Stalker 2 was made in the midst of war.
You’ve probably heard how Ukranian studioGSC Game Worldbussed workers out of the country shortly before the Russian invasion.
Or how some developers have died in the war.
It can feel petty, in such circumstances, to mention the twitching leg of a random NPC.
And when I say huge, I mean that.
Within your first hours you’ll discover a different, older philosophy to the open world shooter.
You still ramble about, doing quests and collecting loot.
But largely there’s a feeling of playing something outside the realms of today’s blockbuster conventions.
In its finest moments, gunfights are scrappy, brief, and full of swear words.
You get two blasts off with a shotgun but the jerk still stands.
But that’s the combat at its best.
Mutant enemies are especially jerky in their movement.
Any time rats or dogs or wild boars appeared, I knew I was in for an annoying fight.
You will sometimes be shot in the dark without understanding who got you.
Camouflage is a part of war and so is unpredictable enemy movement.
Also, you will simply quicksave a whole bunch, greatly lessening the pain of death.
They almost seem to attackthroughyou.
They aren’t alone in being hard to spot.
But they also feel appropriate to the setting in a way that is faithful to the series.
This is not the rainbow oily dangerzone of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation.
Still, some anomalies are underwhelming.
Basically “what if fire?”
or “what if electricity?”
Better yet is the anomalous weather.
Storms are common, with debris whipping about in the wind as lightning lands mere feet from you.
Get caught outside while one of these is happening and you are toast.
I mentioned Bethesda games as a counterpart, because it often feels like what Stalker 2 is aiming for.
But Stalker 2 doesn’t have anything close to the same hooky quality in its main quest.
The supporting characters don’t offer many threads of storytelling that are any more interesting.
Basically all quests in the first 20 hours form a chain of man names.
Almost every quest giver can be asked some version of: “Why don’t you do this yourself?
“, when a more pertinent question would be: “Why should I care?”
I met a woman once, after 26 hours of playing.
She acted like all the other men.
Simply liking guns will carry you most of the way through the game.
Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl accessibility options
Keyboard controls widely customisable.
Motion blur can be decreased or disabled.
Depth of field effects can be decreased.
Contrast, brightness, gamma, and HDR tweaks can all be altered.
Dedicated sliders for music, SFX, and dialogue volume.
That is, if you aren’t waylaid by the other inclement weather: the bugs.
We’ve already listed quite a lot of these ina post earlier this week.
The thing is, Stalker games have always been glitchy.
But they made up for it with a grim-faced, survivalist philosophy of play.
Divorced from its context, Stalker 2 is as Stalker as Stalker games stalk.
A copy of Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl was provided for review by developer GSC Game World.
