S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2: Heart of Chornobyl – Review

The Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, a harsh, desolate landscape resulting from a tragic nuclear disaster in 1986 and one of the most radioactively contaminated areas on Earth, has served as the integral setting of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R franchise, taking the narrative to the next level and adjusting the setting into a punishing series of survival horror first-person shooters not for the faint of heart.

And just like how the games throw players into the deep end, leaving them to fend for survival amid life-threatening dangers around every corner, the Ukrainian video game developers GSC Game World had the same thrust upon them during the creation of S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2: Heart of Chornobyl, the latest game in the series, owing to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the massive cyberattacks that followed. 

Despite their situation, the team managed to pull through, and although the final product shows some clear signs of being a victim of its troubled circumstances in terms of its poor technical state, this doesn’t hamper the fact that the game manages to retain everything fans have come to know and love about the series, offering a worthy successor to the franchise and a testament to how passion can overcome even the most harrowing challenges.

Set in a fictionalised version of the exclusion zone, the game takes place in a world filled with hazardous reality-bending anomalies, with equally dangerous creatures lurking the land, all mutated by the nuclear fallout. As with all the titles in the franchise, the game is a first-person shooter with hardcore survival elements, requiring players to manage their hunger, gear weight and item durability while performing their duties as a Stalker, individuals who brave the dangers of the zone to explore and find artefacts, items imbued with supernatural powers.

You play as Skif, an everyday citizen whose life is turned upside down when an anomaly destroys his apartment block, leaving a mysterious artefact behind in its wake. To recover some of his losses, Skif offers his services as a Stalker to Professor Hermann, a recurring character in the series, although he is betrayed during the opening mission, which leads him down a sort of rabbit hole, finding and helping out various characters in order to uncover the actual mastermind behind the double-cross. 

While the game offers a rather straightforward plotline to follow, it gets increasingly more complex with its terminology as the story progresses. Being the fourth mainline entry to the franchise, the title is filled with organisations and other snippets of information already pre-established in series lore, and while this will certainly be enticing for returning players to experience familiar faces and locations from the previous games, newcomers might understandably find it difficult to keep up with the increasingly complicated jargon and are more likely to end up literally losing the plot.

Although a player’s enjoyment of the overall plot might differ depending on whether they are knowledgeable or at least interested in learning the series’ pre-existing lore, where the game stands out the most from a narrative standpoint is undoubtedly in its presentation of choices versus consequences. 

These range from major critical choices that need to be made during the main questline, like choosing a side in the heat of the moment, or whether to reveal key information, to even the most minor decisions made while out exploring that most other games simply do not provide, which can lead to surprising unintended consequences.

Taking my personal experience for example, while exploring the world, I came across two opposing factions in the middle of a firefight, and naturally, I sided with the one that I had a better relationship with. After mowing down the enemy, I immediately began looting the corpses strewn across the battlefield for ammunition, something that wouldn’t need a second thought in other games. Unbeknownst to me, I accidentally looted the body of a fallen allied soldier right in front of his pals, swiftly causing them to turn their guns on me and cutting me down in one fell swoop. 

It’s the little details like these that make the title feel natural in its presentation, providing an experience that encourages players to think before they act, with almost every situation in the game offering multiple avenues for progression. Encounter an outpost filled with people who don’t trust strangers? You can go in guns blazing, sure, but it might be a better option to take the stealth route and explore the surroundings to exploit any openings to sneak in or avoid potential confrontation altogether by bribing your way through the front gate. It’s these moments that keep players on their toes and elevate the experience to the next level.

As a Stalker, one of the player’s primary objectives is to head into the zone to explore hazardous locations and retrieve artefacts. In line with past games in the series, its mechanics are deliberately designed to ensure gameplay feels as unforgiving as the environments it portrays. Managing radiation levels, eating food to prevent hunger, and looting to survive while also managing the limited amounts of inventory weight are all part and parcel of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R experience, and the game often leaves the player to figure things out themselves, with minimal handholding to make every triumph more rewarding, and every screw-up a valuable learning point.

Because of this, death is always looming, and often unavoidable. Combat leans into mechanics commonly present in more hardcore survival games, meaning it only takes a few hits to kill you, and almost every source of damage received will cause bleeding wounds, which constantly drain health unless patched up by a bandage. 

A gear wear system is also in place, which causes extended use of weapons and armour to drain its quality, causing disadvantages over time like constant weapon jamming or diminished protection respectively, requiring players to fork out a hefty sum at workshops to repair them. With these systems in tandem, making deliberate decisions when it comes to which encounter to tackle or when to take risks and explore unknown locations across the game’s massive open map becomes a pertinent point of consideration throughout the game’s lengthy runtime.

To help lower the barrier to entry, especially for newcomers to the franchise, the game provides a choice of three difficulty levels, which can be changed at any time. Interestingly, each difficulty setting drastically changes the way it’s played. Rookie (easy) for example, makes the game become more of a straight shooter, with ammo and health items spread out in abundance allowing players to breeze through combat encounters. Stalker (regular) plays out like a typical survival shooter, with just enough resources to make constant combat viable, but still requiring tactical thinking like firing weapons in bursts or using cover to prevent unnecessary wastage or damage. Veteran (hard) dials things up a few notches regarding the scarcity of items, meaning decision-making becomes more significant, reserving combat only as a last resort.

That’s not to say that one can simply lower the difficulty setting to power through the entire game though, as it doesn’t change the fact that the world is filled with constant danger, from the semi-transparent anomalies littered across the land that deal massive damage when players get too close, to the numerous bandit patrols and outposts. And who can forget the wide assortment of mutated beasts like the fleshers – tanky mutated pigs that are incredibly hard to kill, and Bloodsuckers – humanoid monsters with the ability to turn invisible. All these dangers are constantly present even while travelling between main locations, and without the ability to fast travel freely, traversing towards every new location becomes a tense experience in its own right.

The process of dealing with the game’s many threats is further complimented by its excellent gunplay. The title features an assortment of firearms from assault rifles to shotguns, with each providing crunchy audio feedback and slick animations, making them immensely gratifying to use. Every weapon can also be upgraded with an assortment of attachments, such as red dot sights or extended magazines to further enhance its combat capabilities, and gameplay soon falls into a rewarding loop of exploring locations to find interesting new gear, then upgrading and maintaining them until the acquisition of the next superior piece of loot.

While overcoming the game’s various challenges can be satisfying, dealing with its poor technical state certainly isn’t. The effects of its troubled development cycle are clearly displayed, with abundant framerate drops and constant stuttering even on a PC running an RTX 4090 and a 14th-gen i9 CPU. Even putting performance aside, the game is littered with numerous bugs like texture artifacting, glitched NPC animations and sounds coming from a completely different direction from its actual source. Granted, none of these are game-breaking, but they occur frequently enough to detract from the overall experience.

Looking past the visual bugs, there’s still a lot here to appreciate in terms of the game’s presentation, which frankly sets a gold standard when it comes to atmosphere. The title boasts some truly next-generation environmental effects, from the menacing radioactive storms, known as emissions, that paint the sky blood-red accompanied by random flashes of blue lightning strikes, to the pitch-black stillness of nighttime, travelling in near-complete darkness guided only by the dim rays of a torchlight, the game is never short of tense moments.

In addition, due to its lack of fast travel, long on-foot treks to discover new locations are commonplace, and witnessing the game’s dynamic weather-changing system work first-hand, turning the once clear sky into a toxic hue of green at a moment’s notice serves to effectively draw players into its world, offering a unique experience only the S.T.A.L.K.E.R franchise can provide, combining the joys of discovery with the looming threat of death at every turn.

Even though S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl has its fair share of problems, especially from its technical side, it’s difficult to not be impressed by just how much the team at GSC Game World has achieved especially considering their arduous journey to even reach this point. If you’re looking for a hardcore shooter with in-depth survival elements and a massive, dangerous world to explore, look no further. Just be careful of bugs along the way, and not the kind you can quash with a shotgun blast. 

Kevin Low

Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.