There are few video game franchises both as beloved and janky as STALKER. The creation of Ukrainian developers GSC Game World, the original STALKER: Shadow of Chornobyl was acclaimed on release in 2007 for its graphics, its bleak atmosphere and its depiction of the real-life Chornobyl Exclusion Zone, filtered through a weird alt-history horror lens inspired by the 1979 movie Stalker by Andrei Tarkovsky and its own inspiration, the 1972 novel Roadside Picnic by the Strugatsky brothers (who also wrote the movie script). STALKER was also famous for its numerous bugs, lengthy patching process, and subsequent fan mods which restored cut content and made the game more stable.
The game was followed by two stand-alone expansions, the somehow-even-jankier Clear Sky (2008) and the much more polished Call of Pripyat (2009), which expanded the STALKER story with new characters, factions and stories. A planned "proper" sequel was announced, followed by the company promptly going bust (some devs spun off to make the splendid Metro series of games) and, just a few years later, suddenly coming back to life. Then, as STALKER 2 was entering the final stretch of development, the developers' homeland was invaded, forcing part of the dev team to relocate to Prague (some of the other devs stayed behind to join the army or help in the civilian support effort).
STALKER 2 is here and in some respects it's like the franchise has never been away: STALKER 2 is janky, but there's a lot of heart and interesting ideas bubbling under the surface. This is an old-school game with deteriorating weapons, the need to repair equipment and think about food and water, but also has a more modern design, with a massive open-world map and various side-stories to explore alongside the main narrative. Fortunately, the game rejects the idea of Ubiclone makework BS, with the bulk of the game's 60-hour playtime taken up by consequential missions and exploration rather than tracking down collectibles.
The main narrative is the focus of the game and is fairly entertaining. You play Skif, an ex-soldier who is rather irritated when his flat is blown up by a glowing rock from the Zone. Rather than file an insurance claim, Skif decides to perform a one-man vengeance mission into the Zone to find out where this rock came from and find someone who is going to pay for a new pad. As a newcomer to the Zone, Skif doesn't know what the hell is going on and other characters try to fill him in on the convoluted backstory from the original trilogy of games (which variously baffles Skif or leaves him apathetic; this guy is really focused on finding out why a rogue geode demolished his domicile). This is obviously a boon for newcomers to the franchise who haven't play the original games either, but getting up to speed is rather tough going as you are assaulted by a battery of proper nouns, nefarious-sounding organisations (Ward, Spark, Duty, Noontide, Monolith) and introduced to a ton of characters, most of whom are some variation on "cynical soldier-philosopher." I suspect Malazan fans will love this game. The story as it unfolds is reasonably intriguing, though sometimes goes off in a weird tangent that's not very-well explained (the STALKER Wikis might be your friend in understanding some of these events) which can be a bit odd.
Gameplay is your standard first-person shooter. You shoot a lot of people, things and mutated animals in this game, with an impressive array of weapons, each of which has its own ammo supply, which also comes in variants (armour-piercing, etc) which are meant for different types of enemies. I'll be honest and say this system is great if you really want to engage with it, but I went with "fire whatever is at hand at the enemy and hope for the best," and most of the time this was fine. Unfortunately, despite being a trained soldier, Skif is also apparently an asthmatic who runs out of breath after lightly jogging for about 12 seconds, so can't carry much in the way of weapons or supplies. As the game progresses you can get better armour, even power-assisted exoskeletons, and acquire weird artefacts from the Zone that ups your carrying capacity, but even so you're never going to be able to carry more than about four weapons max. Weapon variety is solid, but mostly boils down to you being recommended to carry a silenced pistol, some kind of semi-automatic rifle, a sniper rifle and a shotgun, the latter being essential for dealing with bloodsucker mutants that are usually invisible until they attack you without warning. Oh yes, the standard stealth system allowing you sneak up behind someone and stab them silently is present and correct.
Combat against human enemies is enjoyable, with some good sniper duels possible across the rooftops of Pripyat or between office buildings in abandoned industrial zones. Combat against mutants, on the other hand, is mostly tedious. A lot of the mutants are preposterously bullet-spongey, especially galling after the game plays fair with human enemies, where headshots will take down almost everyone in one headshot, unless they have armoured helmets. Patches have nerfed some mutants (bloodsuckers are now much easier to deal with) but others, like chimaeras and pseudogiants, remain absolute joyless slogs to fight and are simply best avoided or run away from.
Graphically, STALKER 2 is frequently jaw-dropping. In some lighting conditions, the game looks photorealistic with amazing environments, textures and lighting. Fog or sunshine almost makes the game look like you've taken photos in the real Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. Human characters are a still not really there, with stiff animation and uncanny valley effects, and the mutants are almost universally ugly and not really convincing. It feels like the mutants were designed right at the start of the process when they might have been thinking about the game launching on last-gen hardware and were never updated to the latest version of the game engine. Still, for atmosphere there is no game out there (bar maybe Alan Wake 2) that can match STALKER 2. Trudging through a forest miles from the nearest town, trying not to stumble into an anomaly and low on health and ammo, only for a pack of wild dogs to attack and force you to take shelter in a nearby ramshackle barn, is an unmatched gaming experience. As with the better Bethesda RPGs, STALKER 2 is at its best when channelling an atmosphere of uncanny sparseness.
The map is massive, which I ended up having mixed feelings on. Having an accurate-ish size of map for the relatively small area of countryside the game is covering makes it feel realistic in terms of scale (Ghost of Tsushima, which had a massive map for a relatively constrained 40-mile-long island, achieved something similar), and early missions are very well-constructed for how they get you to explore new areas of the Zone. However, after a while missions start sending you from side of the Zone to the other, which is a fairly formidable undertaking requiring you to load up on weapons and supplies (recalling that Skif has the carrying capacity of an elderly nun with a back complaint), travel in a straight line for about 15 minutes and will probably result in you fighting off a mutant with two heads and two arses, a plague of rats and a ghost who inexplicably throws buckets at you, along the way. There is a fast-travel-ish system in the game via "guides" who can teleport you from one base to another base, but this doesn't always help much since bases are relatively few and far between. It's also astronomically expensive. Still, the atmosphere is so great that mostly you won't mind taking long hikes to your destination, aside from potentially wearing out your screenshot button.
The in-game economy is also pretty busted, with weapons and ammo being quite expensive, repairing your battered equipment is ludicrously expensive, and you usually spend your hard-earned cash on upgrading your armour to include more carrying capacity or deploying more artefacts about ten minutes before you find a much better suit of armour in a shack in the middle of nowhere, and have to start upgrading again from scratch. Sigh.
Voice acting, in Ukrainian, is also excellent (or so it seemed to me) and the minimalist musical score, backed up by dozens of original and licensed songs in certain areas, is also very good. The English voice acting is frequently terrible though, with a bizarre variety of accents that makes the Zone feel like it's Camden Market on a Saturday afternoon. Switch on Ukrainian voices and subtitles, it adds a ton to the game's atmosphere.
STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl (****) is possibly the most stunningly atmospheric video game available at the moment, with excellent combat, characters and exploration, with a solid (if occasionally obtuse) story. Mutants are a pain in the backside and the massive map can be occasionally frustrating, whilst a plethora of small bugs can occasionally disrupt gameplay, though a steady patching schedule has already fixed a lot of problems. The game's rejection of modern open-world filler is refreshing, and it manages to be a more challenging experience than most modern games whilst not being totally off-putting to newcomers. There's certainly room for improvement, and with two big DLC expansions on the way it will be interesting to go back to the Zone and explore it further.
The game is available now on PC and Xbox Series X/S.
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