S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl review — A rough start

After a ton of unfortunate delays due to the situation in Ukraine, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is finally seeing the final light of day with its imminent release. This hardcore, first person survival horror experience serves as a welcome return to the series’ roots with a complex weaving narrative and a focus on player choice. I can tell GSC Game World put their heart and soul into this game, but the overall end product contains too many technical shortcomings to make the wait for this sequel worth it at the end of the day.

Unlike the first game which focused on an amnesiac protagonist known as the Marked One, this sequel follows a new character named Skif, a fresh-faced Stalker venturing into the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone. The game is set in an alternate timeline where a second disaster in 2006 has caused monstrous mutations and supernatural activity in the area. You do not need to have played the first Stalker to enjoy this game, but knowing how previous titles in this franchise play and feel will give you a better feel for this one. As you enter the Zone, you quickly become tangled in a complex web of competing factions, and it is up to you and the choices you make in this non-linear narrative to dictate the story you experience.

Given how expansive this game is, we are still taking our time with it, which is why this will be a review-in-progress. The open world of Stalker 2 is vast and filled with secrets to uncover, which makes the sense of exploration exciting and addicting. Each new area holds promise of valuable loot or deadly danger, and with the various factions roaming around, the world truly feels like a living, breathing ecosystem. One of the game’s greatest strengths is its atmosphere. The oppressive sense of dread and the constant threat of danger create a uniquely tense experience. Whether navigating through anomaly-filled fields or exploring abandoned buildings, the game never lets you feel truly safe.

Stalker 2 is marketed as a first person shooter and a survival horror game. Now, I’m not expecting Call of Duty levels of fluidity when it comes to FPS’s, but Stalker’s gameplay feels rigid, outdated, and clunky. There’s an input delay and laggy feel to every movement. The gunplay feels stiff and inaccurate, and the experience is made even more frustrating when your gun jams! When you shoot bullet sponge monsters or human enemies, there is absolutely no reaction from them. Pump 10 bullets in them and they’ll just ragdoll and drop dead. Even The Last of Us Part 2 had better physics and animations when it came to shooting gameplay.

Okay but how about the rest of the gameplay? How’s the movement? There’s a stamina system integrated with gameplay, and of course to make the game artificially difficult, it depletes way too fast, and regenerates way too slow. Jumping, running, and melee attacks all drain stamina. This makes on-foot traversal feel like a pain because there are no vehicles in the game. You can pay money to fast travel, but that’s besides the point. Stealth also feels terrible, with no indication of whether or not you will break stealth, and sometimes the stealth kill animations won’t execute. The game’s signature A-Life feature is also lacking.

I can maybe see past mediocre gameplay if the progression loop is rewarding. Alas, this is a bit disappointing. Non-human enemies drop absolutely nothing, meaning killing them is literally a waste of bullets and resources. Mutated elites or mini-bosses, yes bosses, also drop nothing, and are insane bullet sponges. Mutated dogs are your worst friends, especially when a pack of ten swarms you, with completely erratic behavior that makes it impossible to shoot them. Get ready to waste your entire clip of bullets shooting at nothing with how clunky the gunplay is! You have to keep in mind how much ammo you deplete, because it’s rare. This is on top of managing your radiation, hunger, and health!

Player advancement is primarily driven by exploration and gaining knowledge about the Zone and its dangers. You naturally discover new artifacts, weapons, upgrades, and attachments, which serve as tangible markers of progress. Some artifacts might increase stamina recharge rate, enhance physical strength, but these benefits often come with trade-offs, such as increased radiation exposure. In addition, you might stumble upon new characters, factions, and quests. I do respect this organic and immersive form of progression that aligns with the game’s survivalist theme. As a whole, the gameplay is unforgiving and intense, even on Rookie difficulty, staying true to the series’ roots. You will die. A lot.

Let’s talk a bit about the technical performance of Stalker 2, because it’s also pretty disappointing. There seems to be a trend of poor PC ports, and this seems to be another one added to the list. For reference, my PC rig is running a GeForce RTX 3080, and an Intel Core I9 with 32GB of memory. I even updated to the latest Nvidia drivers made specifically for Stalker 2. I also make sure to launch just the game itself, with no other programs running to ensure the best possible performance.

From the developers themselves, I should be able to run the game on High graphical settings at 1440p 60fps with an Intel Core I7 and a 3070TI. Not only do I have a better setup than the official PC recommendations, I cannot run Stalker 2 on High settings without frequent stuttering and dips as low as 20 fps, even with DLSS turned to performance. After downgrading to Medium settings, I still have frequent dips in fps to the low 50s and high 40s. I can’t play for more than an hour at a time before my head starts to hurt.

And because the settings must be set to Medium for me to barely run the game, the visuals are definitely nothing to write home about. There’s frequent pop ins and textures are blurry and muddled. Don’t even bother getting the game if you still have a 10 or 20 series RTX GPU.

Not only is the technical state of the game already disappointing, the bugs and glitches make the package even worse. These range from minor and comedic visual quirks such as ragdolling enemies flying everywhere to game breaking bugs that could potentially softlock you from progressing the way you want to. You see, this is an experience that contains plenty of immersive sim elements, allowing you to approach situations however you like, whether that is peacefully, violently, stealthily, etc. I took on a quest to find an artifact for an NPC only for the artifact to not spawn or bug out, even after relaunching the game (another 6+ minutes wasted!). My only other option was to kill the NPC in order to proceed. Who knows what kind of consequences that might have down the line?

Aside from the poor performance, the game is also insanely huge in size, coming in at a whopping 154.85GB on PC. An unannounced and unexpected 16GB patch took more than 20 minutes to download, install, and then verify due to the sheer size of the game. Every time you boot up the game, you need to wait about 2-3 minutes for it to “synchronize with the cloud”, then another 2-3 minutes for the Shaders to compile. Afterwards, it takes another 20-23 seconds to load into the game from the main menu. In total, you are looking at over 6 minutes of wait time just to get into the game (almost 30 minutes if you count the unannounced patch and verify).

That being said, the audio design is impressive, with ambient sounds and a haunting score that perfectly capture the eerie essence of the Zone. Gunfire sounds appropriately weighty, and the growls of mutants are genuinely unsettling. Voice acting is also very well done, with brilliant performances from all the main characters.

After a few patches, I’m glad to say that tons of bugs were squashed and the loading times have significantly improved. However, the core gameplay loop and experience remains mostly the same. Frame rates, unfortunately, continue to chug and dip, and the performance is still not great. If the developers took just a bit more time to polish their game, then the immediate impressions would not have been so negative. I have no doubt that this game will become great in time, but right now it still needs time to cook in the oven. It doesn’t help that each patch takes upwards of 30 minutes due to the sheer size of the game…

Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is an undoubtedly remarkable achievement in atmospheric game design. This post-apocalyptic experience offers an unmatched dynamic open world that is bound to satisfy long-time fans of the series. However, the extremely poor technical hiccups and hardcore yet niche nature of the game prevents it from getting a full recommendation. This is not a game for casuals.

 

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