Modern video games are often built in service of a power fantasy. Players typically take charge of a character already equipped with superpowers or elite expertise before using these fantastical tools to overcome exceptional odds. Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl leans the opposite way.
Inspired by the soviet science fiction novel Roadside Picnic and Andrei Tarkovsky’s loose film adaptation, the Stalker games are set in an alternate history where a second nuclear disaster occurred at the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone in 2006. It means players are thrown into a desperate struggle for survival with nothing but their wits to help them.
Stalker 2 returns players to The Zone, a tortured, irradiated landscape where the laws of nature have been permanently altered and several armed factions fight for control. If that wasn’t troubling enough, mutants roam the wasteland and players also have to watch out for the sort of environmental anomalies that can suddenly crush your bones or have spouts of deadly fire erupt from the ground.
It’s not all bad though. The anomalies can also produce artefacts that can modify human characteristics — and are therefore desired by both curious scientists and power-hungry tyrants. This is where the Stalkers come into it. These brave grunts make a living by exploring The Zone, trading artefacts and guiding others safely through the chaos.
Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, the first Stalker game since 2009, is an open-world first-person shooter that reinterprets the studio’s ambitious vision with modern production values. The result is an abrasive, often janky game that’s also routinely brilliant and unlike anything else on the market. The unnerving atmosphere of Stalker 2 is fog-thick throughout its campaign, which sees you exploring an enormous map pock-marked with worthy distractions including a militia sharing funny stories around a campfire and a mutated feline that lures players into a dilapidated house by mimicking human speech.
Gunfights are brutal exchanges where headshots reign supreme. You’ll dart between cover spots and munch on cured sausages to patch yourself up between bursts of bullets, then scavenge for food, precious ammo and broken guns to mend and sell. Exchanging fire with enemies may lack a bit of impact compared to other shooters but the slight awkwardness of it all actually complements the palpable terror, especially when you’re being hounded by exoskeletal bruisers.
Anomaly-hunting is another thrilling discipline to engage with. Equip your scanner then launch bolts at homing electricity clusters to clear a path towards an artefact. Once safely uncovered, you’ve got a decision to make. Do you keep the artefact for yourself to improve your own skillset, or sell it to fund armour repairs and weapon attachments.
Like its predecessors, Stalker 2 tasks you with discovering the mysteries of The Zone. This time around you take control of Skif, a man from the mainland whose family home is decimated in an explosion that also leaves him with an unusual artefact. From there, he’s lured across The Zone’s perimeter by an aloof scientist who promises him a new home if he can test the artefact with his scanner.
One unfortunate ambush later though and Skif finds himself navigating the dangers of The Zone and the hawkish cabals who have visions about who should command the land. Like Fallout: New Vegas, it’s up to you to decide which political mob you want to throw in with. Be careful though, every choice is meaningful and can lock off entire questlines or turn former safe havens into corpse-riddled ghost towns.
Stalker 2 has sharp edges and plenty of bugs (many of which will be fixed by launch, developers say), but systemic depth, narrative intrigue and groundbreaking graphics help to smooth these issues over. The open world is littered with jaw-dropping set pieces while cutscenes are meticulously animated. Like any good existential game, you’ll also find stirring monologues buffeted with bracing humour from Stalker 2’s memorable cast of characters.
But perhaps the most enduring aspect of Stalker 2 is the astonishing adventure that is its open world. Whether it’s a tantalising anomaly field, a shudder-worthy subterranean lab or a platforming puzzle that wouldn’t feel out of place in Half-Life, Stalker 2 has the power to snare your attention for hours on end if you stray from the golden path — and you definitely should. Set at the end of the world, Stalker 2 naturally involves a lot of walking through horrifying wilderness but it’s hard not to love the journey when it takes place across an environment that feels this alive.
‘Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl’ is out November 20 for Xbox Series X/S and PC
VERDICT
A much-needed shot in the arm for single-player first-person shooters, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is a masterpiece of atmosphere, made with brain-melting ambition and conviction. Its technical troubles will fade in due course, giving way to an essential experience that is tremendously easy to get lost in and doubly hard to forget.
PROS
- Impeccable open-world ambience
- A gripping story led by memorable personalities
- Eye-popping visual design and lifelike cutscenes
CONS
- It’s janky like the old games and has its fair share of bugs
- The gunplay lacks impact and could do with some iteration