Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl Review: An Apocalyptic Thrill Adventure

MModern video games are often designed to serve a power fantasy. Players typically take charge of a character already blessed with superpowers or elite expertise before using these fantastical tools to overcome exceptional obstacles. Stalker 2: The Heart of Chernobyl leans in the opposite direction.

Inspired by the Soviet science fiction novel Roadside picnic and the free film adaptation of Andrei Tarkovsky, the Stalker The games are set in an alternate history where a second nuclear disaster occurred in the Chernobyl exclusion zone in 2006. This means that players are thrown into a desperate fight for survival with nothing but their wits to help them.

Stalker 2 takes players back to The Zone, a tortured and irradiated landscape where the laws of nature have been permanently altered and several armed factions fight for control. As if that wasn’t enough, mutants roam the wasteland, and players also have to watch out for the kind of environmental anomalies that can suddenly break your bones or cause deadly jets of fire to erupt from the ground.

But it’s not all bad. Anomalies can also produce artifacts that can alter human characteristics – and are therefore sought after by both curious scientists and power-hungry tyrants. This is where harassers come in. These brave people earn their living by exploring the Zone, trading artifacts, and guiding others safely through the chaos.

Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyme, 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 crazy game that’s also consistently brilliant and unlike anything else on the market. The disturbing atmosphere of Stalker 2 is thick throughout its campaign, which sees you explore a huge map marked with interesting distractions, including a militia sharing amusing stories around a campfire and a mutated feline that lures players into a dilapidated house by mimicking the human speech.

Shootouts are brutal exchanges where headshots reign supreme. You’ll dash between shelters and snack on salty sausages to heal between bursts of bullets, then scavenge for food, valuable ammo, and broken weapons to repair and sell. Trading shots 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 stalked by exoskeletal murderers.

Anomaly hunting is another exciting discipline to engage in. Equip your scanner, then throw lightning bolts at the homing electrical groups to clear a path to an artifact. Once safely discovered, you have a decision to make. Keep the artifact for yourself to improve your own skills, or sell it to fund armor repairs and weapon attachments.

Like his predecessors, Stalker 2 tasks you with uncovering 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 artifact. From there, he is lured across the perimeter of The Zone by a distant scientist who promises him a new home if he can test the artifact with his scanner.

However, one unfortunate ambush later and Skif finds himself navigating the dangers of the Zone and the warmongering cabals who have visions of who should rule the country. As Fallout: New VegasIt’s up to you which political crowd you want to join with. Be careful though, every choice has meaning and can lock entire questlines or turn old safehouses into corpse-riddled ghost towns.

Stalker 2 has sharp edges and plenty of bugs (many of which will be fixed at launch, the developers say), but the systemic depth, narrative intrigue, and groundbreaking graphics help alleviate those issues. The open world is littered with breathtaking scenery while the cutscenes are meticulously animated. Like any good existential game, you will also find moving monologues enhanced with invigorating humor from Stalker 2The memorable cast of characters.

But it is perhaps the most enduring aspect of Stalker 2 is the astonishing adventure that is its open world. Whether it’s a tantalizing anomaly field, a shudder-worthy underground laboratory, or a platforming puzzle that wouldn’t look out of place in Half-Life, Stalker 2 has the power to grab your attention for hours if you stray from the golden path – and you certainly should. Located at the end of the world, Stalker 2 naturally involves a lot of walking through gruesome wilderness, but it’s hard not to love the journey when it takes place in an environment that feels this alive.

“Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl” releases November 20 for Xbox Series X/S and PC