Stalker 2's survival systems haven't changed since the last game 15 years ago, and I'm not sure if I'm happy or disappointed

Stalker 2
(Image credit: GSC Game World)

2007's Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl was one of my first steps into the world of survival games. It was a stark contrast to most other games I was playing at the time, representing not some power fantasy about being a nigh-indestructible badass but instead a cold and indifferent world where I was fragile and weak. I never felt like a glorious hero. Hell, I didn't even feel like the main character. Stalker was exciting because it simulated me as just another guy who could be killed—imagine this—by a single bullet.

Headshots weren't the only danger to my mortal body in Shadow of Chernobyl: bleeding, radiation poisoning, and hunger could kill me, not to mention getting ripped apart by anomalies. There was no fast travel, so every journey had to be carefully prepped for while still leaving enough room in my limited inventory space to bring stuff back. It was a shockingly tough survival experience filled with dread, tension, and countless unceremonious deaths. Even in the late game with advanced armor and weapons, I never truly felt safe or powerful.

In the 15 years since the last Stalker game, Call of Pripyat, the survival genre has done a lot of growing. Games have introduced far more complex survival systems than were in the Stalker series. There are food and cooking systems in games like DayZ and SCUM that calculate how much food fits in your stomach, simulate food poisoning and sometimes even track fat and carbs. In other games, like Valheim, food buffs and meal combinations make your diet as important as the armor you wear.

Crafting systems have also exploded since 2010, not always in the best ways—like when it's shoehorned into shooters that don't need it—and along with systems for basebuilding, you can really live in a lot of survival games, harvesting what you need from the world instead of just buying or trading with vendors.

With all that's happened in the survival genre in the past 15 years, I was intensely curious to see how Stalker 2 would handle survival in 2024. Would it be more complex like many of the games we've seen in the past decade and a half? Or would it be leaner and more accessible? Has Stalker, which influenced so many other survival games, been influenced by those games in turn?

The answer is, uh… No. Nope. Negative. In terms of survival systems, Stalker 2 really hasn't changed at all. In the Zone, the last decade of survival games may as well not have even happened.

Time Warp

(Image credit: GSC Game World)

In a way, it's comforting. When I started playing Stalker 2 this week, it was like a homecoming. When a food icon appears on my screen I eat a hunk of bread or open a can of meat shapes. That's it. That's Stalker 2's entire food system. If my weapon degrades, I don't have to scavenge gun parts to repair it, or cobble together a new stock or scope from scrap while hunched over a workbench. I just take my busted weapon to a guy and pay him to fix or upgrade it. Same as it ever was.

I can't help envisioning a version of the game where I don't have to pay an NPC an exorbitant fee to fix my guns

I've come to appreciate simplicity. Sometimes I have to psyche myself up to play new games simply because many of them have so many systems the first few hours have to be spent learning things, which is exhausting. Stalker 2's tutorial was basically WASD to move, CTRL to crouch, SHIFT to sprint. Good luck! Wilmot Works It Out has a longer tutorial than Stalker 2, and it's a cozy jigsaw puzzle game. There's something great about jumping into a game and not needing a wiki open in a second screen just to figure out if a can of beans will buff my stamina better than tinned peaches.

But as a survival fan I can't say I'm not a little disappointed that Stalker 2 hasn't grown a little. I don't necessarily think it needs a huge crafting system or an elaborate cooking system. Maybe it would be actively annoying to have to collect gun parts or kevlar scraps or metal screws or whatever else would be needed to fix and upgrade my weapons and gear.

(Image credit: GSC Game World)

But I can't help envisioning a version of the game where I don't have to pay an NPC an exorbitant fee to fix my guns but where I have the agency to work on them myself. Maybe crafting a few extra bandages from the fabric of a dead bandit's jacket would make me feel a bit more of a survivalist than going to the town store on a shopping trip. Maybe instead of sleeping on my cot to wait out a thunderstorm, I could happily pass the hours by tinkering with my gear.

And sitting around the campfire with a guitar is cool, but putting a sausage on a stick and roasting it over the flames would be pretty immersive. The same way a gravi artifact on my belt improves my carry weight, maybe some Bloodsucker stew would buff my stealth a bit while I digested it. In a pinch, while far from safety, I might cut myself a steak from a dead irradiated dog and chow it down. I'd expect a ton of radiation poisoning, but hey, I've got vodka to deal with that.

I'm enjoying Stalker 2 a ton just the way it is. At the same time, when it comes to its survival systems, I was hoping for a bit more.

Christopher Livingston
Senior Editor

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.

Read more
monster hunter wilds meal
Monster Hunter Wilds' new cooking system is a win for balance, but there's a Meowscular Chef-shaped hole in my heart
A hand holding a compass in the woods
Players are already finding creative solutions to Prologue: Go Wayback's grueling difficulty: 'You could just chug gasoline'
Henry chokes out a farmer while wearing absurd spectacles.
20 hours in, Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 is a mad, systems-driven sandbox that captures some of the best parts of games like Stalker
The view from a cliff in the forest
PlayerUnknown's upcoming game Prologue: Go Wayback! is full of grand ambitions, but there's still a lot of room for this survival game to grow
An enemy druid dodges a stab from the player.
As a Stalker sicko, the 2 hours I just spent with Atomfall have made it one of my most-anticipated games this year
Stalker 2
It launched upside down and on fire, but busted and brilliant Stalker 2 has attracted 6 million players to the Zone in the last 3 months
Latest in FPS
Masked Counter-Terrorist in helmet in forefront with sunglasses and beret-wearing CT in background touching headset
There's hope yet for Classic Offensive after its Steam rejection: The team behind the Counter-Strike 1.6 revival mod is in touch with Valve about its 'concerns'
Destiny 2 Rite of the Nine: The Emissary, massive, ominously standing at the edge of a water basin.
Oops! Bungie rolled out Destiny 2's Rite of the Nine event three weeks early, and new loot is already dropping
A soldier looks out over the Verdansk map, as a single tear rolls down his cheek.
The original Verdansk map is returning to Call of Duty: Warzone, to celebrate which we get a soldier crying to Nat King Cole
FragPunk codes - A close-up shot of a mercenary wearing a mask with glowing eyes.
All FragPunk codes and how to redeem them
An evil-looking demon with red eyes and horns
You can theoretically beat Doom: The Dark Ages without using a gun, but 'You'd have a hard time, that's for sure,' says the game's director
Official Doom Guy art superimposed over Vault 666 Fallout-themed background.
Fallout-themed Doom mod Vault 666 has multiple endings, an OP Dogmeat companion, and a Ron Perlman-impersonating narrator so good, I was worried it was AI-generated at first
Latest in Features
Honey B Lovely
The state of Final Fantasy 14 in 2025: It's in a weird spot, huh?
Monster Hunter Wilds palico
One of the biggest victories of Monster Hunter Wilds' streamlining is I don't have to deal with those awful gimmick fights anymore
A vampire with a dark castle and swarms of bats in the background.
We need to decide on a genre name for Vampire Survivors-like games before a really terrible one sticks
Olivia, Alma and a palico
I wish Monster Hunter Wilds wasn't so afraid of letting me play Monster Hunter
SteelSeries QcK Performance mouse pads overlapping on a desk
The SteelSeries QcK Performance series has reignited my excitement over the simple pleasure of a quality mouse pad… and trying to click skulls with pinpoint accuracy
OneXPlayer 2 pro on a table
I never thought a handheld PC bloated with Windows could replace my Steam Deck, but after gaming on an old OneXPlayer 2 Pro I can see now I judged it too harshly