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This day has come! S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl has finally been released – and it’s a real event for not only Ukrainian but also global gamers. This game has been awaited for years, it was announced back in 2010. Imagine how long the process of its creation was! And now, Heart of Chernobyl has hit all possible jackpots: it has hit the top sales on Steam and left behind not only cool AAA games, but even free hits or the Steam Deck itself.
We managed to live more than 30 hours in the Zone before the official release. During this time, we had to run away from mutants, kill more than a dozen bandits, listen to jokes around campfires, and, of course, catch that unique spirit of stalkerism. Next, we want to share what exactly impresses about this game and how it will drag you into its radiation vortex.
It all starts with a mysterious artifact that suddenly finds itself in Scythian’s apartment, punching a huge hole in his home. Skif is a brave and clever guy, so he decides to find out where this artifact came from and why it ended up under his bed. And, of course, the only place to find answers is the Zone. Armed with a special scanner and with the support of a scientist he knows, our hero sets off on an adventure.
The first task? To get into a closed area and activate the artifact using a scanner. To do this, you need to find the right place, avoid the bullet, and survive the abnormal release. Almost everything goes according to plan, until you are insidiously attacked by a group of unknown criminals. Scythian loses his consciousness, his scanner, his artifact, and narrowly avoids becoming another corpse in the dangerous, albeit romantic, Zone. What does the resourceful hero have to do? That’s right – to understand the situation and follow the dangerous path of a stalker.
This is the basis of the plot of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. You travel around the Zone, meet interesting people, and gradually put together the puzzle of this strange world. The plot is revealed through dialogues, cutscenes, notes, and audio messages. The player learns that a new military operation has been launched in the Zone, the factions have signed the D4 Treaty, and the truce is about to end. The leaders of the factions are tired of listening to the military and are ready to destroy the weakest.
The atmosphere of fierce competition permeates every corner of the Zone. Every other character warns that good stalkers don’t live here for long. And even the one you rescued from the mutant clutches would rather call you crazy than thank you. That’s what’s so fascinating – the developers have managed to recreate an authentic world where survival comes first, and people are looking for at least some prey.
Each NPC adds realism. While some may not like the “masculine” aesthetic, the depth of the characters is impressive. The people you meet are a mixture of melancholy, despair, black humor, and madness. Some of them will be remembered for a long time, while others will pass like sparks. Picky players may think that they are all too similar, but GSC Game World has managed to create the magic of halftones in their characters.
When it comes to narrative tools, some may consider S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 to be outdated to some extent. For example, during radio communication, the player completely loses control, and some transitions to cutscenes look clumsy.
However, these shortcomings do not spoil the overall impression of the game. Especially when you consider how carefully the developers approached the creation of the Zone. It’s juicy, filled with tragedies between the lines and traces of stalkers’ lives. Locations, inscriptions on the walls, picturesque valleys, and skillfully arranged corpses make you want to stay for another fifteen minutes.
Let’s start with the gameplay. We can divide it into three main parts: exploration of the zone, resource management, and battles. The easiest part is exploration. You have as much as thirty square kilometers to explore the open world, which contains various locations: abandoned boiler houses, villages, factories, and much more. In every corner, you can find a bribe – a piece of sausage, a few rounds of ammunition, a bottle of vodka from the local GSC producer, or an energy drink. Sometimes you come across weapons or good clothes.”
But some bribes still have to be reached, and it may not be easy. One of the main obstacles is anomalies. They can be different: distorted gravity, electrical zones, fire geysers, flying blades, and even soap bubbles. Each of them threatens with serious health losses, but an experienced stalker will be ready for them. But the real problem is radiation.
The radiation field is one of the best game mechanics. Not only does it limit where you can go, but it also clearly shows who is a beginner and who already has proper protection. And it’s not just numbers – you hear the Geiger counter and see whitish spots appear on the screen, creating the illusion that particles are flying straight into the screen. The deeper you dive into the contaminated area, the greater the risk and the faster the death.
Another interesting mechanic is stamina. The green stamina bar is already a familiar element in many games, but in Heart of Chernobyl it works in a special way. The heavier your backpack is, the faster you get tired and the longer it takes to recover your energy. To recover faster, you can drink an energy drink, but it will only have a temporary effect and make you hungry. And not only running is affected by this mechanic – even jumps and punches become harder when your endurance is low. This adds depth and realism.
Next up is resource management. The weight is limited, so you can’t just pack your backpack with weapons and ammo. If you overload yourself, you’ll have to stop and rest every few meters.
Food is especially insidious. At first, not everyone pays attention to this point and wonders why the backpack is so heavy. There are only three weapons, but it turns out that you have fifteen kilograms of bread and the same amount of sausage in your backpack, not to mention the huge amount of vodka you take to reduce the impact of radiation. Although there are special preparations, what is better than “white”, after which the colors around you become so bright?
And, finally, battles. They are of two types: with mutants and humans. Both are complex and require a serious approach. There’s no room for chaos: you have to think about tactics, choose the right weapon, take into account the number of first aid kits and food, know where to retreat, where to hide. The Scythian doesn’t have any significant changes in its characteristics, there’s no role-playing system either, but there are enough different strategies.
You can sneak into the camp and quietly kill everyone, or you can take a sniper position and take turns killing enemies. Or, finally, you can simply arm yourself and sneak through the crowd of enemies with a backpack filled with first aid kits and assault rifles. However, switching weapons and animations can be annoying. Problems arise when you try to quickly change weapons in the middle of a battle. Under stress, it’s easy to make a mistake, and instead of getting a new weapon, you just hide the one you had. And this does not add comfort when grenades are flying at your feet.
And now to the unpleasant part – what’s a Stalker without bugs? There was probably no doubt that the game would not be perfectly optimized at release. And, unfortunately, it was true. Let’s focus on the four most obvious problems. The first one is FPS drops. It is interesting that in the very center of the Zone, during shootouts, Heart of Chernobyl has a stable 30-60 frames. However, there are places (for example, the first base of the Varta) where this figure drops to 3-4, and this is already a serious problem.
The second problem is character models. There are many funny moments in the game when a bot suddenly starts flying into the sky or falls underground after dying. Sometimes NPCs just got stuck in each other and stood there for a while. And the number of enemies who pose in the T-pose or A-pose after death is also quite large. Worst of all, some missions require complex maneuvers: jumping over there, crawling over here, walking along a narrow plank. In such situations, when the frames sag and the colliders don’t work correctly, it spoils the experience of the game.
Although it is worth noting that the developers are gradually trying to deal with all these bugs. For example, there was a problem with the treatment of the wounded. The protagonist had to inject a first aid kit into the body of an ally, but for some time he injected it anywhere but into the bot. Now this problem is no longer so obvious.
Another problem is textures. They either flicker or change color, and as a result, they don’t look very attractive. Especially when they are complex surfaces, like rusty metal that was once painted green.
And the last group of bugs is sounds. In S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobylduring battles, sometimes sounds either disappear completely or sound very artificial. There are other strange moments that resemble Cyberpunk 2077 at its worst, when the enemy is already dead, but he still continues to threaten with screams. Or vice versa: you’re in the middle of a battle, and suddenly someone shouts: “That’s it, he’s gone, calm down, brothers.”
“The Heart of Chernobyl” will cause admiration, criticism, hatred, make you stay late at work or, conversely, take a day off. However, we are convinced that Stalker 2 will not leave anyone indifferent. No matter how angry you are about the inconveniences and incomplete optimization, we have to admit that S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is a truly huge, exciting, sometimes imperfect Ukrainian game. Its atmosphere, filled with longing for something unknown and melancholy of lonely “wolves”, is impossible not to feel. It captivates millions of players around the world and won’t let go until they have traveled the entire Zone.
You can treat GSC Game World differently, whether it’s their main franchise or the fact that they’ve been working on a sequel for almost 15 years. But if we put aside all the unimportant stuff, we will be left with the heart of this game. What do we have? A hermetic, masculine space of thirty square kilometers, saturated with campfire stories and mixed post-Soviet fervor. Weapons, bribes, scoundrels, and quiet tragedies. And, of course, a lot of delays and a lot of bugs. But this is Stalker, as Han Solo said: “Chewie, we’re home.”
Have you already tested the new version of the game, what are your impressions of the long-awaited release?