Stalker 2: Heart of Chernobyl review

I admit: I was afraid. Glossy trailers, Microsoft demos, Unreal Engine 5 – the marketing for Stalker 2 was unlike any Stalker I’ve known and loved. Has GSC abandoned an entire beloved franchise in pursuit of streamlined console success? Was Metro created under a different name?

Well, never trust a trailer. It may be shinier and may have gamepad support, but Stalker 2 is still Stalker to the core, that unique and impossible-to-repeat blend of FPS, survival horror and immersive simulation. Whether it’s X-Ray or UE5, the game’s ambitions continue to strain the seams of its engine. It’s still full of systems – factions, artifacts, anomalies, a world full of people going about their business and staccato Thuk-thuk defends the Eastern Bloc – which sometimes brings the whole thing to the breaking point and even beyond.

It’s excellent and undoubtedly my personal game of the year, but there is one caveat here. I meant what I said: Stalker 2 is Stalker to the core, and that means bad things too. There were bugs, crashes, progress-stopping bugs, and sometimes hilarious animation and AI glitches, as well as some minor stutters that I just accepted as the price of admission, even at 1440p on my 3700X, RTX 4080, and 32GB RAM equipped machine . And while the extensive patch that rolled out on day one helped a lot, the game still feels shaky: a bit choppy, with an AI that still can’t tell friend from foe at times, and so on.

God knows I can’t blame the developers – the fact that the game exists at all despite its home country being invaded during development is a miracle – but it does mean that the whole thing feels unsettled yet. Do I love Stalker 2? Yes. Is Stalker 2 simple to love? NO. At least not without fixes that GSC promises are in the works.

Fire it and forget it

In Stalker 2 (which is actually the fourth installment in the series if you’re recent to the Zone), you don’t play as anyone you know. You are Skif, an ex-military from the mainland – relatively normal Ukraine near Chernobyl – who woke up in the night to find that his kitchen had been brutally destroyed by an artifact, one of many priceless, semi-magical treasures the Zone produces naturally and which make it catnip for happiness seekers.

In one of the apartments, quite irritated by the whole situation, Skif ventures into the Zone to find out what the hell the artifact thinks it’s doing by showing up in his apartment, and soon finds himself embroiled in a multi-layered plot of faction warfare, personal vendettas, competing visions ideological and occasional gang violence, with plenty of options to choose which side you side with.

Stalker has always, quietly, had one of the weirder and more philosophical stories in the pantheon of video game narratives, and Stalker 2 repairs that legacy. There isn’t much of it AND plot because it consists of a series of smaller sequences that eventually add up, each of which takes you to a recent part of the Zone’s astonishingly huge map, which, as far as I can tell, includes every location featured in the previous games and then some and which looks more attractive than ever, considering all the screams and whistles of 2024. Never before have video games allowed us to descend into cursed basements with such atmospheric and eerie lighting.

Exploration seems endless, like a 2km sprint every time the game sets a recent quest marker that seems almost maliciously distant (quick travel requires talking to paid guides at population centers, and they only go to Other concentrators). Well, you’ll probably buy some frosty artifacts while traveling.

For the most part, I liked the story-within-a-story structure, but it has a compelling effect, repeatedly making you feel like you’re getting closer to the final showdown, the grand denouement, the climax of the climax, only for the game to turn around and say “and now the rest of the story.” Please turn the cassette to the B’ side. The pacing becomes tiresome, especially when you get to the true endgame, but things still move along. And further. And further.

The world is at war

But you don’t really come to Stalker for its story. You come for the stories: the quirky anecdotes that A-Life’s game systems and AI can’t help but spit out, and Stalker 2 has plenty of them. It’s a real mechanical world, and its NPCs – who to this day retain their totally adorable procgen names like “Gena Badass”, “Vanya Ampoule”, “Max Sleepy”, etc. – are as much subject to and victims of its whims as you are .

Take, for example, a military checkpoint that disbanded itself. While running to the quest marker, I came across a roadblock set up by the intimidating military faction of the Totem. I wasn’t on good terms with Ward. The main plot gave me many opportunities to side with them, and I returned fire on each one, so the soldiers didn’t want to let me pass.

Riddle. I stood with a frown, the rain beating down on my hardened military exoskeleton, wondering how best to handle this situation. I could open fire, I could sneak, I could find another way to get in.

Or I could count on a huge pack of feral dogs to emerge from the darkness and completely ravage the camp. The stars of Stalker 2 aligned in such a way that these dogs, on their journey, went straight to the checkpoint that I had to pass through. Like a plague sent by God, they devoured every unit there, suffering heavy casualties as panicked soldiers unleashed a barrage of gunfire that turned night into day. After 15 seconds, my problems became a blur. I put down the few remaining puppies and continued.

For me, this is the soul of Stalker that burns bright in Stalker 2. It’s not just about the dogs at the checkpoint, it’s about the quasi-boss fight with the big, scary mutant that was interrupted before I broke into the basement where he was hiding , because he fell into a burner anomaly and died. It’s about watching two opposing factions destroy each other in a forest skirmish before choosing who’s left to claim the loot. He is pursued across the map by the faction with which you shot your representative, killing its members following a skirmish in the forest. It is a world that follows its own rules, without favors or prejudices: action meets consequences and action, and so on.

But here too, in tricky systemic issues like the faction system, some of the worst bugs reared their ugly heads for me. Even though I made every effort – including many long bouts of mass murder – to convey my distaste for the Ward, the game never quite accepted the fact that I had completely severed ties with them.

One of their main tasks, loose and orphaned, appeared in my journal and remained abandoned until the very end. This confused the situation many times when I had a “kill all these Wards” type of goal. Enemies didn’t attack, and when I completed the somewhat disturbing quest of euthanizing my enemies like cows, the quest log didn’t update, leaving me stranded. To be fair, the first GSC patch mostly fixed this. The quest was updated, but Totem still refused to treat me as an enemy. Better, but not completely clear, health.

Rough with smooth

But as a die-hard Stalker, even the bugs feel a bit like an old friend. I worried that it was these quirks – the bizarre, unforgiving, system-driven game design and, yes, even that joke – that worried GSC might be tempted to sacrifice itself in the transition to whatever “AAA” meant.

More fool me. The developers steadfastly refused to smooth out any of the series’ rough edges in favor of a new audience of potentially more casual gamers. Stalker 2 doesn’t hold your hand and The Zone doesn’t care about you. This is a game where the first mutant you fight is completely invisible and won’t hesitate to throw his strongest enemies at you if you take a wrong turn first. Even if you escape, you have spent valuable resources to survive, and your equipment has probably been chewed up during the fight; they’ll get you next time.

It’s almost amazing to play something with such an unsentimental, old-school design sensibility that looks as good and feels as modern as Stalker 2, and it’s a welcome return to one of computer gaming’s best and most quirky franchises. Yes, there are plenty of bugs, so maybe give it some time before diving into the game, and yes, the attrition mechanics may be off-putting to some. But it’s great to return to the Zone after over a decade of absence and discover that it hasn’t sacrificed the things that made it so special all those years ago.