S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart Of Chornobyl Review

The Zone Has Never Been Better

HIGH The Zone feels more lived in and alive than ever, with a completely seamless world.

LOW Long load times and stilted voice delivery detracted from the experience.

WTF Burers are deadlier now!? C’MON!!

Earlier this year, I got to experience the Zone for the first time. While I largely enjoyed my adventures there, I was left wanting more. So, I was excited to have a chance to return with the PS5 port of S.T.A.L.K.E.R.‘s sequel, Heart of Chornobyl. I was anxious to see how things had changed since the end of Call of Prypiat, and along with bug fixes, excellent DualSense functionality and new additions to the world, the Zone felt more alive and deadlier than I expected.

Set in the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone of Ukraine, S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2: Heart of Chornobyl is an open-world survival first-person shooter with horror and RPG elements. As the rookie stalker Skif, I found myself exploring the area’s dangerous locales while unraveling the mysteries of why Skif’s home was destroyed by an artifact of the Zone, despite living well outside it.

I truly fell in love with this dangerous and radioactive world, as it felt real and lived-in. The new details are gorgeous, with more natural-looking outdoor areas lush with vegetation. Non-mutated critters, such as lizards, frogs, birds, fish, and butterflies, carried on as if nothing had ever happened. Abandoned houses were in varying states of decay, as time, and especially the Zone itself, took its toll everywhere. The new weather effects were also wonderful. Lightning could strike near me — or even hit me — during storms, and rainbows appeared in the distance during light rainfall.

Not all locations were beautiful or inviting, though, and they sometimes necessitated a tactical approach. As such, stealth is improved from the previous titles, with more satisfying ways to hide or take down threats silently. I could use my knife to do a covert kill, the new night vision goggles helped me skulk about in total darkness, and bolts could be used to distract human foes. I also had a better sense of how aware human enemies were of me. Likewise, I could also use cover such as walls and reeds (as of the 1.7 update) to break line-of-sight or to pass by undetected.

In addition to these techniques, there are now plenty of new threats in the Zone. New anomalies, such as the mine-like Flashbang, could rip me apart quickly, and new arch-anomalies, such as a poppy field that causes unwitting stalkers to become catatonic, were a beautiful addition to many areas. Learning to deal with all of them in their own way meant that there was no shortage of gameplay puzzles to enjoy figuring out.

New and terrifying mutants also made my treks a potential nightmare, such as rat swarms that could tear me into pieces, or an armored elk that calls on other mutants to help it. My favorite, though, was the incredibly crafty Bayun — a mutated cat that was great at disorienting me by perfectly mimicking human speech. Even older enemies have had their behaviors changed, meaning that caution must always be taken, even when dealing with that appear to be familiar threats. All stalkers should be on their guard.

While its friction and difficulty may be offputting to some, I liked that nothing was being held back. Life in the Zone is hard, and the difficulty is meant to reflect that. Thankfully, Heart of Chornobyl gives a ton of agency in how to approach nearly any situation — use the new techniques, fight it out, or try and resolve things peacefully with NPCs. I never felt like I didn’t have options.

In terms of narrative, the script’s branching story paths — things like withholding information from one group, or backing another — made progression feel natural and sometimes provided additional side quests and info about the Zone’s legends. Seeing what consequences unraveled from pulling these threads made me want to replay the campaign to see what would happen if I made different decisions.

The PS5 release (reviewed here) came with the 1.7 version update that features a year’s worth of bug fixes and updated content. This includes a “master” difficulty for players who want to test their skills. There’s also an “immersive mode” that allows for perfect screenshots. In addition, performance mode on an original PS5 looked and played well. While there were a few frame dips (mostly in densely populated areas and Prypiat), S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2 ran excellently. So, while the initial launch may have initially been plagued by issues, the updates that Heart of Chornobyl received seems to have resolved many of the bigger problems. The PS5 version also comes with a host of excellent features, such as motion controls, haptic feedback, controller speaker functionality, and performance/quality mode toggles.

However, while these additions are great, some aspects of the adventure still need some extra T.L.C. For example, the incredibly long save file load times could take upwards of a minute, and in difficult combat sections that took me down, I could be staring at this screen at least a few times.

There were also some visual oddities, but thankfully these were mostly harmless. In one instance, a bartender NPC bent over so much that he clipped through his counter. Other things cropped up, like soft shadows in performance mode (though not in quality mode) and some fuzzy lighting.

I also encountered many instances of stilted English voice delivery, which sometimes sounded like someone reading directly from a script, in addition to pronunciation inconsistencies among the NPCs for some Ukrainian and Russian names. A bit more voice direction and coaching would have gone a long way.

Outside these minor issues, S.T.A.L.K.E.R 2: Heart of Chornobyl is the best entry in the series to date. The Zone feels fully realized, with improved gameplay mechanics and a blend of beauty, horror, and mystique that was irresistible. The engaging story gave me plenty of interesting plot threads to pull at, and allowed me to alter the progression of the story in fascinating ways. The PS5 version has great features, and a year of updates has made HoC better for all players. In my opinion, this is the definitive way for new and veteran stalkers alike to explore the mysteries of the Zone.

Rating: 9 out of 10

Buy S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl – Steam – GOG – Epic – PlayStation – Xbox

Disclosures: This game is developed and published by GSC Game World. It is currently available on XBX/S, PS5, and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via a publisher code, and reviewed on PS5. Approximately 97 hours was devoted to the game, and it was completed. There is no multiplayer mode at this moment, although GSC has been stated that it will be added as a free update at a later date.

Parents: This game has an ESRB rating of M for Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language and Use of Alcohol and Tobacco. The official summary states: “S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is rated M for Mature 17+ by the ESRB with Blood and Gore, Intense Violence, Strong Language, and Use of Alcohol and Tobacco. This is a first-person shooter in which players assume the role of a stalker investigating a mystery in a post-apocalyptic world. Players explore an open-world environment to complete objectives, interact with characters, and engage enemies (e.g., soldiers, mutated creatures) in frenetic firefights. Players use machine guns, rifles, and explosives to kill enemies that emit splatters of blood when shot. Some environments depict bloodstains on walls and large pools of blood underneath corpses. Anomalies in the environment can cause bodies and creatures to explode, resulting in chunks of flesh littering the ground; one sequence depicts decapitated heads on spikes. Players have the ability to kill civilians, though this can result in immediate retaliation from nearby characters; a cutscene depicts a bound man executed at close range. During the course of the game, players’ character can consume alcohol, resulting in screen-blurring effects and the character swaying; one cutscene depicts players’ character smoking a cigarette from a first-person perspective. The word “f**k” is heard in the game.” In addition to this, when Skif has the bleeding status effect, the screen will slowly become covered in streaks of blood.

Colorblind Modes: There are colorblind options for protanopia, deuteranopia, and tritanopia.

Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: The game offers subtitles. Subtitles can be resized and opacity can be applied to subtitle backgrounds. This game is not fully accessible. While there are a lot of options available for players, closed captioning is something S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 could use. For starters, there are many hidden or hard-to-see dangers, such as invisible areas of radiation or hard-to-spot anomalies. The game gives a sound cue from the Geiger counter and anomaly detector, but there are few visual cues (none for initially wandering into irradiated areas) until players are in danger. While radiation does eventually start showing spots (and a radiation meter shows how irradiated you are) having on-screen information for Deaf and/or hard of hearing players would go a long way to help them get early warnings and avoid unnecessary danger before they’re knee-deep in it.

Remappable Controls: No, this game’s controls are not remappable.

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