Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl review – roadside thumbstick

The Zone contains horrors you wouldn’t believe. I’ve spoken to an invisible man. I knew he was real because I could see his military-style headphones floating there, judging me, nodding in response to what I said. I’ve seen bottles, bread, and sausages floating a few inches above a dining table. 

Oh, the horrors. The horrors I’ve seen. 

I’ve seen three men come out of another man. I fired my gun and watched the pink mist vent from his skull, but as he fell, another man with a gun – ready to go, about to die. He goes down and out comes another. And another. And one more. I still see the men when I close my eyes, duplicating like a splitting cell. 

Sometimes people speak to me over the radio and their voice detaches from the electric airwaves and transplants into the space next to me, becoming full-bodied as if they’re right in the room. Then, even worse, sometimes MY voice takes on the static of the airwaves and escapes into the ether until MY voice comes over the radio, despite it coming out of MY mouth attached to MY face. 

I’ll never escape the horrors I’ve seen. 

It’s the kind of psychological terror most directors could only dream of pulling off. If only it were intentional. 

Usually, there are two types of guys when it comes to beloved cult media. For Stalker, there’s one guy, and he’s probably pumping his fist like a sicko after reading that. 

Stalker 2 is a faithful sequel, from the gameplay to the bugs. Like the original game, it’s hilariously broken at launch. Like the original game, it’ll probably be amazing in ten years when modders have fixed it. The developer also has a big day-one patch planned, which will bloat the already 150GB download size out and might fix some of the worst bugs, but it won’t fix what’s fundamentally broken. 

The game drops you into the middle of the Chornobyl exclusion zone, which has become a hotbed for mutants, raiders, and supernatural forces since the radiation soaked into the land. It plays like a Eurojank take on a Bethesda RPG (much less polished), with an open map scattered with NPCs to talk to, enemies to shoot, and strange anomalies to avoid or be murdered by. 

Stalker 2 is supposed to be an unforgiving game. The sickos know it. The environment around you – from the radiation to the mutants and strange anomalies – is trying to kill you at all times, so you’re encouraged to take your time. There’s no fast travel or vehicles, you just have to trek across irradiated wastelands and dank swamps wherever you need to go. 

You’re supposed to use throwable bolts to find safe passage forward so you’re not torn apart by invisible dangers. By the midgame, you’ll throw caution to the nuclear winds and just sprint to every objective, quick saving as you go instead of slowly advancing while throwing bolts into environmental traps because it’s laborious. 

I’m all for friction in games – I love when systems create their own stories, and travel is its own reward because of what happens along the way – but Stalker 2’s systems rarely overlap in interesting ways. They just feel like landmines. When a gun jams, it should add tension to the combat encounter, but here it just makes me sad that I have to walk back to the nearest town to get my weapon repaired. It’s less an obstacle and more a detour. I feel the same about the invisible threats that pepper every route to an objective. Like I said, they’re landmines. Sickos will probably love that. 

It’s an unforgiving game, but the moment-to-moment play isn’t strong enough to make you want to persevere. Even when weapons work, combat underwhelms because of damage inconsistency and subpar enemy AI. Remember when three guys spawned out of another guy? That’s because they’re a hive mind, and they all have the same ideas and pathing, so they often end up in the exact same spot as they move and shoot. 

If you climb to the top of a tower during a fight, enemies will eventually bunch up at the base of the tower and throw grenades at themselves, which is a great way to conserve your limited ammo. If one does land a grenade next to you, there’s no warning indicator, so good luck with that. On the flip side, they will shout, “I’m hiding here” when they’re trying to hide from you, which is nice of them. 

Sometimes, enemies will stand looking at you with their guns lowered, so you assume they’re friendly, but they’ll randomly shoot when you cross some invisible threshold. Stealth doesn’t fare much better because enemy view distance, what hard cover blocks vision, and what they can hear is inconsistent. You’ll quickly give up on trying to creep through compounds when you realize how limited and seemingly random it is. 

It’s disappointing because the world itself – even if it lacks variety, being a nuclear wasteland and all – is gorgeous. In one mission, I frantically searched for a cellar door in the middle of a poppy field that messed with my senses, causing hallucinations and short blackouts as a storm raged and lightning licked the ground around me. The atmosphere is close to perfect, and the weather effects are some of the best I’ve seen, but the game that takes place inside the world doesn’t live up to the brushstrokes. 

I really wanted a win for this development studio. The Ukrainian developer has weathered a pandemic, escaped a warzone, and developed this game while under unprecedented pressure. If I could score a game for heart, it’d be a ten out of ten. Maybe one day it will be, but it’s not there yet. One for the sickos. 

Score: 5/10

Version tested: PC