Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is finally out, 15 long years since Call of Pripyat. The game incorporates the latest and greatest in graphical tech, and looks visually stunning. It’s also very scalable – thanks to it being built on top of Unreal Engine 5.
The game is however, quite unforgiving to low-end PC hardware, making it tough to recommend playing on devices such as the Steam Deck. It’s probably a better idea to try and play this on a more powerful device such as the ROG Ally.
Best Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl Steam Deck settings
The settings mentioned below can provide a ‘playable’ experience of sorts, but do keep in mind that it is far from ideal:
In-game settings
Graphics
- Overall Quality: Custom
- Texture Quality: Low
- Hair: Low
- Object Details: Low
- Effects Quality: Low
- Materials: Low
- Post-Processing: Low
- Anti-Aliasing: Low
- Motion Blur Quality: Off; user preference
- Motion Blur Strength: Off
- Depth of Field: Low
- Light Shafts: Disabled
- Sharpness: 20%, user preference
- Upscaling method: FSR
- Upscaling Quality: Performance; lower to Performance if you have a weaker GPU
- FSR 3 Frame Generation: Disabled; game does not fare well in terms of responsiveness with this enabled
- Shading Quality: Low
- Global Illumination: Low
- Reflections: Low
- Shadow Quality: Low
- Clouds: Low
- Fog: Low
- Sky: Low
- Foliage Quality: Low
- Environment Draw Distance: Low
Display
- Screen Mode: Fullscreen [Borderless]
- Field of View: 90
- V-Sync: Disabled; always keep disabled
- Frame Rate: 60/30
- NVIDIA Reflex Low Latency: Disabled
- Contrast/Brightness/Gamma: 50%
- Image Encoding: sRGB (LDR)
Steam Deck specific settings
- Frame Rate Limit: 60
- TDP: 15 W
- Battery Drain: 25-30 W
It’s probably not worth playing Stalker 2 on the Steam Deck right now
Stalker 2 runs at a consistent sub 30 FPS on the Deck, and is accompanied by a rather long shader compilation screen. While it is possible to push above 30 FPS in certain areas, the hit to visual quality is quite noticeable and is not worth it.
It might be worth waiting for the developers and Valve to further optimize the game on the handheld – given that prior ‘unplayable’ games were made playable later on.
