If there is a game series as defined by its brutality as Stalker, I'm yet to die in it. Its setting, the overgrown exclusion zone surrounding Chornobyl's power plant, is deceptively beautiful. But its lush green fields are pock-marked with radiation and deadly phenomenons called anomalies, which range from pillars of fire spewing from cracked tarmac to invisible whirlwinds that can tear you from the ground at a moment's notice. Bandits, lured to The Zone by supernatural riches created by the disaster, lie ready to kill visitors at a moments notice; while vibrant poppy fields hide mutated wildlife who aren't fussy about what they eat.
Despite all of that, I've been dying to take my Geiger counter out for another trip. It's been 15 years since the series' last game, Call of Pripyat, and in that time few games have been able to match The Zone's bleakly immersive survival experience. But before getting to play the series' long-awaited follow-up Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl, which launches in November, I've been worried that the newest entry would dial back some of its grit in an effort to appeal to more mainstream tastes – after all, it's quietly become one of the biggest upcoming Xbox Series X games of 2024, with Microsoft Gaming partnering with developer GSC Game World to bring Stalker into the world.
Those worries, in hindsight, were very stupid. I recently visited GSC Game World in Prague – where half of the team has relocated due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine – and in the three hours of Stalker 2 I got to play, the game became near-comical in how little it cares about the player. At one point I survived a tense shootout with three bandits, only to die when I couldn't bandage a bleeding wound in time. Later, an attempt at hunting a band of wanted men for their bounties backfired when the sound of gunfire drew a pack of feral dogs, who decided I looked like the tastiest stalker of the group and tore me to shreds. There were other occasions where I didn't even risk fighting, preferring to bribe bandits for a key lead rather than waste my limited ammo fighting them for it.
Like everything in The Zone, Stalker 2 is deeply unforgiving – but that's precisely why I think it's going to induct a whole new generation of stalkers. I have concerns over how stable the game will be at launch, but if you've spent any time in Fallout's survival mode, counting your ammo in Metro, or even slogging through The Last of Us on Grounded difficulty, it's hard to think of another game I can so readily recommend ahead of its launch in November.
No tourists
If you're worried about jumping into Stalker 2 without having played the original trilogy, be at ease. The game begins with a midnight incursion into The Zone, where all-new protagonist Skif wants to find an anomaly strong enough to charge a mysterious artifact, an item changed by The Zone's near-supernatural energy. It's a fairly forgiving and straightforward introduction: you're given plenty of medical supplies, enemies are scarce, and your objective – to scan a series of anomalies – is straightforward and linear. Predictably, though, it all comes crashing down when you're ambushed and left for dead by a stalker with a much bigger gun. It's a neat introduction, and it means that when you wake up later with almost no equipment, you'll be (roughly) familiar with The Zone and its oddities.
While the main quest encourages you to search for leads on the stalker who wronged you, you're ultimately free to go your own way from here on out, and that's exactly what I do. It's hard to express just how big Stalker 2 is until you open its map for the first time – zooming out on the map reveals its staggering size, but even my immediate surroundings are dense with points of interest to check out. Given this expanded scope I'm particularly keen to see how Stalker 2 works as an open-world game (and selfishly, I need money to re-equip myself), so make my way to a nearby town of scavengers and hoover up work.
The first job I take from a bartender seems simple: head down the road and rough up a stalker who owes him money. Unfortunately, a group of bandits have beaten me to it, and they've got him pinned in a warehouse. Said bandits force me into being a mediator, and when the indebted stalker tells me he's stashed his valuables on top of a nearby water tower, they also send me to retrieve it. Unfortunately for them, said stash includes the first scoped gun I've seen all game. GSC seems to read my mind, as the weapon's owner radios me to suggest I have the perfect drop on the bandits below.
"There's an overbearing pressure to make ends meet, whether that's stripping every gun you come across for ammo, or taking odd jobs for a little cash"
Shooting at range is difficult due to bullet drop and my gun being an SMG, but it's worth it for the supremely satisfying thunk that comes with a fatal headshot. Stalker 2 carries forward the meaty gun violence that helped establish the grit and weight of its predecessors. Humans keel over with a well-placed shot to the head, but trying to line that shot up while just-as-lethal bullets are flying in your direction is incredibly difficult, and staying in one place for too long will turn you into an easy target. By the time I've killed and looted everyone, manually stripping their guns for ammo, I'm so eager to find my next shootout that I nearly forget to collect the bartender's debt. Nearly.
Unfortunately, fighting mutants isn't as fun. As cool as their designs are – Bloodsuckers, for example, are towering humanoids with mouthfuls of tentacles and a penchant for turning invisible – they're largely just bullet sponges, limited to battering you and occasionally circling around before lumbering in to batter you once again. I was hoping for a little more counterplay here, but it lacks the strategic depth that fighting humans boasts.
Likewise, anomalies are as tricky as they've always been. You can throw a rusty bolt into the shimmering air around an anomaly to temporarily dispel them, but if you plan on getting through one, don't expect the bolt to keep it gone for long. When someone asks me to rescue their brother's body from a ravine filled with them, I initially try to do the right thing and reach the body in one piece, but he proves too heavy to carry through each anomaly in time. After respawning out of the ravine one time too many, I do something I'm not proud of: as soon as the surviving brother turns away, I shoot him once in the back of the head and empty his pockets into mine.
It's grim, but it's also fundamentally Stalker. There's an overbearing pressure to make ends meet, whether that's stripping every gun you come across for ammo, or taking odd jobs for a little cash. It's this purposefulness that makes Stalker 2 deeply immersive. Most of my time in the game was spent indulging in curiosity and exploring The Zone's lush green wasteland, but that constant ebb-and-flow of supplies often dictated whether I'd wade into a mutant-infested cave or pass it by until I found more medkits.
Campfire tales
When I finally reign in my wandering to tackle Stalker 2's main quest, I quickly learn that stalkers are as stingy with information as they are ammo. My hunt for the stalker who betrayed Skif means wading into regional politics, as an authoritarian group called the Wardens have come down hard on a town of scavengers. To get a lead I've got to play ball with either the Wardens or the town's residents, which means tracking down a stalker who's suspected of killing and looting a few Wardens outside of the town. I hit up a nearby bandit encampment where he was recently seen, forking out all of my hard-earned cash to buy a lead rather than waste my precious ammo fighting.
When I find my man, who's hiding out in a booby-trapped windmill, I'm given the option of killing him or aiding in his escape. I choose the latter, which means traipsing through a radioactive, mutant-infested cave to find an artifact that will help. During these more choice-driven quests, I run into a few snags that pull me out of the game a little. I'd already explored this cave earlier, but nothing spawned or happened there until I was meant to find it. After fishing an artifact out from a pool of frothing radioactive gloop and helping my fellow survivor escape, I give his stolen goods to the town's loose coalition of stalkers rather than the Wardens I'd originally promised to help – which is all well and good, but when I return to the Wardens (because I can't resist the drama) they don't so much as acknowledge my betrayal. Navigating The Zone's splintered factions is something I've been particularly looking forward to, so I'm hoping this occasion was the exception rather than the rule – consequences drive everything else in Stalker 2, so it would be a real shame for the game's story elements to not capitalize on that.
While we're on the topic of concerns, it's also worth acknowledging that this in-development build of Heart of Chornobyl was a little rough around the edges. Some of the issues I encountered were relatively minor (like one dog getting its head stuck in a fence, which was admittedly quite funny) but others were more irritating, such as quick-saving being inconsistent, or finding a quest-giver's unreachable body strung through the rafters of a cottage. It's important to note that this is an in-development build – GSC Game World tells me it will be working on polish right up to launch – but given the original trilogy's notorious jankiness, it wouldn't surprise me to see Stalker 2 have issues of its own come release day. That's never stopped me from enjoying the series before, but given Stalker 2's launch will eclipse anything GSC Game World has done before, I'm hoping another month of polish pays off for the sake of making a good first impression to newcomers.
Ultimately, I do think Stalker 2 is going to take a lot of players on Xbox and PC by surprise. The likes of Elden Ring, along with a bloom in "realistic" difficulty modes, shows that we're generally willing to get punished time and again if it's for a world worth surviving in. The Zone follows this rule – after all, what's a little bit of radiation between friends? I ended my time in Stalker 2 battered, bruised, and low on just about every supply imaginable, but came away with a craving to let my curiosity guide me into just one more moldering warehouse or dark cave, to score just one more thunk-ing headshot before being killed myself. No, The Zone might not want me there – but given how much fun defying it is, I can think of no place I'd rather be dying at come launch.
Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl launches on November 20 for Xbox Series X and PC. To pass the time, check out the best shooters you can play until then.
