At last, STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl is finally upon us. First announced 14 years ago, brought back to life in 2018, and then delayed from 2022 into late this year due to the Russian war of aggression in Ukraine, the release of the hardcore open-world FPS has been a long-time coming. And as I write this on launch day — mere minutes from the release of the Xbox and Windows PC exclusive — its review embargo has passed, resulting in dozens of critic opinions being published across the web.
At the time of writing, STALKER 2 has a "Generally Favorable" overall review score of about 77/100 on the aggregation site Metacritic, with an average of 76/100 based on 44 Windows PC reviews and an average of 79/100 taken from 12 Xbox Series X|S reviews. Most evaluations give it a rating that falls somewhere in the 80-90 range, but there are quite a few reviews in the 70s and even the 60s as well. Here's a roundup of quotes and scores that shows the range of opinions:
