S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl review - works on Linux Desktop with Proton but poorly on Steam Deck

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl from GSC Game World has now been released and after playing it pre-release, I've had a damn fun time with it. There's some clear issues though, that I'll get into. Disclosure: key provided by Renaissance PR.

Thankfully, the game works out of the box on Desktop Linux. With the latest Proton 9.0-3, everything works as expected, including the intro video with no broken test-screen. Being able to play it instantly has been quite a highlight of this year. It’s a huge game, both in terms of world size and install size, you’re going to need to free up some space because it’s about 160GB!

Do you need to play the originals? No. While it does follow on from the originals, it’s a standalone game with its own story. The developers suggest playing the originals to "maximize the immersion". But really, it’s fine. You may not get every reference here and there, but it all explains itself as you play.

When you first load up the game, you will need to let it compile shaders, it does this before you even get into the main menu. That initial compiling took about 13 minutes, so it takes a little while, but features like this are worth it to get a smoother game overall. So grab a coffee.

The developers say that no procedural generation was used in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornoby, everything was made by hand. They even used photogrammetry, along with real objects and places with prominent landmarks included from the real world. However, plenty has been rearranged for the sake of the gameplay, they say it’s “fictionally revised”.

Note: there will probably be some form of spoilers from here on out.

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Steam Deck Performance

Now a few quick words on Steam Deck performance and expectations because this won’t take long. Truthfully, I didn’t expect it to be playable and… it’s really not.

Firstly, there’s the initial shader compiling. On Steam Deck (OLED) it took 51 minutes to complete. It will do it each time you load the game fresh too, but much faster, only about 2 minutes. The initial shader compiling also took a whole 40% battery time away - ouch.

After that, there’s no controller input at all. It sometimes detected I was using a controller (the Deck itself) showing gamepad button prompts, but no actual input. Switching it over to Keyboard / Mouse in Steam Input at least allows you to continue. To be fair, it’s advertised with “Partial Controller Support” on Steam, but that’s clearly pushing it.

It only gets worse from this point on.

Performance is awful. Truly bad. Tested on the lowest possible settings in the game, even with nothing going on, it’s often well below 30FPS. Without upscaling, it’s about 15FPS. Then trying it with all the various upscalers in the game, and you can at times get it to briefly give you around 30FPS at select moments, but it’s mostly going to be around 20FPS and below.

This screenshot below is 1280x800, the Low preset, with AMD FSR set to Ultra Performance and it should speak for itself at 23FPS:

How about FSR 3 Frame Generation? It may give you a few more FPS in some cases, but it destroys the Frame Timing and turns it into something comical with input all over the place. See the screenshot below, in the top left notice the frame timing going wild resulting in serious input delay.

FSR 3 Frame Generation really needs the game to already perform quite well to actually make a difference.

That performance only gets worse at various points I tested, some dropping below 10FPS on the lowest possible settings. This is just clearly just not a game for the Steam Deck. Even if you managed to get the performance higher doing extra tweaks like we often see after releases, the low visuals simply aren't worth it in this.

Edit: release day update note - Valve set it as Unsupported on Steam Deck.

Desktop Linux Performance

On Kubuntu 24.10 with my Ryzen 5800X / Radeon 6800 XT at 2560x1440 resolution, I’ve gone through various settings to see where I could get it performing well. And, quick tip here, Steam Game Recording seemed to suck away a good 20FPS from this game, so I would make sure it’s disabled for it. Some games just don’t play particularly nice with it.

For reference, here’s their suggested system requirements:

However, the developers put a small note in the actual Steam system requirements, to note even the Minimum listed specifications were using upscaling.

With that in mind. Performance here will depend of course on your hardware, and your chosen upscaling. At 1440p resolution on the High preset as per their suggestion based on my system, using no upscaling simply wasn’t an option, performance was all over the place often dropping well below 60FPS, even when dropping it down to Medium.

Eventually I settled on TSR (Temporal Super Resolution) “Quality” with 80% Resolution Scale, which works impressively well on both the visual quality and performance uplift. Add into that FSR 3 Frame Generation, and often it was sitting usually above 80FPS and often a fair amount higher even on the High preset.

As an example here, in a pretty empty area with nothing going on. High settings preset, Frame Generation (Left), and with no Frame Generation (Right):

Click images to enlarge them.

So without any FSR 3 Frame Generation, this empty area was hovering just at 60FPS (that’s with TSR at 80% resolution scale as well). FSR 3 Frame Generation added just about 50FPS. Frame Gen also improved the Frame Timings too so it's overall smoother.

While I am impressed how smooth Frame Generation makes it, clearly the game directly just needs various performance improvements and is quite messy without upscaling. Perhaps we may see future Proton improvements to help it too like we’ve seen for other games. Even though plenty of it performed well with my settings, numerous parts also did not perform well regardless of the settings picked.

Gameplay

Note: review codes came quite close to release, so i’m short on time to fully explore everything i wanted to, and a basic play through is around 40 hours at least. Additionally, there’s multiple endings depending on what you do, and given that it’s a pretty dynamic open-world game, other people may get to see a very different experience.

I should probably preface this by noting that this is the first time I’ve personally properly experienced this world, after bouncing off the older games for various reasons. I just couldn't get into them. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 though, this is very much my jam.

For people new to the series, keep in mind this is not a fast-paced run and gun FPS. It’s supposed to be an immersive first-person exploration horror shooter. You start with very little and it’s all about looting as you go. It’s a thoroughly challenging game, and that’s how it’s designed, they say it’s an “anti-power fantasy”, as you’re just another expendable person exploring a hostile environment. With no levelling system, you need to loot to get a better chance at surviving for better weapons, equipment and items to just keep you somewhat alive (but probably a bit irradiated).

It’s a survival game too where you’ll be dealing with hunger, bleeding, sleep and radiation that all need a constant watch over, so you’ll need to be stocking up on plenty of supplies. No character choice though, you're simply thrust into the shoes of Skif.

As for the difficulty, it can be pretty brutal. However, they have thankfully included difficulty modes. The intended experience is for it to be difficult, but not impossible. There’s even a Rookie mode for you to get more forgiving combat to help you explore the world, and you can change the difficulty at any point. My play-through has been with their intended middle difficulty.

The world is huge too, “64-km²” they say, and it does take a long time to travel across it. Half the time because of so many distractions and encounters. Totally seamless though, no special loading screens to get in the way of the exploration and action.

While there is a main story quest line to follow, outside of that there’s this loop that you end up doing. Going through each different zone, talking to everyone you can to grab side-quests, then gearing up to go and explore. You repeat this quite a lot, and as you explore you’ll likely uncover more random side-quests that continually have you explore more, and further into danger. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, like most open world games, is very much what you make of it. You could blast through it a lot quicker, but half the fun is in all the encounters and some of the side-quests are pretty good.

Part of this loop is also hunting for artifacts, special items you can equip in a slot to help you on your travels. You'll see lots of different anomalies in the Zone, and you have equipment that not only warns you about them with beeps, but you can pull it out to help you hunt down where exactly an artifact might be found in select areas. There's a few different types of these detectors you'll find on your travels.

As for the artifacts, they all have different buffs and debuffs and different levels of each and even just finding them can cause a whole lot of death.

Click images to enlarge them.

While they can give you some protection, they can also cause some serious radiation issues. So they're very much a constant toss-up between risk / reward to use.

Something I did find slightly funny, is the yellow paint styled objects being a thing even in a game like this. You’ll see it in various places, indicating you can do something like climb a ladder or break apart some wood. It’s quite subtle, but still amusing to see it in such a game.

The game can feel somewhat alive, thanks to all the various NPC encounters. You’ll see groups roaming, that will encounter each other and fight without you even needing to get involved. You can watch the fireworks from the sidelines and scoop up some loot later, or engage and speed things up a bit and potentially save some extra ammo if you manage to do it quietly.

While it’s not meant to be a fast-paced game, I wouldn’t say it was particularly stealthy or slow either. Enemies seem to spot you quite easily even from afar, and track you a bit after you move around too. I can’t say I’ve really experienced a whole lot of this “Advanced artificial intelligence system” that they talk about a fair bit. When a single enemy in a group, not actually next to the group, spots you, they all seem to just instantly know where you are and turn to you guns blazing. This is typical of most shooters but here I was expecting a little more smarts from S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2. The amount of times I tried certain encounters over and over and over again with different methods, always found by one single person setting off the whole group - I ended up just going in guns blazing myself a lot of the time.

Your movement speed is somewhat quick too, and while you can crouch, you cannot go prone - which feels a bit odd here if you’re wanting to be more stealthy. I get it though, it’s not meant to be a fully tactical game, but there’s so many situations it would have been great to have. Especially as the current stealth system is…not especially great.

Wonderful atmosphere all the way through. Especially with the day and night cycle, and then the weather system on top of that. Rain, full-on storms - it all really adds to the immersion. The storms especially can look awesome at night while you’re out and about.

One interesting game mechanic here is that you have an unlimited supply of bolts. You can pull them out any time, and throw them at various types of Anomalies in the game to set them off. This allows you to see where certain types start and end, plus move past them safely once they’ve been set off and you get a few seconds cool-down before they reappear.

You’ll be using this feature a lot to access certain areas, some may even surround some fun loot. One particular quest had me direct an NPC through a field of electrical anomalies, and it took me a while to get it right without killing them or us both.

There’s a lot that can go wrong in this game. So my one big tip for anyone jumping in: save early, save often. Mash that F5 button, wear it out. Also, the game doesn’t pause when you’re messing with your inventory, so don’t stick around for too long. Saves are great! Especially when you’re low on health, heading towards somewhere that may have some loot, only to come across a group of bandits and just when you think you’re going to live with 1HP and a dream after taking them down for their loot, a cute little anomaly appears and gives you the sweet kiss of death. I did say it was brutal right?

Some of the encounters I will never forget. Exploring early on, low health, trying to find some meds when suddenly I heard this almighty roar. My character was freaking out, the screen went all weird and clearly something was close by. But what? It felt like it was stalking me a bit, the top of the screen was glowing red, clearly showing an enemy is nearby and I could hear it grunting. I didn’t get a chance to see though, because some weird anomaly appeared as I was searching for it that sucked me in and — dead. Reloaded, explored the same area, and ended up finding 5 med packs close-ish to where I died, great success.

5 minutes later, I heard that roar again, so I quietly explored around some more. Eventually, I came to a house that clearly had a tunnel dug into it from below. Did I explore it? You bet I did! Did I regret that decision? Also very much yes. I saw a dead body, and thought “great, some loot!” and then out of the darkness ahead came a very angry speedy Bloodsucker that wanted me for dinner. That might be one of the most crazy-terrifying moments I’ve had in a game. I died again, obviously.

I love the environmental interactions in this too. Those Bloodsuckers make my heart beat real fast, and seeing them near water is quite fun, because even though they have some sort of cloaking, you can spot them through the water like in the shot below, you’ll see the ripples. That was an especially fun encounter.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is just insanely intense all the time you’re exploring as you never know quite what’s going to happen.

Another time I came out of a tunnel, minding my own business, and was suddenly pushed to the floor with a grunt. Got up, looked around and saw a bunch of what looked like wild boar running rampant trying to attack me. After running for a few seconds to safety on top of a truck, I suddenly heard a load of barking. A whole pack of mutated dogs had come along for some fun too, and then the boar just seemed to chase them around. Guess what happened next? I died, because the truck I jumped onto for safety was a super-source of radiation. Nothing in this game is safe dammit.

Some parts of the general design I found odd that I didn’t like though including only being able to lean if you’re holding a gun. But what if I want to peek around a corner with a knife? Nope. There’s also the sin of some NPCs running slower than you walk, which is especially annoying on certain quests you pick. The mantling system to climb up something is also pretty rubbish, and only works at seemingly very select places. On top of that, in some places, even the slightest jump down can kill you. You know the times I'm talking about I'm sure, it happens in other games, you look and think "even my unfit ass could jump / side down that without a single injury".

While there’s no character-specific upgrade system, there’s still plenty of ways to customise your whole experience. Weapons, for example, can be individually tweaked with various attachments and upgrades. It can get a little costly though depending on how many you wish to keep around. You also need to deal with weapon durability, and if it drops too low bullets will get jammed. Weapon durability can end up a fatal mistake to ignore, when you’ve got some good loot and a pack of hostile people or creatures come across you. Weapons end up wearing out somewhat quicker than I was expecting too, which is thoroughly annoying.

The overall dynamic nature of it means some quests and side-quests can go a fair bit differently each time, depending on your involvement, or not at all if you step out of the way.

One particular quest came to mind where I tried talking a group out of killing someone in a house, but they didn’t listen. As they were about to go in, the person hiding came running out guns-blazing at them. First time around, the person in the house managed to take them all down after running outside and taking cover. Second time the group point blank shot the person the second they stepped outside, which was quite comical to see after the initial run of it due to how abrupt it was. Just pow, dead.

I’ve also had quite a lot of times where I’m out roaming for loot when enemies spotted and started firing at me, only for a big creature to come along and annihilate them so I could run away while they’re all distracted. So many little events that keep going throughout the game, and you get to choose what to do about them all.

Something I truly hated though is the weight system. I can't think of a single time, in any game – ever, that has made being overencumbered in any way fun. It's a game mechanic I despise. Let me stock up on things without slowing to a crawl. Considering how far between traders are, and your own stash, it's just a ridiculous nuisance. Let me hoard sausages in peace! Why are a few of them as heavy as some of the guns?

I hope you like rats…as there can be swarms. Vicious, hungry, screeching swarms of them.

Thankfully again due to the dynamic nature of the game, you might at times come across a roaming friendly patrol to help you deal with them, or use as your distraction meat-shield.

I'll also take this moment to say screw these guys and their stupidly annoying telekinesis that picks up guns, fires them at you and steals your gun away from you:

Say cheese! Still smiling at me after death, annoying little thing.

There's some other bouncy little critters that can also go to hell, that make me jump every time they make an appearance and I'm not expecting them. But I won't spoil those. You can just enjoy meeting them for yourselves.

Even though the world is huge, there is (thankfully) a form of fast-travel. Much like the game world though, it’s on the punishing side, as it will cost you a bit every time you decide to use it. However, it can be incredibly useful too. If you’re stocked up on loot and want to get to your stash, or to a different area to sell it and carry on with more quests, it can be beneficial anyway to find a guide to initiate fast-travel so you don’t lose anything on the road. I can’t count the number of times I died to a random creature, then bandits appearing and finally losing it to an anomaly with loot on me. Thankfully, I quick-save as much as I breathe but still, you get the point.

The quest system is dynamic too, and at least a little smart. You can build up quite a lot of quests, and there’s various ways of doing each of them differently. Some of them can be completed with a shotgun to the face of a particular person, but that person might give you other options. Shooting first, questions later is not always the best option, but sometimes it’s also just fun to do so you can loot everyone in a particular location. If you’re allowed to kill a particular quest giver, they’ll have the items you need on them. Other times, a quest giver might have been killed by someone, or something, and they’ll all show up in your Failed Quest list.

Another big issue to deal with are powerful emissions. They’re insane crazy storms that turn the sky red, with lightning everywhere and staying outside during one is 100% guaranteed death. You do get a fair bit of warning when one is coming, but even so, getting to shelter fast can still be an issue. Nearly everything in S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 wants you dead.

I haven't even gotten a chance yet to talk about the story, which I won't spoil, because it would be so easy to do so. It revolves around a particular item that gets taken from you, and your main initial quest to try and find it and who was involved. This of course leads onto various other intertwining stories, and things spiral a fair bit from there and it gets…weird.

Dealing with various gangs and different factions along the way. It's exciting even from the moment you load it up, with an impressive intro to the game. Even though the story is interesting as it expands, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is very much about everything else. Plenty of the individual quests you do, along with their story progression, are really fun as they unfold. Backed up by some great voice acting, I especially liked the blind brainwashed preacher when you meet the remnants of the Monolith organisation, and a particular mind-controlling "boss battle" of sorts that took me a good few attempts to get right.

As always, every experience you have depends on your equipment, you really will want to constantly be sorting through what you have and swapping things around depending on your currently picked quest-line.

Hope you like FPS platforming too because there's a bit of that spread throughout the game.

With a game like this, I'm really only scratching the surface. I need to go back through and play more, to try out making some different decisions. You do get to make a few interesting choices as you play, and so I'm keen to see what the real difference is when you treat a faction differently.

Bugs and Technical Issues

In my time in the game I’ve seen a fair amount of bugs. Just to give you a full idea of what to expect that I’ve come across: objects falling through the world, annoyingly at times I needed them too (darn ammo and meds); dead bodies that spring back up in some sort of T pose and then flop back down again; characters that at times seem to do a mini-teleport and guns that fire without a sound at all. Others like: bodies you can’t get close enough to move, that end up blocking your way in certain situations; I’ve seen NPCs with legs going through the floor in buildings; NPCs that walk on top of objects and just stare point-blank at walls; NPCs walking on the spot never going anywhere and then just vanishing; various NPCs that aren't even close to the floor (or the bed) and so on.

During my run I've also seen one of the single funniest bugs I’ve ever seen in a game. I was at an enemy base, sneaking around, got discovered and so an enemy started firing at me. I shot them, and then they just suddenly started wildly spinning, and then their body took off like a helicopter and just carried on spinning going up and up and up. The physics system can be pretty hilarious. This ended up happening multiple times too.

Radio chatter audio is even a problem too. When you get a call it often flicks between radio-style sounding one sentence, to chatting like they're right next to you and back again. Thoroughly odd.

Objects NPCs are wearing don’t always line up correctly too, like a particular discussion where their headphones and tape player move without them and the camera ends up focusing on that as you move around. Hilarious again.

Saved games act oddly too. I assume due to the dynamic nature of the game, but the AI seems to just make things up when you reload the game. Numerous times I’ve saved somewhat close to enemies, reloaded and they’re suddenly looking for me even when they weren’t before or they know exactly where I am and start shooting. Their position seems to shift during save reloading, as does their behaviour. I gave advice earlier to “save early, save often” and you’ll need it, because this issue has caused me to load earlier saves more times than I can remember.

None of the problems actually stopped me enjoying it for the most part, some even just made me laugh, but yeah — there’s definitely a fair amount of bugs there. I’m honestly surprised at how many. Some do end up breaking the game, like quests that don’t go through properly causing you to reload an earlier save.

A fair amount of flickering textures too in some places, which might be issues with it running with Proton on Linux. So I’ll give it some allowance there until we know more after release. Example video:

That flickering is only in a select few places, but very distracting when it happens.

One major graphical issue I came across, that I’ve never ever seen before in any other game, is that I had to completely disable adaptive sync directly in my monitor control panel. Otherwise, lots of light sources would have some insane flicker. Took me ages to figure out what that cause was. But I’ve not had to do that for any other game.

It's clear the game is coming in hot, with plenty of bugs still to be worked through. There's been patches during the review period, some fixes I may not have seen yet, but still many issues to be found during testing even on release day showing many.

Quite stable though, surprisingly so, only a single hard-crash to desktop in my entire run.

To sum up

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 has been equal parts mesmerising as it has been terrifying at the same time. There’s been lots of moments where I’ve just sat and watched something happen, to the times where something has made me jump so fiercely that I threw my mouse across my desk. Some of the encounters really can end up quite frightful, but other times I’ve been just amazed by things happening around me. However, all the bugs can definitely be really frustrating to deal with.

My main concern with it aside from the many bugs is the performance on Linux (and just performance in general), you clearly need some power and without Frame Generation it’s pretty rough. Apart from that, and speaking overall, my time spent with it for the most part has been thoroughly good fun.

If I could compare it to previous experiences, it was like the first time I jumped into and completed the original Dying Light or Fallout 3. Worlds full of seemingly endless possibilities, that’s truly never dull to load up a save and explore, and you don’t necessarily need to stick to the storyline if you want to just keep exploring and discovering. There’s hours and hours of content here to discover. But also a whole lot of jankiness, so expect plenty of patches to come.

With the mod support, I really cannot wait to see what people cook up to add into it. I feel like this is going to be a game that has a very-long shelf-life that people will be playing for years to come. Add into that the multiplayer they’re promising that will come “soon after release” as a free addition, I have zero doubts that it’s going to be popular.

Feature Highlight:

• Unique gameplay built on a blend of FPS, horror, and immersive sim.
• It is a non-linear story, with a variety of paths that lead to one of the several endings.
• Benchmark-setting graphics developed using cutting-edge photogrammetry and scanning technologies.
• Advanced artificial intelligence systems that will keep engaged even the most hard-boiled players.
• Immersive survival mechanics like hunger, sleeping, bleeding, radiation effects that enrich the gameplay.
• Dynamic day-night cycle and weather will add even more realism to the gameplay experience.
• Mod support gives the freedom to the creative stalker to extend and enrich the game universe.
• Multiplayer mode, will be added after release as a free update.

The game goes live to purchase at 4PM UTC.

“It feels utterly surreal to say that, but after more than 7 years in the making, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 is now released. That’s totally wild. So was the whole development story.
What started as the most ambitious game by GSC eventually turned out to be an ultimate personal challenge. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 was always supposed to be a truly Ukrainian product, showing our culture to the world in the ongoing effort of the nation to be recognized. I truly believe the team we have consists of exceptional people, but I never actually thought they would be finishing the game under the circumstances like these. Despite all the odds, it’s there. Our biggest game, our own story, our love letter to Ukraine. All the time, effort and passion we put into this is about to be witnessed by the players from all around the globe. After 15 years, the doors to the Zone will be opened once again”, — says Ievgen Grygorovych, CEO and Game Director.

If you haven’t seen it, I also recommend checking out the making of documentary video for some background:

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