Stalker 2 Review – Beautiful Brown Hell

I’ve died seven times in the tutorial section of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. This hasn’t happened to me in years with any game. But I wasn’t mad. I was careless and too inquisitive. I should have taken the Zone more seriously. This initial experience taught me to be a better Stalker.

It’s been more than 15 years since I played the first Stalker game. I’ve forgotten most of the gameplay lessons it taught me. I did not forget, however, the emotional impact of despair and self-doubt it left me with while playing.

Stalker universe is based on a short story/novel by the Strugatsky brothers called Roadside Picnic. It tells a story of an alien culture having a picnic on Earth and leaving their trash behind. The trash they left are wonderous artifacts to humans, just like a lighter would be a marvel to an ant. The story has been made more famous by Tarkovsky’s movie Stalker from 1979. Heralded as one of the best movies of all time, it paints a bleak picture of human existence and makes the viewer wonder what life is.

Adding to the universe we had this buggy first person, open world, survival game that mesmerized anyone that played it. The Zone in the game is created by a second accident in the Chornobyl Nuclear Power Plant, but the premise is basically identical to its famous literary and movie origins. How do humans react, both individually and societally, when faced with such a big unknown that it defies any of the human experiences. It strips us down to basic building blocks.

And, yeah, Stalker 2 is also a huge open world, first person, buggy survival game.

Welcome (back) to the Zone

In S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl you’re woken by an explosion that took out half of your building and your apartment. The explosion is caused by an artifact, and this seems to be first such occurrence outside of the Zone. You go into the Zone trying to find some answers and hopefully earn enough to stop being homeless. It’s only fair that the Zone pays for damage caused by one of Zone’s artifacts.

This will take you on an adventure across the Zone. Fans of the previous games will hear many familiar stories and see familiar faces. Newcomers to the series, which is where I place myself as well, because of how forgetful I am, will be able to experience the intricacies of the Zone and people and factions inhabiting it. GSC Game World, developers of Stalker 2, managed to craft a story in such a way that both new and old fans will be able to follow the story in a satisfactory way.

I must mention here the fantastic cutscenes that are used to convey this story. I rarely enjoy every single cutscene in the game, but in this one I enjoyed them all. They are filled with situations and conversations that felt so real, so human, that three hours of cutscenes the game has weren’t enough.

Story aside, you’re stuck in a radiation filled, anomaly ridden, mutant roaming, faction waring land with nothing but a pea shooter, handful of metal bolts and some stalkers that decided to prevent you from dying.

Fresh Few Hell

The game doesn’t try to hold your hand at all. After you get some basic information you’re left to your own devices. I died many times in the first area, called the Lesser Zone, just trying to figure out what I should do about incomprehensible anomalous phenomena littering the open world of the game. Once I got a hang of that and even getting a hand on some artifacts, I had to come to terms that killing everything and anyone, like I would in an FPS, is not a smart thing to do. Enemies will make short work of you in the first 5 hours. They’ll shoot from far and from cover. By the time you manage to see them they’ll already be stripping loot from your dead body.

Stalker 2 slowly teaches you how to approach its world through your own failures. That’s what makes its atmosphere so special. You feel desperate most of the time just to survive. Most survival games fail to create that feeling as good as Stalker 2 does.

Just as you start getting a hang of things you’ll step into a deeper region of the zone where fresh new Hell will come at you. You’ll have to learn a whole new set of dangers and how to avoid them. New anomalies, new types of enemies and new societal conundrums.

Know thyself

Just like in the previous Stalker games, Heart of Chornobyl is filled with different factions with their own agendas. Fans of the series will enjoy some returning factions and characters, but for those new to the universe here’s what you need to know. The Zone is filled with opportunistic cliques. They all have their agendas and views on life. From hippie-like, religious cult look-a-likes, to military types and corporative scientists. From self-centered kingpins to self-centered cowboy-like stalkers. In all of it you, the player, will have to decide who to side with and what story speaks to you the most. From this you’ll learn more about yourself as a person than anything else and that’s what Stalker is all about.

In the end you can just ignore them all and devise your own goals as a loner.

Let me give you an example of this. Early in the game you’ll face a Monolithian (these were kind of a big deal in the previous games) and you can decide to end him right there and then or learn his side of the story. You can even decide not to get involved and just go back to the main hub for a reward. Each of these three possible outcomes give you a different explanation and dialogue. The truth for your first playthrough will be true to you, but the real truth might be something completely different.

This makes roleplaying as different types of people entirely possible.

Oh, and choices here seem to carry quite a bit of weight. You’ll have to pick a side almost constantly throughout the game. This will lead you to one of four different endings. This means that you’ll be able to have another playthrough that will give a completely new and fresh perspective on your previous experiences in the Zone.

Skill Required With No Skill Trees

Unlike Role Playing Games, though, Stalker 2 has no skill points nor special abilities to unlock in traditional RPG sense. Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl progression system is quite satisfying in its difference to western tropes. You progress by collecting better gear. Go out into the zone and hope to find something good in one of its many points of interest. You can also do chores for various people and hope they reward you with something good. Once you get your first gas mask and better armor, you’ll be ready to face harsher environments and new, tougher, enemies deeper in the Zone. There is no XP, archetypes or hand holding. Good gear is also very scarce. 99 out of 100 stashes will contain some ammo and bandages. Then, that hundredth stash will reward you with an awesome new weapon.

So freeing and yet so doubt inducing. I’ve spent dozens of minutes just pondering if I should wear this armor or that one and if I should spend money for gun upgrades or hope to find a better one in some stalker’s stash.

The one thing that resembles special abilities is Artifacts. These items are found in dangerous anomalies with an Echo scanner. They will buff one of your resistances or increase the weight you can carry. They’ll also irradiate you, so you have to juggle between radiation inducing and reducing artifacts to get a real buff. They are used mostly as small buffs, and you’ll use them as inventory extensions for most of the game or as a great money maker, because they sell for quite a lot of coupons.

Run Until Fingers on Your Keyboard Bleed

Since gear plays such an important role in the game the fact that inventory and weight management are frustrating casts a rather big shadow. Playing with a controller makes inventory management even more unpleasant. As any hamster-gamer will tell you we leave nothing behind and pick everything up. This is simply not possible in the Zone. You’ll get over encumbered quickly and that will make moving around the Zone grind down to a snail’s pace. Stalker 2 doesn’t have any means of quick transportation so all you really have is running. You spend half the game just running from one POI to another. Not bringing the whole haul back will mean that you won’t have enough money to repair your gear or purchase new one. Everything is so expensive in the zone. Just repairing your good armor will set you back for all that you have.

And if you don’t maintain your gear it’ll break. You’ll be in the middle of the firefight and if you haven’t been good to your guns, or are using one you just picked up from that dead bandit there, it will jam. The stress of needing to switch your weapons mid fight is the highlight of stalker experience.

This interconnected game design economy between inventory, weight/stamina, movement and gear constantly forces you to make tough choices and bring only what you absolutely need. I think that the developers made this a miserable experience on purpose. I certainly felt more helpless and frustrated because of the way this whole thing works. This enhances what they want to convey with the Zone. You are just human, not a superhero.

However, this game design, that almost feels archaic, will surely frustrate a lot of people to the point of being furious about it. But, as one character in the game says, the point of life is not to be happy and GSC Game World sticks to this philosophy.

Pretty in Brown

All of this takes place in a huge open world that seems extremely bleak with its predominant browns, socialist brutalism architecture, yellowed vegetation and ever-present random death. There’s some charm in it though. When the sun shines just right the Zone looks stunning. And then an Emission happens, and all Hell breaks loose, which only leaves you in more awe.

The game runs in Unreal Engine 5 and you can see it being a next gen game. Still, it reminds me so much of what the original Stalker looked like. I think this is due to the style of the game that is identical to the old games and not the actual graphic fidelity of the new game. To some this might look like a bad looking game. I believe these were all design choices to preserve the feel of the whole series.

Bug or Feature?

Unfortunately, the game lacks quite a bit of polish. This huge world takes a big toll on your computer. Playing without DLSS is not advised. Review copy was also not the final release version, so I’ve encountered floating NPCs, T-poses and other glitches. This close to release I believe customers will experience a multitude of glitches as well. None of them were game breaking. I never got stuck so I couldn’t progress the main story. But, to the players, this will feel a bit janky. My biggest problem was that I couldn’t decipher whether something that looked like a bug was actually a bug or there’s some wonder from the Zone that makes things act that way.

For example, enemies seem to appear out of nowhere (and they really do just spawn out of thin air), which is rather stressful. This is intended behavior for when you encounter special PSI enemies. But a pack of dogs spawning several times on top of your had seems like a lack of polish.

I’m a big opponent of overly buggy game releases. In the case of GSC Game World I will make an exception though. These guys first had to go through a worldwide epidemic and then their country was thrown into a war with a nuclear superpower. It’s one thing when a big budget western studio is bad at their job or is mismanaged and releases a game full of bugs. It’s a whole different story when this happens to a team that had to scatter all over the world so they would just stay alive.

No Disney Chanel Content Here

Once you spend enough hours with Stalker 2 you realize it’s a game with simple common-sense rules. Do not charge into danger, you’re not a Marvel character. Those are not real. Conserve and prioritize your resources. The world does not just throw free shit your way. That is not reality. Make choices true to yourself, but more importantly, accept to live with the consequences. Heart of Chornobyl will speak the most to realists. Turns out, Stalker 2 makes one a philosopher and that’s a masterful achievement by something that’s supposed just to be a video game.

We could be happy now, without making others suffer. All it takes is to live like humans.

GSC Game World, Ukranian developers of the game, managed to persevere and release a game that is fascinating in its depth. Although it lacks polish of a western-made product and can seem too bleak and evoke the feelings of depression, due to its constant tension and adult approach to the way humans behave, GSC managed to do something amazing. They created a worthy addition to the universe established by the book and the movie mentioned at the beginning of this review. Stalker 2 oozes atmosphere and evokes existential questions in the player, just like any art would, and that’s a big accomplishment for a video game.

I’ve come out through all the trials and tribulations of the Zone with more than a 100 deaths and all that was left on the other side was I, Stalker. That’s all I wanted from this game, and it fully delivered.

Review platform: PC

Developed by: GSC Game World

Published by: GSC Game World

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