Following the surprise announcement of remasters for all of the classic STALKER games last week, developer GSC Game World has now released them all across Xbox Series X|S, Windows PC, and PS5. Initial reactions to these revamped classics, however, are less positive than everyone was hoping they would be.
In fact, they’re extremely negative overall — at least on PC. The Enhanced Edition versions of STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl, STALKER: Clear Sky, and STALKER: Call of Pripyat are all currently sitting at a bright red “Mostly Negative” rating on Steam, with only 36-38% of reviews positive. The bulk of reviews so far are for Shadow of Chernobyl since it was the first game in the series, though the issues I’m about to touch on are present across all three titles.
Based on dozens of critical reviews I’ve read thus far, the biggest problem plaguing the STALKER remasters is a strange bug that seems to cause the games to render at a resolution lower than what you set it as and then upscale it improperly, resulting in blurry, muddy visuals that persist even if you turn settings like AMD FSR Super Resolution and depth of field off.
In my brief testing this morning, I didn’t run into this myself, but it’s affecting a huge range of different systems and even gaming handhelds like the Steam Deck. It doesn’t help that there’s no option to use high-quality Supersampling Anti-Aliasing (SMAA); you’re stuck with low-end Fast Approximate Anti-Aliasing (FXAA) or Morphological Anti-Aliasing (MLAA) that’s fine, but not my first choice.
Another highly contentious change that’s drawn the ire of fans is the complete removal of everything Russian or related to the Soviet Union, including all Russian voice acting and localization, the use of Soviet rubles as in-game currency, and even every Soviet sign, statue, and landmark present in the real-world Chernobyl Exclusion Zone that were included in the original titles.
Russia’s terrible war of aggression against Ukraine is still ongoing, and when you consider that GSC Game World is a Ukrainian studio — and one that’s faced severe adversity as a direct result of the conflict — it’s understandable that the developer would want to scrub its games of Russian content. At the same time, the way The Zone’s supernatural mysteries are layered over recognizable pieces of Soviet iconography and rusting Soviet technology is a huge part of what gives STALKER its atmospheric vibe, and the absence of beloved voice lines like “Cheeki breeki iv damke!” just feels…wrong.
Perhaps this decision would be better received if all the removed historical imagery was replaced with something, but it hasn’t been. It’s simply gone — and that’s something that wasn’t mentioned on the FAQ page for the remasters, where GSC notably affirmed its intent to remain faithful to the original experiences.
Beyond that, players have also reported everything from lower-than-expected framerates for graphical improvements that aren’t too extensive (though they do look nice) and bugs with settings changes not saving to frustrating in-game glitches turning environmental hazards invisible and causing enemy corpse to despawn rapidly — a huge issue in a games where scavenging is important. Some other problems include a new typeface for text that seems to be largely disliked so far, mouse side buttons not being bindable (why?), and UI elements that overlap when playing in ultrawide (as a member of the ultrawide gang, this one is driving me crazy).
It’s not all bad; as I said, the visual improvements look nice (though are ruined by the aforementioned blur for many), the addition of the same great controller support the original Xbox and PS5 ports had last year is appreciated, and Steam Workshop integration is fantastic for modding. Even so, it’s difficult to recommend these remasters when they’re beset with all these caveats. The Xbox and PS5 versions seem to possess far fewer technical problems, notably, but still have the same content changes.
The one saving grace of the Enhanced Editions is that they’re free of charge for anyone who owned the original games, and also include free copies of the classic releases if you’re buying them post-release (they also don’t cost any more). That’s great, because until GSC Game World makes some significant improvements with the remasters, I think you’re better off playing the originals.
There’s also always the Radiophobia 3 mod if you want more of a remake-style experience, as well as last year’s excellent sequel STALKER 2 that’s on sale for $37.49 at CDKeys and is also on Xbox Game Pass.
