Stalker 2 has some of the best FPS action I've played in 2024, thanks to its "old-school" formula that treats players as "highly expendable"

When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works. (Image credit: GSC Game World) In most game previews, I’d be turning beet-red with every death, equating failure with wasted seconds I could have been Seeing Stuff. But in Stalker 2, I caught myself grinning at respawn screens and victorious shootouts alike. Given how squishy protagonist Skif is, the difference between the two can come down to a single bullet. The result is more of the same unforgiving firefights that defined the original Stalker trilogy, where headshots drop enemies in gratifying crumples and dashing from cover to cover feels like having to run over live wires. It – sort of – worked. Sometimes they’d catch me before I could duck behind a tree and riddle me with bullets. On one particularly embarrassing occasion, the noise of our shootout drew a pack of feral dogs, who tore me to shreds before I could scramble up the digger I was taking cover behind. But …