Conclusion

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is finally here, and the core of the game is brilliant. Rewarding exploration, a metric ton of quests, an interesting story, a huge world to explore, punishing difficulty, realistic weapon handling and gunplay, light survival elements, a bunch of equipment and weapons to get, and The Zone that was never as massive or more inviting would result in one of the best, if not the best, game of 2024 if not for the technical side of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, which is a mess.

The game's A-Life 2.0 system is broken at the moment, with enemies spawning 10 meters from you and respawning shortly after you clear encampments, like in Far Cry 2. I've also experienced more than a dozen crashes between my PC and my ROG Ally, regardless of the settings I've used. On the flip side, I haven't encountered many bugs, especially quest-related ones.

The game is also too demanding for the visuals it offers. At times, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 looks incredible, but more often than not, the game looks just okay while still being one of the most demanding games ever.

I've played the Stalker 2 for about three hours in preparation for this performance review and about four or five hours since. I love the gameplay, the story, and the exploration, and I adore the immersion and the familiar Stalker atmosphere. But I've decided to put the game on ice for at least a few months until developers patch it up and optimize it a bit.

While the game is playable on PC, as long as you've got enough horsepower, Stalker 2 isn't playable on Steam Deck nor ROG Ally. The former just doesn't have enough CPU and GPU horsepower to run it at playable frame rates, while the latter doesn't pack enough memory to prevent the game from turning into a stutter fest as soon as you start moving.

There's also the controller support issue. Stalker 2 recognizes the embedded controllers of the Steam Deck and ROG Ally, but it doesn't respond to controller input on some handhelds, including ours. The same issue is reported by some PC gamers, while others, including us, can play the game on their gaming PCs with a controller without issues.

Finally, by default, the UE5 Global Illumination system doesn't work on ROG Ally—and every Windows gaming handheld, for that matter—out of the box. You can remedy the issue, but enabling GI also increases hardware requirements.

I would guess you can play Stalker 2 on the ROG Ally X at playable frame rates and manageable amounts of stuttering since the upgraded machine comes with 24 GB of memory, as long as you get lucky and the game allows you to use the inbuilt controller in the first place. Stalker 2 is available on PC Game Pass, so if you do want to try it, I recommend checking it on Game Pass before buying the game.