As I crouched in the rafters of an abandoned farmhouse, I thought about what kind of game it was STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl will be. My flashlight is off, my gun and my stomach are empty. Below me, a gunfight rages in the darkness, and harsh Ukrainian voices echo across the wind. I stick myself in a can of suspicious-looking meat and wait. A few moments pass and silence spreads over the dark field. I think it’s safe enough to fearfully venture out and search the bodies for remains while the flashlight is still off. At that moment I am unceremoniously torn to pieces by mutant dogs.
Let me say up front that I’m not a particular fan of hard or scary games, so I’ll suffer this fate in less than 30 minutes STALKERS 2 I actually adopted a contemptuous tone that I thought would be unwavering. And how wrong I was.
“So this is how it will be,” I whisper out loud to myself.
STALKERS 2 is a hard-hitting first-person survival affair that follows the premise of its predecessors in the Stalker series. As new protagonist Skif, the game begins with you entering an alternate recreation of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, or “The Zone,” home to countless strange and horrifying phenomena. Skif, a stalker who has ventured into the Zone in search of artifacts, valuable items that can help with survival or be sold for a high price. Unfortunately, many other shady characters are also hunting for artifacts, so Skif’s journey within The Zone quickly takes a turn.
Explore the zone
STALKERS 2 is an open-world affair where you’re expected to fend for yourself in brutal and unpredictable situations where basically every living thing you encounter can and will hurt you. For those unfamiliar with the series, it’s paramount to be prepared – like any survival game, you’ll need to constantly be on the lookout for weapon ammo, medical supplies, and food. Not to mention, this entire habitat represents a huge, quarantined danger, full of monsters, environmental anomalies, and of course radiation.
However, STALKERS 2 doesn’t present its scares like a horror game. Within the confines of The Zone, the creatures you encounter, the hostile personalities and the desperation you often face are an inalienable normality – that’s exactly how it is. Life in this area is not a nightmare that the residents just woke up in, it is, for better or worse, a choice that many stalkers make, and it is a particularly unique, complex and captivating setting to make it to unravel.
Visually, The Zone looks like a real labor of love for developer GSC’s home and looks wonderful. Bold European architecture stands imperiously over hauntingly beautiful fields and forests decimated by tragedy but still standing. The surprisingly large map rivals neighboring open-world epics and is always inviting to explore, despite the nuclear nightmares that lurk within.
However, I found the duality of STALKERS 2 It really lies between the day and night cycles, with the latter inducing the most pervasive sense of dread I’ve experienced in games of this type in a long time. In daylight, The Zone is quite welcoming, threats are easily visible, and walking out at dawn with a bag full of supplies is a relatively calm, even exciting, experience.
But the tension mounts as the sky begins to darken – everything I do in that moment is uprooted as I think about what’s coming and how prepared I am for it. The game wastes no time in introducing you to the unrelenting dangers of the night in the prologue, and it’s truly a thrilling experience to be faced with such consequences, especially early in the game when supplies and money are scarce. Later, the darkness becomes your ally if you’re prepared for it (and the powerful mutants that hide within it), but for the first few hours it’s an experience like no other.
Friends and enemies
Throughout The Zone, you’ll meet new characters with different significance to your story, and in true RPG style, you’ll often be able to decide that for yourself. In one mission I’m tasked with collecting a debt from someone, only to discover that they’re hidden in a house by bandits. Like me, they’re here to collect debts. I try to appeal to the similarities, but they’re not very nice about it, and so I remove them. In many moments like this, I have the choice between being diplomatic and snarky, or just opening fire for no reason and seizing the loot by force. The latter can of course have consequences, but the freedom to decide your own level of morality and violence makes for an excellent role-playing experience in this world.
Another aspect I didn’t expect was the dry humor that the characters often display in dialogue, which is greatly enhanced by the vocal performances in GSC’s native Ukrainian. Even in safe areas like settlements or bars, there’s often a constant tension or rigidity in interactions between characters, as if a conflict could break out at any moment, dissolving into banter when you and the others decide there’s no imminent threat . This echoes my earlier point about how “normal” this landscape feels to the characters living in it and the horrors they have to endure on a daily basis, often in a humorous way.
For example, early in the game I’m sent to retrieve an artifact from a dangerous cave, sending toxic gas and mulch into the air. It also happens to be home to some sort of mutated monster that surprises me and takes most of my supplies. When I return to the quest giver and ask, “Hey, what’s up?”, he calmly takes a moment to light a cigarette, enjoys a drag, and casually says, “Well, you wouldn’t have left if I told you It’s interactions like these that make NPCs, even for a moment, a completely believable part of this world, and I’d recommend playing through the game in Ukrainian for even deeper immersion STALKERS 2 already impressive scenery.
STALKERS 2 Its greatest strength lies in its ability to create an immersive survival experience that doesn’t need to delve unnecessarily into the occult. While the phenomena lurking in The Zone lean towards the realm of science fiction, the horrors and anomalies remain entirely believable within the confines of the alternate Chernobyl that GSC World has created.
However, it’s a thoroughly unforgiving world that will challenge, thwart and reward you in equal measure, and, as I imagined, no matter what kind of game you play STALKERS 2 After being decimated by radioactive dogs, I couldn’t have predicted that the outcome would be “my kind of game.” Who knows, maybe it’s yours too.
Luckily, you can find out – STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl launches today on Xbox Series X|S and PC, and you can play it from day one with Xbox Game Pass.
STALKER 2: Heart of Chernobyl – Xbox Edition
GSC game world
STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl is the relentless FPS survival adventure set in a dark, open science fiction world. Search for equipment and resources, hunt for wonders, make difficult decisions to survive, and make your way through the anomalous zone of Chernobyl.
