S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl

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...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. [Review in Progress]

Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl is an extremely mixed bag so far. While I’m enjoying the atmosphere, the few stealth-based missions (I say “based” but you can just wander in and shoot everyone) have been the highlights. Skif is a likeable enough horrible person, and I like how much there is to do in terms of quests and side content, but it’s held back massively by stifling bugs, unsatisfying gunplay, iffy voice work and sound design, and a general air of being five to ten years behind the modern market. Or maybe I’m just missing the point. Either way, with only around a dozen hours played I’m still in the early game, so perhaps by the time I come to add a score to all this, a lot will have changed. Either way, right now, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl isn’t setting my world alight. [Review in Progress]

For fans of big, open-world games like DayZ and Horizon Zero Dawn, your time is now. A beautiful new world has been made available to you, with more than 60 square kilometers of forbidding wilderness to explore, enemy AI be damned. When you tire of the swamps and the hills, of the sinkholes and the ruined cottages, its densest industrialized areas hold labyrinthine warrens of industrial decay that will satisfy the cravings of the most ambitious urban spelunkers. Beneath this thin crust of earth, the Zone is a wild and terrifying wasteland with challenges and horrors you can only imagine. But the game’s many other systems still need a bit more work to reach the same level of perfection.

I’ve been battered and sometimes frustrated by S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2, but ultimately there is something admirable about its commitment to challenging you – especially when it simultaneously provides just enough tools to avoid becoming unfair. Between that, its punchy shooting, and some properly superb atmosphere-building, it’s done enough to earn the mantle of Good Game...Is it a good enough game, though, that you should headbutt your way through such a dense wall of bugs? I personally think yes, having not played or really thought about any other games for all the previous five days that I’ve been lost in the Zone. At the very least, that question should probably be more a matter of whether it’s worth playing now, or in six months' time, when updates and the promised mod support might have more thoroughly patched it up. And even in the latter case, that’s probably not an alien concept to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. fans.

The fact that STALKER 2 is complete and ready for an imminent release is nothing short of a miracle. It’s just a shame that my experience... is damaged by a constant stream of ever-present bugs and issues. [Provisional Score = 50]

With a few patches, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 may yet become this “shining” version of itself. As it stands, the game requires you to submit to the spell that is being cast. The rewards for those who can overlook the wonky combat, bodies that glitch through scenery, and other audio-visual quirks are considerable. That core feeling of raw survival in an uncaring environment — lightning cracking in the distance, rain lashing down, and the disquieting noise of far-off gunfire — never wanes.