you run into more bugs – quests that won't complete, NPCs who aren't visible, irradiated horrors that won't attack or show themselves but are still detected as nearby so you can't save. It feels as though there's always something pulling you out of the game, and while earlier S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games were renowned for their janky nature, this is at another level.

Yet there has to be some forgiveness for the state of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 at present. Developer GSC Game World is based in Ukraine, and you may have heard of a few goings on there in recent years that would explain a troubled development – not least of which is a good chunk of the studio relocating to Prague for their own safety.

A host of patches and fixes are already promised for S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 – six months from launch, this may be the phenomenal sci-fi survival horror it shows numerous signs of being. Unfortunately, it's far too buggy to be considered great at present, even by the most masochistic survival game fan.