STALKER 2 Heart of Chornobyl Will Definitely Find Its Fanbase In Survival Gamers

It has been a long time coming for STALKER, as a franchise we haven't had a new title since 2009, but with the release of STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl players get to return to The Zone and attempt to survive against a variety of factions, strange creatures, and even odder anomalies.

In STALKER 2 you take on the role of Skif, a stalker who has headed into the zone to gather more information on a strange Artifact that appeared in his kitchen. Once inside a key piece of equipment is stolen from you and you're left for dead. From there, you begin your quest to track down just who ambushed you and how you can recover your scanner.

STALKER 2 reminds me of New Vegas, for better or worse

The setup reminded me heavily of Fallout: New Vegas, with just a brief introduction to the post-apocalyptic world before you're out on your ass with a major MacGuffin to hunt after. While you can tell there's a drive for Skif to recover what he's lost, as a player with very little connection to this world that kind of motivation is a bit difficult to relate to though.

Early on following the scent of your attackers, you'll run into others who brave The Zone, each able to drip-feed you a bit of information to get you to your next location. The overall quest structure of the game did feel a bit like a goose chase.

Each new lead you obtain would get you to someone who knows just a little bit more information, but you need to help them clear out a settlement or recover an important item before they share it with you. In that way, you'll find yourself bouncing around the world doing odd jobs working towards your goal.

The shallow nature of the primary story definitely made the start of the game slow and difficult to get into. Many quests feel like checking boxes rather than something I would really be pushing myself to explore or complete on my own. There's a lot more to STALKER 2 than the story though.

If you do make it past the initial 8-10 hours then the story does bring in more ideas and concepts from the original games. You'll see what has happened to the Monolithians, among other factions, and even take steps to align yourself with them.

Enjoyment from exploration, not plot

Each new area is filled with different side-quests and activities. There are a variety of settlements that you can travel to that can be looted or are populated with others who need some help. You can even stumble into turf wars that you can watch from a distance or hop into the fray yourself.

These side-quests aren't just a chance to explore the world as they're also one of the best ways to obtain very necessary equipment whether it be currency for purchasing new items or repairing your gear, or more powerful weapons and armor.

Survival mechanics will make or break your experience

The Survival mechanics of STALKER 2 is really what will decide if this is the game for you. Jumping into the game you'll immediately notice features that other games offer, like detecting the rough direction of where you're being shot from or a map-based fast travel aren't present.

These survival features continue to add as you play further. You'll be avoiding radiated areas for fear of getting sick, be reminded to eat food continuously, and see some extremely debilitating effects if you start to push your carrying capacity.

The combination of carrying capacity limits alongside the lack of fast travel unfortunately is a slog. Going out with equipment, bullets, health and food items, and only three guns I'd regularly find myself at 45-50kg of the 80kg carrying capacity. Carrying much more and suddenly my speed is down to a crawl and my stamina drains faster and recharges slower.

From an on-paper perspective, I can see how this promotes the idea of going 'light' or making returning to a base with a variety of valuable items a more stressful situation. Unfortunately outside of settlements, there's very little else to run into in the overworld. What this results in is a lot of dead time just slowly walking across the map.

STALKER 2 will find it's audience

Chances are if you played the original STALKER you've got some idea of what you're in for but if not imagine a mix between a Fallout and Metro game, with a large open world and more intense survival mechanics. If that is something that you're attracted to then now is your time to hop on. If that doesn't take your fancy then you'll likely not reach a point where the story picks up.

STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl was previewed over 15 hours of gameplay on PC via Steam with a key provided by the publisher. All screenshots were taken during the preview process.