S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl Steelbook Edition (Xbox Series X)

One of the most immersive games in a long time. It looks stunning and offers a believable grounded world that's rewarding to explore. Its utterly bleak atmosphere and unforgiving combat may not be for everyone, but it stands unique in the genre and has been greatly improved since launch.

If you are a hardcore gamer; knowing what constitutes a good game, then please ignore the negative reviews! My thoughts go out to the developers during war. The game is receiving patch’s and updates.The developers have stayed true to the orignal Stalker games, vastly improving upon it. Yes there elements which require ironing out…. Examples being opening crates; more often,than not it requires two attempts for me to open medical/ammunition crates in spite of the cursor being aligned. Occasional rendering glitches/artifacting do occur. Loading timesvarying. However, that being said. What the developers have achieved in my opinion is a class in atmosphere. I love what is on offer, having just come out of the Lesser Zone I am finding the experience remarkable; despite it being extremely tough to survive sometimes. Death coming from the environment over being killed by hostile anomalies, or humanity; radiation levels are constantly rising and is something I should have considered before venturing further north. But the challenges are what makes it so rich and rewarding. A very welcomed touch and importance in terms of realism is the difficulty. One wouldn’t expect different in such a harsh environment. Ballistics and lighting are wonderful. Enemies are tough and require one to be tactically mindful. I am playing on Xbox Series X, so cannot comment for PC users.

If you enjoyed the previous stalker games you will enjoy this. It obviously looks better than the originals but beware, the game isn't even on the disc. It installs about 342mb from the disc and the rest is about 120 gb download. I would give it one star for this disgusting practice but the game does deserve recognition.

Bought this at the end of its first week of release and having playing it ever since and loving it. The sense of place and atmosphere is fantastic. There has been the occasional slight glitch and in places the graphics are aittle old fashioned but the landscape and sense of being in a location, aocation which is constantly shifting makes this a compulsive game for me. I've long been a fan of the Tarkovsky film and whilst the game doesn't have the spiritual / philosophical weight of the 1979 film, it captures a fair slice of it's sense of haunted melancholy location. The other thing is that since buying the game there have been a number of updates which are taking some of the rough edges off.... So I feel very supported by and supportive of the game's developers. If you like Fallout, Half Life and old, damp, abandoned power stations, then this game has your name on it. Enjoy!!!

Stalker 2 was a game I have been looking forward to a long time. Being a fan of the original games and the sister series Metro.It's a shame to say this game was a huge disappointment. It's a buggy mess (which is why I returned it), there are too many glitches to make this game fully playable, the worst being unable to complete quests as an NPC doesn't recognise that you've completed it.To make matters worse, the game is ridiculously hard, even on a lower difficulty. It's not a case of getting good at a game, but the fact that enemies are extremely unfair. Getting attacked by a group of dogs is a death sentence, as they can easily surround you and attack you out of your line of sight. The moment you are able to change direction and aim at the dog attacking you, they have run away and you're being attacked from behind again. Human enemy AI is ridiculous, knowing exactly where you are at all times and having the aiming of a god, guaranteeing a hit everytime they shoot.To make things worse, enemies can take you down in two shots.I want to be lenient with my score, as I know the developers had made this game in tough conditions, but Stalker 2 is not a game. It's just frustrating.I would like to wait until they patch the game into a playable state, but as it's sitting at 149GB already, I don't think there will be enough space for the final product.