In Stalker 2's horror-filled Zone, nothing is more terrifying than encountering a small, malnourished dog

You're skipping through the woods, not a care in the world—except, perhaps, the fire spewing out of the ground, or the weird gravitational anomaly sucking and crushing everything in its vicinity, or maybe the invisible mutants that will strike without warning. Such is life in Stalker 2's Zone.

But aside from those things? Life is good. You've got plenty of bandages, vodka and ammo, and you've just finished fully upgrading your favourite gun. You're doing well. You're getting the hang of Stalker 2. You're a survivor now, experienced and confident. You are 10 seconds away from being mauled by a pack of hungry, rabid, scabby dogs for the 50th time.

There are two types of videogame pooch: there's your adorable BFF whose life will almost certainly be put in jeopardy to elicit an emotional response, and then there are the bastards. The ravenous beasties who will chase and leap and claw at your face. Stalker 2 has an abundance of the latter. The Zone's true alpha predator.

Stalker 2's killer hounds are particularly nasty. They tend to hunt in large packs, and will quickly surround you. Their bites will cause bleed damage, so even when they're not snapping at you, your precious health will be drained. In the early game, they are horrendously dangerous because of this. Expect to go through a stupid number of bandages.

But what makes them extra dangerous is how erratic they are. These are some loopy pooches. Sometimes they'll charge at you straight away, completely giving into their crazed bloodlust, but other times they'll just sprint off in another direction, only to boomerang back when you least expect it. They zig and they zag and they make tactical retreats or simply get distracted by something else for a few seconds. This makes it hard to put them in the ground. They're just so fast and hard to predict. And since they're quite small, you might not even notice when one of them is ripping your ankles to shreds until you're bleeding to death.

"But Fraser," you might ask, "in a Zone full of sneaky mutants who can turn invisible at will, and anomalies that play fast and loose with the laws of physics, how can dogs really be that much of a threat?" You're forgetting, though, that nothing is more nuts than a hungry pooch who's skipped puppy training school. At least transparent mutants present a big target, and get up in your face for long enough to put a clip in them. And when they do retreat, they follow an easy to identify pattern. The dogs, meanwhile, play by their own rules. And those rules are simple: there are no rules.

And fair play to GSC—dogs do be this crazy. Or at least poorly trained ones like my demonic cockapoo, Cosmo. He's no killer, thankfully, but he does bounce around my flat like an out-of-control pinball, barrelling into doors, slamming into me, leaping onto seats, charging and then retreating. He's simply impossible to catch when he's got the zoomies. Which is 90% of the time, because cockapoos are relentlessly bonkers.

Sometimes, at least, Cosmo will listen to commands, or stop for a moment thanks to the promise of a delicious treat. The Zone's feral monsters, though? Nah, they ain't stopping for anything. So you'll either have to outrun them (challenging) or kill them all (also quite challenging). I can't count the number of times I've been walking towards a mission objective, full of bullets, only to get ambushed by the Canine Club, forcing me to waste clip after clip for zero rewards.

So many of my deaths include the phrase "and then some dogs appeared", because they seem to have a preternatural ability to sense when their presence would be most disastrous or hilarious or frustrating. Maybe I've just walked out of a labyrinthine cave with a brand new artifact, feeling all cocky, but low on meds, and then they'll suddenly appear. "Woof woof, we're here to fuck you up." Or maybe I'll be fighting some mutants and suddenly I'll hear their barking, their warcry, before they join the fray to get their share of the meat.

But sometimes the dogs will become my inadvertent, temporary allies. Or at least a distraction. Dogs don't differentiate between factions. All humans are food. So yes, they've saved my life a few times, messing with my foes for just long enough that I can reverse my fortunes and get the upper hand. Does that make up for all the times they've ruined my day? No, to hell with these hounds.