Poll: What Do You Think Of Stalker 2 On Xbox Game Pass So Far?

Technical Issues aside I really like it. But it's definitely not for everyone. It's well worth a try on gamepass to se if you like it

Our individual experiences with the game have been quite varied, so we can definitely see there being lots of different perspectives on this one

Regardless of individual experiences at PX the one you posted as a review sure hit the engagement mark😉....let's how this 4/10 review age's next to the 8/10 for the Suicide Squad: KtJL ( I say this as someone who most of the time agrees with PJ's reviews)

Edit: I've only had the chance to play for about 6 hours, no major issues so far, except for some items not obeying the laws of gravity and physics 😁.

Well, it's definitely not a 4/10.

I’d like the people giving such ratings to Stalker 2 to be consistent in their reviews.

Just a reminder that Starfield and Star Wars Outlaws also had plenty of technical issues at launch, yet somehow those problems didn’t affect their overall scores.

I give it a 7 or 8 as it stands right now (fully expect to be 9 or 10 after patches & fixes.)

Its certainly a full on Stalker experience with all the good & bad that goes with that. This is not a cozy shooter like say the recent Far Cry games this is a kick you in the balls while laughing at you sort of experience. You will die & it kindly reminds you how many times on the death screen, how thoughtful.

Yes it has issues right now but the game is still fun (at least for me.) I know the devs are working on the problems (& have been very open & honest about it on their discord.) The devs didn't let a small thing like their country being invaded stop them so some technical issues are small fry in comparison.

I am certain that when all the dust has settled on the patches this game will be seen as one of the best post apocalypse survival games made.

@MeanBeanEgg

My point is, that from the time (albeit short) I've played of the game, the 4/10 score seems too harsh (hope this clears it up).

if this game was not in game pass and i would buy it i would return it and wait for all the patches

Played the prologue this morning ..had zero bugs and it ran fine ..that was in quality mode on an lg oled c2(vrr) on the series x

8/10 😎..... the 4/10 review was frankly reckless journalism, to allow a clear personal dislike to rule the review is not good journalism, that requires a certain level of objective detachment to be fair to the game, the audience and developer.

It may well have unfairly cost GSC game sales

It’s fantastic. Have encountered very few bugs, runs well and captures the feel of the old STALKER games while updating it with many quality of life items.

I’m in the camp with the good scores the game got (and there are MANY of them):

PC Gamer 83
GameRant 9
GameSpot 8
IGN 8
The Sixth Axis 9
True Achievements 9

And many others. I only put those as examples so people don’t read one 4/10 review here and base your opinion on that alone. It’s still 79% positive on Steam as well!

When the game isn't freaking out at me, I love it but it is freaking out at me a lot.

I think this might be "balance" after Cyberpunk where I didn't get any noticeable bugs or t-pose in my first play through. Stalker 2 hits every bug it can lol.

I’ve only just got past the prologue but my initial impression of the game was that the graphics didn’t look anywhere near as good as the gameplay videos we’ve saw before release. Those videos were obviously running off a powerful PC but still I’d of expected it to look similar on Series X quality mode.

I recently finished Shadow of Chernobyl so I know I’ll enjoy the gameplay, exploration etc.

@awp69 If playing on Series X what mode are you playing it on quality or performance? I’ve toggled between the two but don’t think quality mode looks good enough to sacrifice the extra frames.

@MaccaMUFC I’m playing on performance and agree it’s not worth the sacrifice to play on quality.

I'm at first big town and for me it's, a total meh atm. Some enemies are bullet sponges, controls seem stuck in 00s PC land, voices are wooden(isn't the main guy V from cyberpunk?). It's a def 5 or 6/10

Some reviewers don't like the genre, pace or style that they're reviewing and that doesn't make sense because reviews are meant for gamers that like that genre, pace or style. Although some reviews are meant to be controversial and get more clicks, I believe that in this case is the former.

@MeanBeanEgg

I think it's perfectly rated

Cool beans, bro. I'm not here to convince anyone to agree with me😅...

@el_pieablo I know what you mean about enemies being bullet sponges, when I fought the bloodsucker in the prologue I think I went through about 2 or 3 full magazines from the AK-74 before I took it down, that’s not fun at all imo and I was playing on Rookie.

The game is far better than what an article on this website led us to believe.

@MaccaMUFC its a mutant they are tough. The lesson of that fight is think about what you engage in the future while you are a new stalker.

Humans without helmets or head gear you will get one shot kills to the head with most guns. Later in the game with some of the better sniper rifles with upgrades you can do that to mutants too (& will one hit humans on a body shot.)

@abe_hikura are you comparing it with Cyberpunk at release or one of the latest versions after patch 2.0?
Just curious as I played it a year after release after they supposedly fixed many bugs and it was barely playable.

@Caspin-U I think it depends on how you view it. The technical issues being reported are sufficient in my opinion to take a full priced title down from a 7 to a 4. I’m interested in checking it out, but not until there’s been a lot of patching. Most reviewers have said there’s a good game hidden behind all the bugs and performance problems. The game apparently gets a lot worse after the midway point - I don’t want to start something and then end up bailing half way through playing because it becomes ‘unplayable’.

It would possibly be a good idea for purexbox to revisit the title once it’s been patched and update their review score accordingly. Both cyberpunk and no man’s sky are infinitely better now than they were at launch.

Average so far. Few glitches and bugs but nothing outrageous. I'd go maybe 5 or 6/10 from what I've pllayed thus far

@Donutsquad00 in terms of bugs, at launch.
I got really lucky and the whole thing played well bo noticible bugs or crashes whilst pretty much everyone else was hitting every bug and crash.

Now with Stalker 2 I'm hitting all the bugs and my friends are not seeing a thing.

@abe_hikura You should work as a tester. 😜

I agree 100% with the PureXbox review giving the game 4/10. It's in a really rough state perfoamnce wise with lots of pop in with the vegetation. Enemies don't populate the world; they spawn in behind you over and over again. Every single point of interest looks abandoned until you enter which triggers something to start spawning either dogs or bandits etc. It's simply not a very fun game in it's current state the world feels so empty and devoid of life compared to the previous game.

Gonna let this bake a bit longer don't want another starfield experience that breaks my game I can wait 👍

8/10 so far. If you like The originals, Chernobylite or Metro give it a go

for now - buggy few things need to be fixed
story is little bland will see what will happen next
performance is terrible and I think it is UE5 fault
cpu should not be hit that hard in this game there is no reason to

@Tsushima always fancied Chernobllite, any good?

@MaccaMUFC completely agree. I was playing on normal, restarted and rinsed the mutant first time again. You can find a better gun if you look around before the bunker

I'll try it again after a few (dozen?) Patches.

Either there is no one at Microsoft whose job it is to say "this game isn't good enough to release" or whoever they are they're completely incompetent. This game is an absolute MESS. obviously there has to be some grace given considering the conditions the team faced, but I'm not going to pretend this game is better than it is. There's a LOT wrong here.

I'm only an hour in because of the weird controller issues. I decided to wait on a fix for that before I continue, but other than that, I was getting immersed.

Just as an fyi the stalker team have posted details of their first patch for pc & xbox due in the coming week via a steam news post:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1643320/view/4455843903878203415

Glancing through it seems like a decent first patch hitting up some story quest blockers & some memory allocation plus other performance issues. They do note controller deadzone & a life problem will be in a future patch.

Also on steam they hit a new peak player count of 118,872 which isnt too shabby either.

I was looking up about the game’s HDR settings and how there isn’t a scene to see how it looks when changing the settings. Then I saw someone recommend to turn HDR10 off and wow what a difference it makes, game looks so much better and just goes to show how badly the HDR is implemented in this game.

@MeanBeanEgg "Or maybe the game is just not that good. Your point is? I think it's perfectly rated."

Nobody here is disrespecting your opinion (because that is an opinion), but you can't reprimand and expect me and the others you tagged to agree with you and your rating. For most reviewers and players it is a good game. If you don't like it, don't play it and problem solved.

@MeanBeanEgg I have to agree, the comments went beyond a difference of opinion/outlier score. They seem to be questioning PJ's suitability to review certain games/general professionalism. As you say there is a lot of hypocrisy and it is quite frankly an immature way to 'deal' with a review score commenters don't agree with.
No devs/publishers need fans to shill for them at the end of the day.

to be honest, in my opinion I was expecting more from this game, specially on xbox series X via 4kTV, the graphics are very poor, the commands are very confused. NOt bad but 5/10. METRO its much better

@el_pieablo It's like Stalker with some light base building. A sequel is due out next year

@MeanBeanEgg The topic is literally what score would you give to the game, so you should expect people disagreeing with the review, when most reviewers and users' ratings are higher. Exactly the same thing would happen with any other game if people disagreed with the review. You say that the game is "broken" and are more worried about an Xbox/Game Pass game being well received than about what others are saying about it, when it's usually the opposite, Xbox games tend to be rated more harshly, so don't worry. In any case, if people enjoy the game, don't consider it broken and give a higher score, let them be. By the way, this review is the only negative review on Metacritic.

4/10 seems perfect. Looks like it's at least ten years old. Lots of bugs. Everything feels familiar and uninspired. Clunky inventory. I heard it recommended as spiritual successor to New Vegas and whoever wrote that should have their credentials revoked. Played about two hours, realized I was neither engaged nor having fun, and deleted off my Series X.

Better than that hit piece done by PJ thats for sure, what a joke

I played about 5 hours of it and I have to wait for a patch and possibly start over because of a bug. I reloaded a save after dying for the 15th or 16th time and I can’t run. Nothing works, not even leaning- I have seen quite a few people reporting the same bug in their playthrough. I really like the atmosphere (though the acting is terrible) but it really is a buggy mess.

It ran fine for me on Series X and I actually preferred quality mode. The atmosphere and intrigue kept me gripped for a while but although it is a type of game that is generally up my alley, the high amount of seemingly random and sudden deaths completely broke my immersion. I expect to die a lot in Elden Ring as it's practically part of the overall story and mechanics but in Stalker 2 it just takes you out of the experience too often. You're supposed to be on the edge and yes it's a game where you'll die here and there but it was too relentless for me. I'm glad it's selling well and other hardcore survivors are enjoying it though!

Edit: I didn't rate the game above as I don't think it's fair considering it's simply not a game for me.

I went to play on Series X today and my saves are not showing. Looking around the Internet seems to be a problem across Xbox and PC. Going to wait for a fix

Absolutely not for me. The "intro" section that's just scripted deaths in a row for absolutely no reason, teaching you absolutely nothing just made me unwilling to go any further.
I'm not a big fan of FPS games, so I just want accessible fun. Borderlands. Titanfall. BioShock.

I didn't find skill to help me much in the beginning, and don't care to see if that changes later. It shouldn't be there. Days gone (not comparable as genre games) also did this for me.
Opened the game so poorly and so frustrating that I couldn't care to get to the good parts.

There should be no unfun parts. Even dark souls type games have progression in the difficulty. I didn't find that here.

Not saying it can't be enjoyed. Just that it can't be enjoyed by me.

Pass.

One of the worst games I've ever played. Deleted it after an hour. It plays like a bad 360 game. Runs like crap, looks like crap. The thought of people paying £55 for this is actually insane.

@MeanBeanEgg

It is a pretty crappy thing for members here to accuse the reviewer of lying just for clicks.

Disagreeing with the review is one thing. Attacking the reviewer and calling them a liar is something else entirely and shouldn't be tolerated by the team at Pure Xbox.

Mediocre. Feels like a re-release, of a game from the PS3/360 era, complete with the clunky controls and performance of that era.
Enemies can see you from anywhere, and even a shotgun blast to the chest, and headshots, don't do any damage at times.

Maybe I expected too much. But it was so hyped, that I expected a truly epic AAA game.
I rather just play the Metro games again.

I am loving this so far (8 hours in) and it feels like Stalker. I will be making mutants a little less spongy though as at the moment it’s a little extreme how much they absorb. I have had no bugs and it runs really well. Though I’ll caveat that with me playing on PC and I have a mod from nexus that improves stability etc. since applying that it runs at 120fps average, with everything on epic etc and DLSS set to quality

@Caspin-U Oh it's definitely a 4. Played it for about three hours. Unfortunately, I cannot get that time back. Thought it was horrible.

A few things. I got rid of my console because I can play GP on PC. So if I kept my series x it might be better. But GP for PC is ridiculous. The “compiling shaders” for 5-7 minutes every time I go to play it is absurd. Meanwhile. Using GP on the Steamdeck it plays better than the PC GP version. For me at least.

It’s clear that their day one patch fixed a lot of stuff, unfortunately they didn’t have it ready earlier to help it get better reviews. This game is clearly doing several things right with its community sentiment. What it does specifically for Xbox has yet to be seen exactly. Seems like in the long run this will be a good W for Xbox.