The original S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy remains a commercially successful and influential IP that laid the foundations for more recognisable titles like Metro Exodus and Chernobylite, yet it’s never gained widespread appeal nor remained in the traditional news cycle for long – such as when the console ports finally arrived earlier this year to little fanfare and few reviews. As a challenging, open-world, FPS-survival-sim hybrid – with a notable lack of polish – it’s always been a hard sell to a more casual audience. With that in mind, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is more S.T.A.L.K.E.R. for a new generation. More refined and accessible, somewhat, but still as unforgiving and uncompromising at times.



While you’ll benefit from some familiarity with the prior games and their cast, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl’s branching narrative is designed to be just as enjoyable for newcomers; if potentially a little more mysterious and terrifying. Protagonist Skif, a former soldier trying to withdraw from the world, loses his apartment during a massive storm. He discovers a depleted Zone artefact in the rubble – suspiciously far from the current boundary – and is forced to take up a contract with a scientific group testing new anomaly scanners for the cash.



The clunky tutorial sees him slip through a damaged border wall under the cover of an emission storm, fend off some local mutant life, and run afoul of a mysterious group that takes the scanner, his artefact, and leaves him for dead. For newcomers, it’s the perfect setup as Skif has no insider knowledge of The Zone, no link to past events, no existing allegiances, and plenty of excuses to ask questions about current and past events.

A decade has passed since the original trilogy – taking account of key events and canonical endings – but the mysterious Zone has continued to expand, with deadly emissions and anomalies now encroaching on surrounding towns. Many armed factions and scientific groups, some old and some new, still carve out an existence within it. Some, like the SIRCAA research group, claim they want to harness its power to advance humanity, but constantly clash with their paramilitary defenders, “The Ward”, who have grown frustrated over rising casualties and limited progress.

While you’ll benefit from some familiarity with the prior games and their cast, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chernobyl’s branching narrative is designed to be just as enjoyable for newcomers...

The “Spark” faction believes the zone has a literal bright side they just need to discover behind all the horror, while the “Noon” faction of amnesiac Monolithian survivors is split between those looking for solitude and those still looking for the voice of their former “god”. There’s also no shortage of scavenger, bandit, and mercenary groups looking to avoid “Mainland” authorities; the IPSF maintaining the border with shoot-to-kill orders; and the titular stalkers still taking contracts from any group with trade coupons or gear to spare.



It’s a powder keg Skif must navigate as he hunts for contacts that could help him trace the group that attacked him and, if you look past the terrifying mutants and bizarre anomalies, you’ll always find humans looking to exploit the situation for their own benefit – often at the expense of their own kind. You’ll also realise most primary missions offer a choice between working with one of two local factions, with some potential wildcards thrown in mid-mission, while even the secondary quests allow you to resolve them in several ways for some light role-playing and faction reputation building.

There’s a lot to take in on your first playthrough, and the sequel has been designed with several mutually exclusive mission chains based on your choices, so you can’t see everything in a single playthrough. However, unlike so many games with a branching narrative and questlines, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl does an impressive job of weaving it all together without any dissonance, irrespective of the choices you make. I chose to stay as neutral as possible for as long as possible, playing it straight with every faction, and freely sharing knowledge; a feat that served me well when running into friendly or neutral patrols with a pack of mutants or bandits on my tail.

That said, some early choices felt a little random without enough context. I was almost 30-hours in (maybe halfway through the core story and a dozen side quests under my belt) when I finally approached the SIRCAA research facility, had met most of the factions and splinter groups, and had begun to understand their objectives. Of course, it was a balancing act that couldn’t last forever, so it’s always worth stocking up on ammunition before any encounter (particularly with bandit groups) in the event they turn on you.



That branching narrative is an excellent hook, but as most quests inevitably boil down to fetching something, activating something, or killing something, the bulk of your playtime is spent traversing The Zone and you’ll soon discover if the gameplay mechanics thrill or frustrate you. Whereas games like the Metro series reigned in the scope and ramped up the cinematic set-piece moments, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl sticks close to the original template and feels satisfyingly anachronistic as a result. It is more cinematic and better scripted than the original trilogy, sure, but the sprawling environments, focus on player planning and preparation, and the emergent gameplay possibilities are the highlight – not simply hurtling from one tightly-controlled set-piece to the next so that you get the same experience as everyone else.

If you had to critique each mechanic in isolation – the high-damage tactical gunplay, basic stealth, gear upgrades, artefact loadouts, weight vs. stamina considerations, the day-night cycle, and managing status effects, food, and sleep – you’d find competent but unremarkable systems. What’s important is how they interact within the context of The Zone, as you trek ever further away from the relative safety of settlements and encounter diverse anomalies, emission storms, vicious mutants, and hostile factions.

Whereas games like the Metro series reigned in the scope and ramped up the cinematic set-piece moments, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl sticks close to the original template and feels satisfyingly anachronistic as a result.

S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is a game in which running straight towards an objective marker can see you half-crushed by a gravity anomaly, left bleeding after being shot from a hundred meters away by a bandit, and finished off by a pack of mutants coming to investigate the noise. On the other hand, you might take cover during a firefight in an abandoned building, start hallucinating voices and spectral mutants, watch the bandits start screaming and turning on each other, realise you’ve stumbled into a mutant “Controller” den, and run like hell to fight another day. It seamlessly shifts from agoraphobic to claustrophobic, as missions take you across the surface and deep into dilapidated facilities, alternating between scrappy close-quarter firefights in the dark, and terrifying long-range surface engagements where you can barely see your target through a scope.



Despite functioning as a first-person shooter, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl leans into the survival mechanics, forcing you to prepare before heading out on an excursion and adapt on the fly. From a resource- and reputation-standpoint, you’ll be punished for reckless and trigger-happy behaviour – even on the lowest difficulty – as there’s no nonsensical progression mechanic whereby killing things or performing task rewards XP towards miraculously unlocked buffs or new skills. You’re only ever as good as your tactics, gear and ammunition reserves.

Picking your path through the massive environment and choosing when and where to engage are crucial. Unlike so many open-world games, the map is not there for you to systematically clear on your way to your objective; it’s a sprawling collection of potential dangers and opportunities, such as stalker stashes to restock on consumables, major anomaly zones that might spawn artefacts, or human patrols and packs of mutants you can play off one another.

Once a mission is triggered, your objective spawns in the world, and the rest is entirely up to you. There are a few first-person scripted sequences and dialogue-driven cutscenes, but out in The Zone you can often approach a location from any angle, engage in a clear daytime firefight, or sneak in under the cover of a nighttime storm. If you find yourself up against tough, well-armed human foes, that’s always an opportunity to claim their gear – through a gruelling straight-up firefight or more creative means – giving you access to equipment that’ll make you far more survivable or providing high-value trading goods. If you run into a seemingly unkillable mutant, it’s rare you need to kill them, so completing your task and fleeing is a perfectly viable approach. The “progression” mechanics encapsulates the stalker ideology: survive, improve your gear, push further into The Zone, repeat until you’re the biggest fish in the pond or eaten by it.



As with its predecessors, there is a degree of jank inherent in such a large, dynamic, and reactive world, but the sequel has made changes to ensure the basic mission flow and world structure is more satisfying.

The core quests move you from region to region – some of which are initially restricted by checkpoints, terrain, or irradiated rivers – and side quests within that region are typical local. This means you can establish a base of operations in the local settlement, with access to traders, medics, technicians to upgrade your gear, a bed to rest or pass the time, and even a Resident Evil-style item box you can access from any other settlement. Traversing such a massive world makes each excursion feel like a significant risk, but there are guides to take you between major settlements should you need to return later.

There are a few first-person scripted sequences and dialogue-driven cutscenes, but out in The Zone you can often approach a location from any angle...

It’ll no doubt be further polished over time, but I still encountered the odd scripting glitch, missing map marker, and sometimes returned to a quest giver to find them mauled by mutants, but the refined world structure goes a long way to removing some of the complete randomness that blighted the original. If you’re planning to pick to this on console, it’s also worth highlighting that PC-centric roots do mean some friction when it comes to navigating inventories and menus – something you’ll be doing a lot while looting, sorting, and upgrading gear.



One element of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl that I’m more divided on is the presentation, even after putting a few hours into the day-one patch version. The Zone is, undoubtably, more beautifully realised than ever – assuming you’re into irradiated ruins, overgrown vegetation, bizarre anomalies, and horrifying mutants. Being caught far from a settlement as the sun sinks below the horizon and blind mutant dogs begin howling in the distance remains as chilling as ever.

With no shortage of open land, industrial facilities, and urban environments, you’ll spot repeated asset use, but there’s no shortage of unique biomes and locations that show an incredible level of detail throughout, more realistic lighting, more atmospheric effects, unsettling ambience, and punchy sound effects – think gunfire or mutant roars echoing across open space or reverberating through confined tunnels. Even the cutscenes, which are mostly just first-person dialogue choice sequences, benefit from improved character models, animation, and natural lighting. It’s a great looking game – just not always a consistent one.

The Zone is, undoubtably, more beautifully realised than ever – assuming you’re into irradiated ruins, overgrown vegetation, bizarre anomalies, and horrifying mutants.

While I’m sure developers would disagree with me based on workload, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is yet another Unreal Engine 5 game on console that makes me fear for their ongoing dominance. To GSC Game World’s credit, even the Xbox Series S provides a mostly smooth and consistent 30fps (vs. 60fps on the Series X), albeit with chunky, low-resolution ray-traced lighting and reflections. However, there are still obvious temporal upscaling artefacts when moving in and out of structures, flickering surface lighting and missing light-casting sources in several locations, and the load times are just long enough that repeated deaths feel frustrating.



What concerns me more are the stylistic compromises in the name of realism – like the loss of the high-contrast lighting, dynamic torch shadows, and muzzle flash shadows – all of which make me wish developers would rather use their own mature engines and artistry to create striking game worlds, rather than compromising visual clarity and performance to facilitate third-party engine features.

Wrapping up, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is a massive game that probably deserves an even longer review to truly do it credit, but as a long-time fan, it’s (almost) everything I wanted from a sequel – and I’m impressed at how well it’s turned out given the long development period and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.

It offers a branching yet more coherent storytelling, a more refined world structure and mission flow, even more emergent gameplay possibilities, and a more stunningly rendered and atmospheric Zone to explore – console compromises aside. As a bonus, the developers have committed to future mods, which’ll hopefully give it just as much longevity as its predecessors. For newcomers, it’s a game I’d strongly recommend if you’re sick of the increasingly homogenous, on-the-rails, friction-free gameplay loop that dominates the industry… but a steep learning curve and plenty of rough edges might be difficult to overcome.

*Review code provided by GSC Game World