The review embargo for Stalker 2 has officially lifted! Yes, the game is out today on Xbox Game Pass for console, PC and cloud, and we had planned to bring you a review here at Pure Xbox… but we’re going to need a bit more time with it.

So far, we’ve played about 30 hours of Stalker 2 on Xbox Series X, and it’s been a rocky experience. Bugs have been a problem during the review period, causing us to occasionally lose progress and quite regularly run into irritating issues.

We haven’t finished our review yet for a couple of reasons. The first is that GSC Game World has pushed out two massive updates over the past few days, and we simply haven’t had enough time to test them properly yet. The other is that we don’t feel like we’re anywhere near completing the campaign after 30 hours, so in the interest of providing you with a definitive and clear verdict, we’re holding back just a little longer.

You’ll still find plenty of other Stalker 2 coverage here at Pure Xbox until it’s live though. We’ve got a review roundup on the way, a comparison of how the game performs across Xbox Series X and Xbox Series S, a bunch of guides for things like the best controller settings, and obviously all the most relevant news that we think you’ll be interested in.

Thanks for remaining patient with us – we’ll bring you our Stalker 2 as soon as we possibly can!