Review: Stalker 2 (Xbox) - GSC Game World's Long-Awaited Sequel Is A Mess - Pure Xbox

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is a pretty big mess. In its current state, this is a badly-judged game in almost every way. The new zone is incredible to behold at times, for sure, but it's a world at odds with itself; full of gear and guns, but with precious little in the way of enemies that challenge you to use them. The story is terrible, the A-Life system is AWOL, and the acting and writing is atrocious. Stalker 2 is cheap in how it kills without warning, is packed full of bugs and performance issues on Series X, and is devoid of mostly anything that makes it feel worth playing for very long.

[Sonic1881]

Dam

[goken]

It’s kinda the quality we have come to expect from Xbox exclusives 😅

[vTuro24]

It's not an xbox exclusive.

[Lightning77]

The studio also went through war and lost colleagues also. Surprised the game even released at all.

Instead of console warring think about the real world for once.

[LonDonE]

Sheesh i played this for a hour or two on series x and initially it felt ok but playing for a bit more and wow its shocking how unstable it feels.
How can they justify this release?
What's worst is i go and download on my pc thinking it will be a better experience and WOW just wow its shocking how bad it runs.

My pc is runnning super hot and does not maintain the framerate and image stability is shockingly bad.
Why does microsoft accept such bad ports.. not on pc or xbox should this run so poor..

They are just giving us shockingly bad ports on pc and console running like rubbish ports.. how can this be acceptable?

I literally deleted and will wait a year or so for the patches and modders to fix.. would of felt so cheated had i bought the game.
Its sad to see such a great potential game run like trash on both xbox and pc, people with beast rigs are even struggling to run this game with a playable stable framerate.

i was actually defending the devs but a few hours in, after hitting the first npc outpost and i can tell everyone to avoid until its patched up.. sad state of gaming we live in.

@Lightning77
No dude dont make excuses, they could of delayed the game instead of taking peoples money at full price.. i played via game pass but i am still a paying subscriber who pays for said sub for games like this and again and again we get trashy games.. optimized to shit.
Sorry its harsh but DONT RELEASE a buggy mess simple..
people might down vote me but i am tired of devs stealing our hard earned money and releasing lazy code.

@goken
facts you spoke sadly most on here wont know the facts and instead follow propaganda being fed to them.

[Christopher]

Blame sits purely at the feet of the developers here. Not like MS was in there telling them what to do with their game.

[Redgehammer]

Way to cherry pick a score that matches your misguided narrative.

[thorstein]

Since every game's success on N4G is based on SteamDB, it's not doing too bad.

[RhinoGamer88]

Wait until Feb 2025... a hot mess right now.

[jznrpg]

Ouch. From an Xbox site too.

[elJoker5]

This is probably the only Game/Developer I will give a pass. Their country was at war and had to flee. One of their developers went and fought in the war and died.

[ZycoFox]

All because some clown wants a chunk of land

[goken]

Attacking other countries is NEVER the right course of action.
But Nothing happens in a vacuum.

1) in that “chunk” of land ukraine was under investigation for genocide of Russian speakers.

2) Neo Nazism running rampant in Ukraine, so much so that Nazi war criminals sentenced by the Nuremberg trial responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of polish and jews were declared National Heroes. Imagine Germany declaring Hitler and Goebbels national heroes.

3) Nato membership, which was agreed that Nato would not expand with the dissolution of the warsaw pack. Nato proceeded to break the agreement multiple times since then. And seeing how Nato is basically a war machine targeted almost entirely on Russia, you can understand why bringing Nato right next to Russia may be concerning for the Russians.
Basically cuba missile in reverse. Except the soviets backed down, and Biden refused to.

If anything, be thankful the clown you are referring to isn’t like the Joker in Isreal right now, or it could be so much worse. Imagine after almost 3 years power is generally still on in Ukraine, you think the Russians are so incompetent that they can’t hit stationary power stations in 3 years?

War is crazy, so many lives lost for what?,
the politicians that pushed it to this end should be condemned.
The “clown” shouldn’t be the only one to face condemnation.

[1nsomniac]

@Goken thank god there’s still people out there with the intelligence to be able to research topics for themself without having to regurgitate what they’re told to.

You’ve surprised me sir, not what I expect from N4G. I tip my hat to you.

[fsfsxii]

Maybe they should’ve enlisted instead of making an inessential project.

[anast]

You're country is always welcoming new recruits. Better get on that.

[RaidenBlack]

Maybe you should do some more productive stuff than regurgitate this slop in a gaming website comment section ...

[Cockney]

"Had to flee" don't make me laugh they had a choice, defend their country or produce this bug ridden mediocre game, my heart goes out to the family of the one that passed away defending his country. Respect

[CrimsonWing69]

Man, how in the hell did Xbox games constantly get this sh*tty?

[MeatyUrologist]

Really liking it so far, then again it was free so prob would have different opinion if I paid 70 bucks. Game is incredibly immersion. Yes it has a fair amount of bugginess but nothing game breaking so far. If they fix the dead zone and enemy spawning issues I'd give this an easy 8-9.

[S2Killinit]

With the gamepass price increase you are paying full price for gaming if not more. Its not free. You are paying for the games every month. And you dont own them either.

[MeatyUrologist]

Lol how am I paying full price? It's like 15-20 bucks a month and there are a ton of games including brand new ones. If I only played 1 game every 3-4 months then I guess? I have both series x and ps5 and their premium services are damn near the same price and xbox is infinitely better.

[S2Killinit]

Because you aren’t playing a full game a month genius.

[FPS_D3TH]

Fair rating for the Xbox version. Pc version has bugs but Xbox version runs like dog water and sadly, often.

[repsahj]

I thought this game is the one! But I guess let's wait for the next one. Indiana jones and Avowed?

[neutralgamer1992]

Hopefully developers can fix most of the issues soon. This game might be in a really great condition by middle of next year. Potential is there just now need to polish the game

[TwoPicklesGood]

Oof. Seen plenty of positive reviews and plenty of negatives as well. I've watched Doc and a few other streamers play and it looks interesting but in no way can I deal with the bugs. I'll pick it up in a few months when everything is hopefully ironed out.

[bunt-custardly]

Yeh, I died numerous times in the opening hour. I found that the gameplay was sketchy at best and couldn't see what all the fuss was about. I am sure with some patches it will improve.

[gold_drake]

i would have given it a 5 or 6 too

[Reaper22_]

Click bait article.

[Gamingsince1981]

What the 9s and 8s this broken game got ? This review site is an xbox site , why would they click bait with a low score ? Derp

[Reaper22_]

Doesn't matter. All sites do it regardless.

[anast]

I don't see a point trusting Xbox with much other than mobile games at this point.

[Reaper22_]

Kinda like sony and GAAS. These devs had to develop while their country is at war. Whats the excuse for concord? Stalker still sold over a million in 48hrs though. Thats success.

[anast]

Quiet Man, Sony is the worst....I'm sure you get it.

[Gamingsince1981]

It will get about 800,000 refunds too, people that bought it thought it was gonna be good, it turned out to be another "good enough for gamepass" games, which is to say terrible.

[LoveSpuds]

It's fascinating to note how Xbox and some of its fringe headcase community try to hype up certain games as if they are super popular mainstream games.

They did it with Senua and tnow with Stalker, where the original games had their fans but they were never mainstream hits. I feel like their desperation to push the sequels as these mainstream juggernauts really puts unfair pressure on devs and unrealistic expectations amongst gaming fans.

[DarXyde]

To be fair, Stalker sounds like a good game held back by bad code. I suspect it's being graded on a curve given... You know, the history and challenge with getting the game out.

Hellblade II isn't even really a game the Xbox community cares about largely, but it's an exclusive (for now) and a first party studio so that's where the praise comes from. You have to laugh that now, in the year of our lord 2024, neither Hellblade nor Death Stranding are walking sims anymore.

Curious.

[LoveSpuds]

Agreed DarXyde.

To be clear, I'm not dunking on Stalker as I haven't played it, I just know how niche the original Stalker was back in the day and that in my view, pushing the sequel in such a way as to suggest it is a mainstream product comes with a lot of risk and baggage. I remember playing Stalker back in the day and it was a very hard-core kinda title.

As for Senua 2, I did play that and fell off after 3 hours of being pretty bored.

[Ninver]

Wow, is xbox capable of having anything decent?

[SimpleDad]

Jesus Christ!

[repsahj]

Honestly after watching this video review, I feel the game looks too generic and old looking.

[Gr8Vngnz]

Even forgiving the technical deficiances, the game has issues no amount of patches could fix. Genuinely bemused by how well it has reviewed tbh. God awful.

[jjb1981]

These devs had to go through a lot to release this game. I'm enjoying it, slowly, but surely. They probably could have waited a bit but it's tough in their circumstances. I can't say anything about the Xbox version but the PC version is totally playable right now. There are some glitches and anomalies but still enjoyable.

[HyperMoused]

Got it on Steam and in under two hours i had a game breaking bug, movement locked up so you could hardly move at all, reloads didnt help,refunded it....damn shame...butr also you shouldnt be able to release a game that broken...maybe when its patched ill try again.

[gammaray13]

Im playing this game on PC with 4090 GPU and it runs smooth as silk no issues, but i must admit the story is garbage and the models look like they are from the 360 era