Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl (GSC Game World, Xbox/PC)
FROM toxic workplace cultures and studio mismanagement to publishers going bankrupt, some games have endured a long and difficult development. But, rather than a handsy boss or tightened purse-strings, Stalker 2 deserves a medal for simply existing at all.
In retrospect, Covid was a walk in the park for Ukrainian developer GSC, who later found themselves in Putin’s sights when Russia invaded their homeland in 2022.
Its narrative designer worked on the game while sheltered in a corridor alongside a one-eyed dog, injured during bombings, while several team members juggled development with military service.
Reinterpreting the buggy-yet-beloved open-world shooter with modern bells and whistles, Stalker 2 may be badger’s bum rough, but the fact that its very title changed from ‘Chernobyl’ to the Ukrainian spelling of ‘Chornobyl’ is enough to bring a lump to the throat.
Loosely based on chin-stroking soviet sci-fi novel Roadside Picnic and Andrei Tarkovsky’s film adaptation, Stalker is set in an alternate history where a second disaster at Chornobyl created ‘The Zone’ – a barren wasteland where armed groups fight for control amid supernatural anomalies.
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As Skif, players navigate the badlands, throwing in with various factions in a punishing game of survival.
Dropping players into the Chornobyl exclusion zone, Stalker 2 is more survival epic than first-person shooter. A map double the size of the original is scattered with characters to help, mutants to shoot and anomalies to investigate, offering around 40 hours of blasting, scavenging and a lot of walking.
Brutally difficult, Stalker 2 doesn’t so much hold your hand as kick your arse, forcing players to use brains over brawn in a game where every firefight could be your last.
Set in a gorgeously grim world, Stalker 2’s atmosphere is thicker than Irish stew, backed up with brilliantly bleak sound design. Faithful to a fault - right down to the bugs which plagued the original games – it’s also a hot mess of technical hiccups.
Set in a gorgeously grim world, Stalker 2’s atmosphere is thicker than Irish stew, backed up with brilliantly bleak sound design
With a spasmodic frame rate and characters that veer from turning invisible to getting trapped in the scenery, Stalker 2 may be a dozen patches away from glory, but its besieged developer is rolling out virtual band-aids as we speak.
A far cry from Call of Duty, Stalker 2 is a punishing slice of survival that engages your grey matter as much as your trigger finger - yet, while not for everyone, such is the love for the series that it’s already shifted more than a million copies barely a week after launch.
And, with half the studio in a warzone and the other refugees, we can forgive a little jank.
Slava Ukraini, indeed.
