Stalker 2 is leaving Game Pass in a few days. Which means I should probably play a bit of it, eh?

As the picture above shows, I did not get very far. I believe there was originally a 15-day warning message about the game leaving Game Pass, and so it was technically possible for me to plow through the 50ish hours needed to complete the game. However… it just didn’t grip me. Plus, I was trying to play some other games (Outer Worlds 2) at the time, so being “forced” into playing something else didn’t exactly leave me in the best headspace.

I have not talked about them much directly, but I have played all of the original games 10+ years ago:

• Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl (22 hours)
• Stalker: Clear Skies (5.2 hours)
• Stalker: Call of Pripyat (22.7 hours)

For those that have never played the series, Stalker is some quintessential eurojank. The premise (I think) is that after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the area is not just radiated, but a bunch of anomalies and mutants show up. The anomalies are extremely deadly environmental hazards that one must navigate carefully, but allow intrepid “stalkers” to claim nearby artifacts with varying powers. These are quite valuable scientific specimens, as you can imagine, leading many different factions fighting to control the best locations within the Exclusion Zone. There is also a loose plot that navigates you closer and closer towards the source of the anomalies.

One of the Stalker series’ biggest claims to fame is the “A-Life” mechanic. Essentially, A-Life was an attempt at making the Zone feel like a living, breathing world. We hear a lot about that sort of thing these days, usually with “innovations” like NPCs having a work schedule and going home at night, etc. Meanwhile, Stalker devs originally built NPCs capable of beating the game themselves back in like 2008. While things were reigned in a bit, the point is that a lot of very innovative stuff went on to make the original game world(s) feel like you were the least interesting thing in it… until you weren’t.

What does this all have to do with Stalker 2? Well, it originally launched without anything resembling A-Life. Instead, you got what every open-world game has: “dynamic” events that spawn randomly within rendering distance of you. Hearing gun shots in the distance while walking around can feel haunting; less so when it happens like clockwork. The more up-to-date articles I’m finding is saying that Stalker 2 eventually did get A-Life working, but some of the magic still feels gone.

Honestly though, that really just sort of sums it up: the magic is gone for me.

Graphics? Phenomenal. In the moment, things look a bit gritty and muddled. Then I realized that, hey, it kind of looks like I’m viewing this game through a body camera. That’s low-key crazy good.

The mutants are hit-or-miss. The dogs have insanely good AI, with all the juking and serpentine movement that causes immediate panic as you empty your magazine into the dirt and end up dying to what would otherwise be level 1 enemies in other games. Other mutants? Deadly… but rote. How nice of the invisible bloodsuckers to attack me, then run off long enough for me to use a healing injector and reload before attacking again.

My problem is that the series is just not that mechanically interesting to me anymore. Granted, maybe a whole lot of things change after hour 7, I dunno. Fundamentally though, there doesn’t seem to be a lot going on. For example, there are a lot of random abandoned houses dotting the landscape. You can go into just about every one of them. But… there’s nothing to interact with inside. While that “makes sense” from an immersion standpoint, it fails on a gameplay standpoint. Even when there are things to pick up, they’re just the same bullets, broken guns, canned meat, bandages, etc, as everywhere else. That leads you naturally to just going from map icon to map icon, collecting crap to sell to a vendor to hopefully afford something that the game is likely to just give you for free in another hour.

Seriously though, you start the game with a vest armor that provides about as much protection as, well, a regular-ass vest would. Then you talk with an NPC that can upgrade your vest with like chainmail for cash. Not two missions later though, you pick up a way better armor right at the start to an area, and then find an even better piece 30 minutes later. Gotta love these designer gotcha moments, right? Or hate them with an undying passion.

Meanwhile, the whole time I was playing, I was trying to remember what even happened in the first games. I thought I remembered there being a cool twist/choice at the end, then I realized I was thinking of Metro 2033’s ending instead. And by the way, Metro actually rewarded exploration because those extra bullets you found doubled as currency. To say nothing about Fallout 3, which came out at a similar time; even when not finding those little post-apoc vignettes, you were always looking for additional aluminum cans or duct tape.

Some of these criticism are, in a sense, unfair. Presuming that the A-Life situation is actually resolved, I would say that Stalker 2 is definitely a Stalker game. If you played the others, you’ll probably like it. There are some little things that add to the charm, like seeing a group of stalkers coming in an sitting around a campfire while someone plays the guitar. Or how after a firefight, the survivors actually loot the bodies of their comrades, just like you were about it. The first time that happened, I was like “Hey!” And then I was like, “fair play.”

So, if you’re in for a bleak, immersive mil-sim with some mutants and anomalies for flavor, then yeah. Stalker 2. (Un)Fortunately, I’ve been spoiled by Metro and Fallout in the intervening years, and it turns out I like what they bring more than what this series does. It’s a time and a place that’s passed for me.