S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl Stalker 2 2024 scifi computer game
Ukrainian science fiction
Stalker 2 (2024, Ukraine)
Original title: S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
Categories: alien artifactsmystery science fictionalternate realitypost-apocalyptic reality2020s sci-fi
GSC Game World, company behind the Stalker series, took a long hiatus from this title, the last game being published in 2009. Since then there were several overhaul mods for the original games that turned them into a completely different experience of the Zone. Back in 2020, it was quite surprising when Stalker 2 was announced by GSC and Microsoft, since no previous plans of the series revival were known. To make things more interesting the publisher moved the title into the open world genre, which had potential to be the new big thing.
Even though the title was supposed to be published in 2020 / 2021, the years went by without any huge updates, apart from the information that the game is coming. After several postponements, then the attack of a madman on Ukraine in 2022, the perspective for the game to be successful seemed bleak. The premiere in late 2024 brought back the memories of the old Stalker games - it was buggy, it was poorly optimized, it required quite few mods to make it playable.
But there was one big difference between Stalker 2 and its predecessors, Stalker 2 was more bleak. And I don’t mean bleak in an artistic way, I mean in the boring way. There was a bigger map, there were some graphical improvements (hardly surprising after 15 years of hiatus), but overall it was just meh. The atmosphere is not there, the open world is not really there, the gameplay is just forgettable.
The game was partially developed during an ongoing war, which is a reason you should cut GSC some slack, but the problem is not really with the quality of the material, the problem is with the basics of the whole design. They day/night cycle is surprisingly short, the nights are not really that dark, the fight bit is not great, the open world means just that the locations are spread wider all over the place, even though this sometimes makes no sense. Not to mention the "open world" is not fully open (there are different walls blocking you from moving around the parts of the Zone).
Perhaps the creators were too ambitious, perhaps the gap between the games was way too long, perhaps the war disrupted the development more than the public could realize, but the fact is that Stalker 2 is just... bland and forgettable. While you can understand that people in danger of being killed during the ongoing war might not be able to focus on complicated task, like game design, the basics should have been decided years earlier (the original premiere was hinted as 2020 or 2021). The final product is yet another technical mess, empty open world, gameplay that hardly can be called exciting.
Our rating
4.8 / 10
Overall rating
3 / 10
Reality complexity
3 / 5
Adventure
3 / 5
Story complexity
3 / 5
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