STALKER 2 Review: The Zone beckons

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In many ways it’s incredible that STALKER 2 Heart of Chornobyl is here today at all. The latest entry in the STALKER series and the direct sequel to 2009’s STALKER Call of Pripiat, it was originally slated for release way back in 2012.

This sequel popped up again a few years later, this time with a release date in 2022 – though due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where developer GSC Game World is located, the game has suffered further delays. It’s here now, though, and that alone is somewhat of a miracle worthy of celebration.

Much like the previous entries in the series, STALKER 2 is set in and around the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in Northern Ukraine. Ravaged not only by the initial explosion at the famed power plant in 1986, the area within the Zone has been hammered by vicious anomalies, howling storms, and fierce events known as Emissions – all set in motion by a second violent disaster that rocked the area sometime later.

As soon as we step out into the wilderness within the Exclusion Zones walls, it’s overwhelmingly evident just how much care has gone into designing the world. The Zone of STALKER 2 is dark and gritty. When darkness falls, your flashlight can barely pierce the night. Check your PDA and it’ll take a few moments for your eyes to adjust back to the inky blackness all around you.

It’s no understatement to say that this feels exactly like old genre titans did 15 years ago. While those older series entries and peers undoubtedly looked significantly worse than STALKER 2, it still manages to capture the exact memories of stepping out a vault or waking up in a wasteland did so long ago – this is how those games look in our memories, if not in reality.

From the moment you first jump over the wall and enter the Zone, it’s like you’ve taken a step back to a simpler time. The game is awash with old school mechanics – some of which are a welcome drop of nostalgia, while others were probably better left in the past. It’s certainly a shock to play this right off the back of the very hand-holdy Dragon Age The Veilguard with its cheesy and overly positive dialogue options. STALKER 2 absolutely lets you be an asshole, and you’ll then be left to suffer the consequences of that, whatever they may be.

Politics inside the zone are messy, with several different factions vying for control of what precious little liveable land is left. Just who you help, who you hinder, and who you go to war with are entirely up to you – though occasionally you may find your back against an unexpected wall for the simple sin of navigating a dialogue tree incorrectly. While that’s frustrating, embracing this as part of the old school experience.

There are no skill trees or experience levels to be found inside the Zone either. Instead, you’re forced to rely on whatever gear you can scrounge. There’s a delicate balance to strike between taking enough supplies for the mission while also leaving enough room in your inventory for other items you may find on your adventures.

You can very quickly find yourself weighed down by the gear on your back and punished accordingly. As a low-equip load Stalker, you can run at full speed for some time and jump around without much concern for your stamina. Should you stray into a medium- or heavy-equip load though? Well then, you’re out of luck – even your walking speed is reduced significantly and you can forget jumping more than once.

While this is undoubtedly reminiscent of the game’s commitment to old school mechanics, that doesn’t necessarily make it fun. Having said that though, the backbone of the STALKER series is making tough choices like this and I’m glad to see this mechanic persevered with some of these more difficult gameplay decisions. Over time though I did learn to break out of my classic hording mindset, probably about the time I realised I was carrying 5kg of bread, 5kg of sausage and another 4.5kg of tuna cans.

The real progression system comes in the form of that equipment on your back and the artifacts in your pockets. Over time you’ll progress from a simple pistol and a knife, up to more impressive AKs and ARs. As you repair them, modify them, slap attachments on them and get good ammunition for them you can really feel the difference in their performance.

Perhaps the single strongest element of STALKER 2 though is its sound design. Whether you’re trudging along a road in the middle of nowhere or cracking open a tasty beverage to get your radiation levels down – every element of the audio feels crisp and intentional. The wind howls, rain drums down around you and anomalies thrum with energy as you walk by them.

All of this ambience swirls together to dial up the tension and make you feel like you’re truly unsafe and alone. More than once, I stopped dead in my tracks, certain that I’d heard footsteps near me only for it to be nothing more than the wind in the trees. When fights break out your weapons crack and the delayed thock of your bullets making contact at range is incredibly satisfying – when it works.

See, all of what I’ve said so far has been dancing around one, very sad reality: the STALKER 2 I played is a buggy mess. As much as I enjoyed the plinks and pops of the guns in my hands, I’d wager that 95% of my time playing STALKER 2 was without any weapon audio from my guns at all. There wouldn’t even be impact sounds – just the sickly crunch of landing a headshot, should my aim be good enough.

From the get-go the game also ran abysmally. By their own recommended settings, my 13700KF/4080 system should have been able to hold 60+FPS at 4K at the highest settings tiers. In reality, I was seeing horrific frame rate drops even when playing at 1440P with the settings turned down.

In my time with STALKER 2, I experienced random crashes, consistent crashes, and graphical bugs so bad that I could see clear through the world. There were times when the AI would spot me through 50m of dirt, despite me being underground. Other times they ran off even searching for me, even though I’d just killed their mate standing next to them with a shotgun blast.

There was even a time when, after dropping an enemy with a headshot, he proceeded to fly away like a deflating balloon – spiralling through a wall and up into the sky before floating back down to earth. Bugs like this one are humorous, but unfortunately the sheer number of them — many of which were actually game breaking for me — weighed down any enjoyment I was able to derive.

We raised these above concerns via a bug report; to GSC Game World’s credit, we were told that most if not all of our reported bugs would be addressed in a Day 0 patch. We obviously can’t confirm this is the case, nor did GSC share proper patch notes to review ahead of its pending release.

As I’ve already stated, the fact that STALKER 2 is complete and ready for an imminent release is nothing short of a miracle. A full 12 years after it was originally due, this honours the legacy of its predecessors and continues to build on the gameplay loop of those much-loved entries that came before. It’s just a shame that my experience with this release is currently — and seriously — damaged by a constant stream of ever-present bugs and issues.

My current experience would sit at a 5 on our review scale, though with every flagged bug fixed, I’d wager this would come somewhere around an 8. As such, we’re publishing this review with a provisional score and will update it accordingly, and as necessary, following the release of the Day 0 patch.

[Update – 25 November 2024]: Launch day has been and gone, and after a handful more hours with the Day 0 patch I’m very pleased to report that the vast majority of issues encountered in our review period have now been resolved (and, with seemingly more to come). STALKER 2 is stable and runs consistently at a high framerate on my higher end system. Guns make noises, the gaping wounds in the earth have been knitted over and characters models no longer desync in cutscenes.

In its current, post launch state, STALKER 2 is an enjoyable modern example of an old school survival horror FPS. It still has some other more fundamental issues of course, such as weapon durability, mutant health and a borked economy to name a few – but these don’t outright ruin the experience and instead plant it more firmly into its niche.

While undoubtedly not for everybody, STALKER 2 manages to both be a tribute to the past and a step forward to the future. STALKER 2 is now available on Windows PC, Xbox Series S, and Xbox Series X.

STALKER 2 is currently scored provisionally. It is being reviewed using a promotional code on Windows PC via Steam, as provided by the developer. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale. This review was first published with a provisional score on 21 November 2024.

STALKER 2 Heart of Chornobyl 21 November 2024 PC Xbox Series S & X   Buy on Windows PC: Steam Buy on Xbox: Microsoft Store