After an incredibly turbulent road to launch, which started in 2010, included the death and resurrection of the studio, numerous delays, and then the significant hurdle known as the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl finally arrived yesterday. And it warms my cold, decrepit heart to see players utterly embrace this uncompromising, janky weirdo.
As Josh wrote in our Stalker 2 review, "Just like in the old days, performance issues and bugs don't stop Stalker's mad, wonderful heart from shining through". It is a flawed but deeply brilliant game, and while bugs and performance issues can often lead to a less than favourable response on Steam, Stalker 2's brand of jank doesn't seem to have hurt its reception at all. After 10,000 user reviews, it's sitting comfortably at "Very Positive".
"That's all I wanted from a Stalker game," reads one short and sweet review. "Damn, this is Stalker all right," starts another. The broad sentiment is that, yep, Stalker 2 is more Stalker, and that is a wonderful thing.
81% of the reviews are positive at the time of writing, it's currently Steam's top seller, and it's ranked 11 in its most played list. And despite being a niche singleplayer affair, last night it peaked at 114,000 concurrent players. Right now, nearly 70,000 folks are weathering the temperamental Zone. On a Thursday morning.
All in all, it's a pretty great result for a game that revels in its rough edges and old-school design sensibilities. But if anyone was going to love it, it would be us PC lot. While Stalker is a multiplatform series, at its heart it's a pure PC game: complex, systemic and risky.
This is not to say that there hasn't been any criticism of the bugs or performance issues—and that's perfectly understandable. £50 is a lot of cash to spend on something that frequently doesn't work as intended, and not everyone is going to be as accepting of jank as the veteran stalkers who have been waiting for 14 years to get back to the Zone.
I'm very much in the 'interesting but flawed games are better than polished but unadventurous ones' camp, though, so I'm naturally pretty bloody happy with what GSC has managed to produce—especially given the incredibly difficult circumstances.
