Where's our Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl review?

Hello! It's one of these again. You may have started to see some reviews going live for Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl right now, but ours won't be among them sadly - at least not just yet - so we wanted to let you know where ours was and why we're delaying it.

In brief: we need a little more time with this one, for two main reasons. The first is that Stalker 2 is a pretty sizable game and we've not had all that long with it, so we're giving ourselves some extra breathing room to ensure we've been able to make significant enough progress for a full review.

The second reason, though, is both more pertinent, and more troubling. At time of writing, the early review build of Stalker 2 that was sent to us by developer GSC Game World has several, quite major technical issues. We've been assured that a Day One patch will be launched alongside the game's general release today, and so we want to make sure our appraisal is reflective of the version of the game you'll be playing yourself.

As such, we're currently aiming to publish our review on Friday November 22nd, so you'll be able to read our full thoughts on Stalker 2 then.

Technical issues are, of course, often part and parcel of big launches like this, and in the case of Stalker 2 - which let's not forget has been developed during Russia's invasion of Ukraine - it's perhaps not entirely surprising.

At the same time, however, the extent of some of these bugs has been hard to overlook. To give you a couple of examples of things we've experienced during our playthrough, we've seen cases where NPCs have become trapped in whirlwind anomalies, only to stay there spinning upwards into the sky when it dissipates rather than falling back to the ground. Characters have also got trapped inside walls, flailing wildly, and sometimes they won't appear at all, resulting in conversations with floating pairs of headphones. One Stalker we were travelling with also just dropped dead on the spot for no apparent reason.

We've encountered a lot of issues with the game's sound, too. Lines of dialogue sometimes didn't trigger when they were supposed to, radio voices sounded clear as day like they were standing right next to us (and vice-versa), and occasionally subtitles appeared for different lines of dialogue to what was being spoken onscreen. We also had an ongoing issue with firing one of our guns, with gunshots going utterly silent for long stretches of time.

There were also several instances where Stalker 2's bugs affected our quest progression, got us killed, left us confused and generally made it difficult to play.

I should note that our review build has also been regularly patched as we played, and that several issues are actively being addressed by GSC Game World. However, until we can get a more thorough look at what that Day One patch amounts to, we thought it best to delay our verdict so we can investigate it more thoroughly.

In the meantime, I'd suggest having a read of Rick Lane's extensive Stalker 2 preview from last month to help set the scene, and you should absolutely check out GSC Game World's very own documentary about the game's development, War Game: The Making of Stalker 2. You can also make sure your PC is up to snuff by reminding yourself of Stalker 2's PC requirements. Stay tuned for more from us soon, and thanks again for your patience!