In the earlier days of the internet, when social media wasn’t in everyone’s hands and gaming was niche and nerdy, some of the best video games were gatekept secrets and whispers on message boards. This rang particularly true for games from Japan or Europe, that often got overlooked by mainstream media. For years as a teen on the web, one game series in particular that felt like legend was STALKER. People would simply talk differently about these games, treating them like immersive experiences where you don’t just beat a level or complete a quest, you live in The Zone, and you become a Stalker. Now, with the first new entry in the series since 2009 and my first real foray into the franchise, I can tell you that all those stories were true. STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl is immersive, and frightening, and hilarious, and magical, and intense, and unlike pretty much anything else out there.
The STALKER series owes its inspiration to societ scifi novel Roadside Picnic and the loosely related film adaptation by Andrei Tarkovsky. In the wake of 1986 Chornobyl nuclear reactor disaster, STALKER paints the picture of an alternate history where a 2nd disaster rocked the Exclusion Zone decades later in 2006. This has warped the entire region from a barely inhabitable wasteland to a truly alien world.
Mutated creatures stalk through the bushes, while sudden emission storms turn the sky and rip the earth apart. And then there are the anomalies – environmental oddities like psionic whirlwinds or chutes of fire that can shred you in an instant if you aren’t careful. Stalkers are dedicated wanderers and survivors who may not share ideals or allegiances, but all take part in overcoming the odds of The Zone to track down artefacts, make a little money, and strive to see another day.
This is all the narrative setup that truly matters to the overarching experience. In STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl, the game will attempt to paint you into the box of a man named Skif, who works as a Stalker to investigate the truth behind a unique artefact he uncovered after his old family home was destroyed. His story is fine, it’s okay, but what makes this game truly special is turning it into your own story, though. Like the freedom that Fallout: New Vegas or Baldur’s Gate 3 give you in crafting your own protagonist and filling the moments in-between dialogue with your own role-played lore, this game provides that same kind ofcanvas. However, you aren’t just painting it with dialogue options or character builds – your story is told through moments of survival.
STALKER 2 is relentless, but combat is just one part of the tense tapestry it weaves. Gunfights can be fast and brutal. When you fight humans, they’re fragile, and so are you. A lined-up headshot can cause a bandit to crumble on the spot, but a bullet to your back can take you out just as quickly if you aren’t careful. Meanwhile, packs of dogs will upturn your plans at the worst possible time, every time. Mutated rats and invisible monsters will soak up your bullets and leave you drained of resources. Every moment of existing in The Zone is a calculated struggle, yet it never feels like an artificial challenge like so many other survival games do. You aren’t managing arbitrary hunger and thirst meters or idly gathering wood and stone – there is a constant direct connection between your survival needs and what is happening on-screen, and it is incredible.
As you learn what it takes to survive in The Zone, you’ll start to dig deeper into the overarching storyline of Heart of Chornobyl. While Skif’s personal journey is easy to ignore, there is a massive conflict brewing in the world between multiple factions that you quickly find yourself embroiled in – your choices on which sides to trust or not trust will leave a lasting impact on your playthrough. After one moment of siding with a group of Zone-revering Stalkers called Spark, I found myself in multiple situations where I would be attacked on-sight by their direct rivals, The Ward. On one of those occasions, though, a crew of Spark-affiliated Stalkers was nearby and helped me turn the tide on battle. Afterwards, I walked up to one of them, he offered to sell me items and boasted about “only having the good shit”, and I opened his inventory to see him selling two beers and a sausage. My man.
There’s an undercurrent of comedy to STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl – the improvisational nature of the world and it’s inhabitants and how they all interact can toggle between frightening immersion and gut-busting hilarity in a moment. I love that, and I think we all need that. When you take into account the real-life circumstances faced by the Ukrainian development team behind this game, it’s easy to see how the unique charm of The Zone might be something that they really need right now, too.
Part of the comedy of errors that tends to play out in this game also comes from a litany of literal errors and bugs – the series’ reputation for being buggy continues. Some are hilarious visual oddities, like a mutated rat flying into the sky after I knifed it. Other bugs can be boring technical frustrations, though. Most of these bugs contributed to the charm of the world as I played the review build of STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl. A day one patch larger than the game itself arrived after I wrapped up my time with the game, and notes fixes many of these silly or frustrating bugs.
Even without those fixes, though, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is like almost nothing else out there. It’s full of charm in so many different flavors, and is a visual feast on top of that. It’s a new bold path for survival games and shooters that I never want to turn back from.