STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl is the long-awaited sequel to the acclaimed first-person survival video game series developed by GSC Game World. Set in the Exclusion Zone Chernobyl, this game takes players to a post-apocalyptic world full of dangers, deadly anomalies, and powerful artifacts beyond our understanding. The game’s narrative focuses on the fight for survival in a hostile environment, where decisions will influence the course of the story and determine your final destiny.
The best thing about all this is that, within the framework of the Summer Game Fest 2024 which we were proud to cover, we were able to play at length for this long-awaited title that had so many twists and turns in its development. The demo that we were able to access lasted between 45 to 60 minutes, and represents the beginning of the game, specifically everything that makes up the first chapter of the story. It is worth remembering that STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl will leave for PC, Xbox and will be available in Xbox Game Pass from the launch day, this coming September 5.
We are arriving at “the Zone”, that sector that was affected after the accident of Chernobyl and a lot of strange details began to appear, such as anomalies with mysterious electrical discharges, along with monsters and mutants that we will have to eliminate or avoid. Unlike other titles like falloutwhere the nuclear context also marks a before and after, STALKER 2 It has a serious tone. While fallout uses comedy as part of its narrative, this game located in Chernobyl He has a serious character, much more realistic, who dares to touch on political aspects and has a clear tendency towards survival as part of his daily life.
The faction system returns, as well as the fact of exploring and inspecting an immense open world that will be the main protagonist of this title due to everything that the ruins of what was once a city offer, at least in the chapter that we were able to play. To investigate within “the Zone”, we have to use a kind of catalyst that must be constantly recharged with the energy emitted by the anomalies that we find across the map. We, as protagonists, are going to put ourselves in the shoes of one of the stalkerswho are practically adventurers – or looters, as they prefer – who enter the Zone to collect rewards or fulfill different objectives.
These first minutes of the game (between 45 and 60, as we already said) result in a very marked tutorial progress, which is governed by the structure of a fairly delimited corridor where we will have two monstrous mutants to face, two groups of soldiers well armed, and the difficulty applied to the Artificial Intelligence of the enemy characters is extremely noticeable, unlike other demos where it was commented that the actions of the characters responded to a rather poor AI. As if that were not enough, a kind of system of puzzles where the consequence of the radiation and the necessary anomalies will affect our environment and play against us.
With respect to gameplay, STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl It is not a dynamic title but rather it feels tough to crack, the action is not unbridled as in titles with a more arcade tendency, but realism takes over the construction of the mechanics and everything feels heavier, it is not as simple shoot and kill at random everything that moves. We don’t have enough bullets, so we have to think very carefully if we are going to shoot or if we are going to fight hand-to-hand or if we are simply going to escape to avoid the conflict. In any case, the game seeks to have its own balance at times, since reaching the end of the route I was able to find a lot of ammunition that gave rise to a huge and very difficult enemy to defeat, very much in the style resident Evil. Furthermore, the difference between the different types of weapons is very well marked, especially between the lightest and the heaviest, such as the M4 versus an AK47.
The visual aspect is very detailed. The reconstruction of the area, the climates and environments that are generated, the color palette that transports us directly to how this area is recreated in a characteristic way in the different audiovisual productions that we have in mind. We were able to play this demo on PC, with a 4K resolution but as soon as we finished, they made it clear to us that we were playing at an average of 45 FPS. Obviously this is a demo PC, but even so, this particularity was not very noticeable. However, they told us that at the time of its launch this will be completely different, maintaining the visual spectacularity that we could see but with a frame rate Much more polished.
