When one considers the circumstances around the development and release of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, it existing at all seems like quite the miracle. It’s a video game that has Ukraine at the absolute heart of it, and the team’s peril throughout the ongoing conflict has been well-documented, especially so in the recent documentary “War Game”. If nothing else, it provides perspective and context that’s important to the game’s story, even if it’s relatively irrelevant to the bigger picture of how the long-gestated sequel, subtitled Heart of Chornobyl, is set to be received.
I’ll preface this piece by saying that I still want to spend more time with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 so treat this as a review-in-progress, or rather an overview of my experience with this supposed forty-hour game thus far. It’s worth noting, for reasons that’ll become evident shortly, that I’m also playing on Xbox.
Whether deliberate or not, there’s a desperation that permeates this world’s Zone of Alienation. In fact, the world painted for us feels so permanently unsafe, devoid of hope, and analogous to Ukraine itself, it’s hard not to feel a lot of the team’s terrible, life-shattering experiences bleed through in the moment-to-moment gameplay of Heart of Chornobyl. You endure the Zone’s vicissitudes as Skif, a hardened stalker who, after being left for dead having been robbed of a sought-after artefact, is thrust into a branching narrative full of secret plots, warring factions, sides to take, and decisions to make.
As I’ve said I’m early doors as far as the story goes, but the mystery of who crossed Skif in the wilds and left him at the mercy of the Zone’s horrors is enough to drag the boat along for now. Skif might not be the most riveting protagonist, nor would he be any fun at parties, but fortunately many of the Zone’s other major players have starred in their small episodes within this larger journey. Conflicted scientists who pit their ethics against scientific curiosity, ravagers who’ll weaponise your own need for intel against their rivals as they look to secure their slice of slag heap region Garbage, and war-weary generals whose trust in their men is misplaced are but a few I’ve encountered in the game’s early acts.
Though I’ve enjoyed those who call it their home, the Zone itself feels like the main draw for Heart of Chornobyl. It’s a spectacularly hostile place that, despite being rooted in horror and science-fiction, feels so cruel, grounded, and ultra-real in its treatment of the player, bullets are devastating, creatures claw with ferocious efficacy. Even on the easiest of difficulties, it felt as though death crept about every corner. Spectacular emission storms turn the sky a blood red as blue, radiated lightning cracks and pings off the abandoned cars littering the fields, I definitely don’t recommend getting caught in one, however glimpsing one through a window, watching as the world near literally blows on by, is an undeniable thrill and truly sells the scariness of the Zone.
While I think S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 does a marvellous job reminding the player time and again that its world isn’t to be fucked with, its remaining systems managed to upend my enjoyment over and over. I constantly felt as though the game wasn’t designed with a controller in mind, which is fine in principle, so much of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. audience’s roots lie with keyboard and mouse, but so much of Heart of Chornobyl is downright painful to play on console. Inventory management, of which there’s plenty being a hybrid of both survival and immersive-sim genres, is cumbersome and slow, the gunplay is spotty and imprecise with its Bethesda-esque jank and AI pathing leading to frustratingly bad combat situations.
But these gripes aside, it’s really the performance on console that scuttles the whole thing. It’s not that I have played it on PC at all, though I’ll be shocked if there isn’t an enormous disparity between it and this console port because optimisation appears to have been an enormous problem for the team. I’ve not seen bugs of this magnitude since the launch of Cyberpunk, and there are a few that are just as egregious without being game-breaking.
Graphical hang-ups make up the crux of the concern, with unique cutscene assets, like cassette players and headphones, floating offset from their user and floating through the air, wall textures strobing on and off like an epileptic’s nightmare, and draw distance issues causing textures to pop-in at what I’d consider mid-range. Combat can be a tough pill, but it’s made tougher still when raiders magically materialise out of thin air and, in a flash, spot you and fill you full of holes. I also experienced a number of hard crashes, lines of dialogue simply not playing, and enormous plunges in frame rate that, hand on heart, would have been fortunate to register in double digits. I think S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 already caters to a niche audience by being a tough as nails, hard to the core apocalypse simulator steeped in realism, and having to contend with this performance shortfalls that mar that experience and render the game frustrating is disappointing.
The game tries so hard to present its world as an authentic, post-apocalyptic playground that’s super serious in tone, almost like a Fallout for masochists. I enjoyed plenty of my several hours with the game, it teaches you how to be frugal with resources and develops in you an edge that holds you in good stead for the game’s many moral quandaries. For a game crafted in a literal war zone, Heart of Chornobyl is, without question, an achievement. It’s a huge, enormously scoped game, and I admire the team’s ambition to swing for the fences despite the conflict that underpins their day-to-day lives. Sadly, I do think the console version is rife with issues that’ll hamper people’s experience at launch.
However, they’re all issues that can be ironed out and I hope Heart of Chornobyl gets its redemption arc, because bloody hell this deserves a feel-good story.
