We recently went hands-on with the first half-hour of gameplay in STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl running on PC. After a brief story-heavy introductory cutscene, we were sent off running through dark corridors at our own pace with danger not far behind. As one that has had more than a short break from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series (Shadow of Chernobyl and the L.U.R.K. mod were honestly my last real in-depth experience with the series nearly a decade and a half ago, although I did dabble in a bit of Clear Sky back at release), so much of the world and inventory feels right at home. Name one other RPG where random bottles of vodka and tinned cat food are just as essential in your inventory as spare bandages and bullets.
STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl’s gunplay remains a strong focus to differentiate it from other open-world games. Both players and enemies alike go down in just a few bullets and if not for the sparsely littered medkits and bottles of vodka, I would’ve been left traversing the Zone in a permanently critical state. Most weapons thankfully use interchangeable ammo types across the class, however, I found a wide assortment of caliber rounds that would each clutter my inventory in individual stacks despite having never come across a weapon that could use them. Hiding in a side room in one of the buildings I explored was an assault rifle that was numerically slightly more efficient at indiscriminate murder that I wound up swapping to it, only to never find another stash of ammo for it. My packrat nature made me want to hold onto that gun for the rest of the demo, cluttering up my inventory space rather than discarding it. If this were the full game, I’d probably still have held onto it to vendor it for enough rubles to buy a can of Tourist’s Delight.
Anomalies remain one of the most dangerous aspects of the landscape in STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Veteran players have had years of experience throwing bolts at and subsequently activating anomalies just long enough to sidestep them. For the demo, my main character carried around a military-grade scanner meant to extrapolate data from the anomaly breach upon activation. That meant getting close to them and giving them a quick scan before the main story would progress. One anomaly was scanned and eliminated without much of a hitch (save for one enemy approaching and attacking me when I was guarding the scanner), while the other kept hitting me with an electric pulse that would quickly burn through my life and kill me after just a few seconds. This went on for a few tries before ultimately finishing my scan and venturing forth to stumble across a roaming group of bandits before my demo time had lapsed. The first anomaly rewarded me with a low-rank Slug anomaly that provided a small resistance boost once slotted into one of my character’s four artifact slots. As with the last three titles, I’m sure that STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl’s artifacts will be the key bit of kit necessary to surviving the Zone.
Cover wasn’t readily available to provide a sense of tactics in STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Most of the firefights took place in the swampy open world with few objects to duck behind like rusted vehicles and abandoned farm sheds. Roughly midway through my demo, I was caught by surprise in the open against a mutant that would turn invisible and try to get behind my field of view. It took a few deaths and restarts to deal enough damage to stun it long enough to whip out a quick bandage and shoot it when it would phase back into reality. I could’ve easily kept shooting the wispy form as it navigated around, but ammo for my assault rifle and handheld Uzi were both sparse from firefights with random raiders that didn’t give me the right ammo types back when I looted their corpses.
STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl feels modernized in ways that AAA games have developed over the years. A minimap has been replaced with a compass permanently affixed to the top of the screen, pointing to nearby points of interest and quest markers. Enemies are also marked with red dots when alive and gray X’s once they fall, giving the player a visual reminder of where to find their backpacks and that sweet low-level loot within. The firing mode indicator located beneath your ammo count indicates whether the weapon is toggled to semi-auto or fully automatic fire. Most of the information that needs to be conveyed to the player is presented in unobtrusive HUD elements shrunk down to the edges of the screen, giving more screen real estate for players to admire the corrupted beauty of the Ukrainian Zone.
For many fans, STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl has been a long time coming, but the wait is finally ending. Despite the challenges of developing a AAA title in a country currently ravaged by an invasive war, GSC Game World has put its best foot forward and shown why it’s been worth the wait. The game will be available exclusively on PC and Xbox Series S|X on September 5.
