REVIEW: ‘Stalker 2’ Is Something Special Buried Alive In Bugs (XSX)

Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is a challenging game to review. Developed and published by the Ukrainian studio GSC Game World, Stalker 2‘s development team has had to overcome an array of incredible challenges to release the title. It is a small miracle that it has managed to do so at all.  Just like its predecessors, Stalker 2 is a unique blend of Eastern European culture, horror, immersive sim, and first-person shooter. But it also is one of the buggiest releases in recent memory, so much so that it frequently mars the experience at every level.

Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is set in an alternate universe where the 1986 Chornobyl nuclear power plant explosion had a more supernatural impact on the surrounding area. It led to strange tornado-esque energy anomalies that tear living things to pieces. Mutant beasts crawl around its shadows. Perhaps most importantly, it allows for the creation of powerful items called artifacts that harbor incredible abilities.

These artifacts are at the center of the franchise’s gameplay and universe, with players stepping into the shoes of various stalkers or independent mercenaries willing to venture into the disaster zone and bring back artifacts for money. In Stalker 2, players control Skif, a stalker struggling with isolation and loneliness after losing his home to an artifact.

Skif’s loneliness is the beating heart of Stalker 2’s main campaign and side quests. In the exclusion zone, the term used for the irradiated map of the game, there is a lawlessness that makes trusting anyone difficult. Factions grapple with one another and vie for control over the zone, but it remains a dangerous wasteland where might often equals right.

This leaves a lot of room for player choice and expression during the story. Players make many impactful decisions throughout the story, and those decisions often have far-reaching consequences. However, I highly recommend playing through the game with Ukrainian voice acting and English subtitles, as the English voice acting is bad enough to turn what is an effective and impactful reflection on modern social isolation into a laughingstock of farcically bad accents.

The theme of loneliness is also present throughout the gameplay and mechanics of Stalker 2. Time spent in the exclusion zone is spent alone and with a lot of space for quiet reflection. Much time is spent quietly walking between objectives with only nature, the weather, and perhaps distant sounds of conflict to accompany you. Despite the game’s punishing survival elements like managing hunger or status effects like bleeding, it often borders on meditative.

That meditative nature is also supported by just how beautifully rendered the zone is. Based on the real geography and landmarks surrounding the Chornobyl disaster, it is clear that GSC Game World labored to make the world of their game a love letter to their home nation. And it is a resounding success. Exploring the zone is a wonderful experience. Every nook and cranny holds something interesting to find, even if it lacks any rewarding loot.

While exploring the zone, players also have to worry about staying alive. The world is filled with mutants and other humans that can easily end a peaceful walk through the zone at a moment’s notice. This is where Stalker 2‘s immersive sim and shooter components come into play. The combat is reactive and high stakes, especially on the harder difficulty. Ammunition is far from plentiful, and it only takes a couple of rounds to send you to the game over screen, making combat wonderfully tense.

The franchise’s iconic A-Life system is also at play, an AI system that focuses on creating realistically evolving combat encounters. When it works, it’s fantastic. Enemies make interesting tactical decisions against the player and other AI combatants that you must react to quickly and decisively to stay alive. It makes coming out of encounters on top very satisfying and exciting, although the punishing stakes may push some players away.

However, combat is also where most of Stalker 2‘s bugs rear their heads and start putting a serious damper on the experience. The A-Life system has some serious bugs that are capable of ruining encounters and it feels as though they pop up almost half of the time. On top of that, visual glitches are common that ruin the game’s carefully tuned atmosphere, and loot frequently falls through the world map and leaves you with nothing after spending expensive resources on a firefight. Sometimes, status effects like bleeding will not be removed when they should be, forcing you to load back to before you got it.

Stalker 2‘s bugs and issues are numerous and severe, but it stands as a testament to how great the game buried underneath them is that it still manages to shine. If the developers hadn’t overcome so many obstacles, the game would undoubtedly be stronger now, but that just isn’t how things have gone. As it stands, Stalker 2 is well worth it for the dedicated fans or players who don’t mind working around bugs along the way. But for most potential players, it would be better to just hold off for some patches.

Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is available now on Xbox Series S|X and PC.