Stalker 2 Gets Day-One Patch Improvements, But Problems Remain Across PC And Xbox

Few video game developers have had to deal with the things that GSC Game World had to face while making Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl. The Ukrainian game developer behind this first-person shooter survival-horror title was derailed by Russia’s invasion of its country in 2022. But the game was finally released earlier this month with some noticeable issues. Fortunately, a day-one patch has reportedly dealt with some of those problems, while others remain.

As noted by Eurogamer and Digital Foundry, the patch arrived after reviewers had already played through Stalker 2. The good news is that this patch seems to have significantly helped the game’s frame-rate performance. But the site notes that “the game still suffers from everything to minor, amusing bugs to more serious issues and heavy CPU utilization.” On Xbox Series X, the game is said to occasionally freeze entirely for a few seconds when visiting large towns, before continuing with an erratic rate of frames per second.

Overall, the first impression left by Stalker 2 remains positive. GameSpot’s Richard Wakeling wrote in his Stalker 2 review notes that it “boldly sticks to the studio’s vision of a seamless open-world survival shooter, which the series has always strived to be. It’s rough around the edges and uncompromising in a way that is sometimes off-putting. Yet the series’ emergent gameplay remains intact and is further complemented by a fascinating setting and the most accomplished combat in the series so far.” However, Wakeling also reiterated many of the technical issues stated above, as well as crashes and other bugs that hampered the experience.

Xbox released the behind-the-scenes documentary War Game: The Making of Stalker 2 last month, which chronicles the ordeal that GSC Game World’s team went through in order to complete the game during war time. Ultimately, many of the developers had to leave Ukraine to finish the development while others remained behind to fight for their country. That war continues to this day with no resolution in sight.