I died a lot playing Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl.
Like the 2008 original, developer GSC Game World’s long-awaited sequel is a punishing affair, because life is difficult and fleeting in the Zone–the irradiated area around Chornobyl filled with deadly, physics-defying anomalies, mutants, and various people who will kill you for just about any reason. If you fail to keep your wits about you in the Zone, your time there will end quickly, making exploring Stalker 2’s open world both fascinating and oppressive.
I recently played a little more than three hours of Stalker 2 that covered the beginning of the game and its opening few missions. My experience in the Zone could sometimes get frustrating, especially after trying to take down the same group of bandits four or five times, only to get overwhelmed and shot to death or blown up by one guy’s extremely well-placed grenade. But once I started to get the hang of keeping myself alive by moving cautiously, exploring, and identifying threats at a distance, I found that Stalker 2 felt harrowing and invigorating in equal measure. It requires players to be on their guard and rewards them with strange, exciting experiences in the Zone.
Stalker 2 starts by immediately introducing you to the weirdnesses of the Zone. After both the historical Chornobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 and a fictional one in 2006, the Exclusion Zone is filled with strange, almost supernatural goings-on. Whirlwinds will toss people into the air and then implode their bodies; there are spherical gravitational anomalies that look like near-invisible bubbles that suck you into them; sometimes, jets of flame or bursts of electricity erupt from the ground if you wander too close.
Anomalies range from dangerous to deadly, but they can also be incredibly valuable. If you can make your way into the center of some anomalies, carefully picking a path based on the loud beeping of a detector that tells you just how close to danger you are, you can find an artifact–a strange object with unexplainable properties that you can equip on your character. That’s what Stalkers–scavengers who make their livelihood in the Zone–are after.
After a betrayal during your trip into the Zone, you wind up becoming a Stalker too, mostly out of necessity as you try to find the person who turned on you and get back a special artifact they stole. Much like in the original Stalker, you’re hunting a single person down and interacting with other people who live their life in the Zone. That means heading to Stalker settlements and taking on jobs to trade for information.
Stalker 2 throws you in the deep end almost immediately. After the tutorial–where you’re left for dead–another Stalker rescues you and introduces you to the mechanic of chucking metal bolts at anomalies to trigger them, which sometimes gives you the opportunity to run through them while they reset, and otherwise can let you probe their edges to see their size and distance. He points you in the direction of a town where Stalkers hang out, and along the way, you can pick up side missions and mix it up with random adversaries.
One of those side missions involved finding a Stalker trapped in a destroyed post office, engaged in a gun battle with some of the lawless bandits who also inhabit the Zone. Kill them, and he’ll offer you the job of heading up the street to the bandits’ stronghold to help his pal, this one being held because of gambling debts incurred by the guy in the post office. Here’s where I died several times, because fighting human enemies can be extremely tough.
Combat feels a lot like in the original Stalker, where you’re relying on weapons that aren’t especially well-maintained or accurate. You can sneak up on the enemies in blasted-out buildings up the road from the post office, a few of whom are patrolling around and having conversations, to get the drop on them, but actually shooting them can be tough. A headshot is generally lethal against any human enemy, but body shots are way less predictable, and getting accurate aim under pressure was tough in any case. Part of it is definitely due to elements of Stalker 2 that are meant to make the game difficult and to make every fight feel intense and dangerous.
There is a jankiness to fighting overall, though, that can get a little irritating. It’s not uncommon to be peeking out of cover, blasting away at your foes, only to have another guy walk right up behind you and shoot you in the back of the head, with no way of knowing he was there. And as mentioned, it can be tough to land accurate shots; at times I felt like I was dumping a whole magazine of bullets into one guy to little effect, while others went down immediately after one well-placed shot.
Reloading the same small firefight four or five times was a little bit galling, and it may be that in situations like this, you’ll find yourself playing a fight over and over, getting to know exactly where each enemy is, and then using your knowledge to finally overcome the situation. On the other hand, though, getting walloped a few times in what was essentially my first battle impressed a key piece of information on me about Stalker 2: Fighting is extremely dangerous, and you should avoid it wherever possible.
The unreliability of combat feels intentional–the developers want you to be careful about taking on people you find out in the world, and staying on guard to avoid bumbling into firefights. It also had me thinking twice about future side quests. Did I really want to walk into some meat grinder of a bandit camp just for a few coupons? Was the Stalker who gave me the job setting me up? Those elements put a different spin on Stalker 2’s open world that works well for making the place feel dangerous at all times.
Even cooler were my chances just to explore the Zone and encounter strange things. Walking to any given place means watching for and avoiding anomalies and mutants, as well as humans. I found two Stalkers running from twisted pigs called Fleshes at a farm, and watched as one barricaded himself inside the farmhouse while the other was killed by the creatures. Killing them all showed that combat can be as clunky against mutants as it is against humans. As I circle-strafed the pigs, they leapt at me over and over again, while I dumped a bunch of bullets into each one. Moments like this, again, gave Stalker 2 a more awkward feel than most modern games tend to have. There’s a degree to which Stalker 2 seems like it’s right out of 2008, which gives it both a unique feel in keeping with its setting and ideas, and sometimes makes it cumbersome to actually play.
I saved the survivor, who thanked me before letting me go on my way. Later, I noticed another group of those same mutated pigs out in a field, with an anomaly floating nearby. This time, I drew their attention with a few gunshots and then stood with the anomaly between me and them, letting them charge right into it and implode in midair. It was as satisfying a solution as it was efficient, and played into the idea that paying attention and using your knowledge of the Zone might be more interesting for gameplay experiences than relying on more run-of-the-mill video game elements like shooting. The combat feeling a little clunky and creaky, just like your fragility as a character, encourages that approach.
One side mission took me to a particularly cool location: a field of deadly anomalous poppy flowers. Like in The Wizard of Oz, the poppies make anyone who strays into the field uncontrollably sleepy, but if you fall asleep here, you never wake up. What’s more, you hear strange whispers and echoes of the dead who’ve been lost in the field. Running around, searching for a lost religious icon belonging to someone who used to live in the area before the accident, I had to keep chugging energy drinks to stay awake. The screen would darken as I started to drift off, signifying heavy eyelids. At the same time, a wisp of petals–some kind of anomaly, seemingly alive–would whip through the field, bringing with it a stronger, deadlier dose of drowsiness. I finally found the icon and got the hell out of there after the screen went dark for so long I was sure I’d succumbed to an endless slumber among the flowers.
The time spent in the settlement and advancing Stalker 2’s main story presented a different kind of tension. In the first town I ventured into, I found locals in conflict with the Wardens, a military group working within the Zone, who were hunting a Stalker they believed had murdered some of their men. To get information about your betrayer, you can choose to work either with some of the locals, who want to protect the accused, or with the Wardens, taking on jobs for either one. If you talk to the Wardens, they’ll send you to a location where they think the murderer is hiding out, given to them by a local informant. It was pretty obvious to me the informant had lied, hoping the Wardens would bumble into a trap, especially as he gave me a stern warning to be careful.
I chose to work with the other group and discovered the man was actually hiding in a windmill full of boobytraps–located in the complete opposite direction–where I helped him escape by venturing into a cave, killing an invisible mutant, and navigating a deadly anomaly in order to get him an artifact he needed. Though the preview ended before I learned about the fallout of my actions, it was clear the occupying Wardens weren’t going anywhere, and wouldn’t be happy if they never found their suspect.
Navigating anomalies, navigating the open world and its mysteries, and navigating the politics of different competing factions all have me excited for Stalker 2. Its atmosphere of deadly, mysterious strangeness makes wandering its open world both alluring and frightening. Stalker 2 perfectly balances the desire to discover what’s hidden out there, like a field full of whispering poppies, with the unnerving knowledge that the Zone is also full of things that can and likely will kill you. Though it can sometimes feel like a throwback to older games, especially in elements like its combat, it’s that feeling that also helps make Stalker 2 both frightening and compelling.