S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2 – a janky but enjoyable experience in the Zone
Welcome to the post-apocalyptic world of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart Of Chornobyl, where everything including your framerate is trying to kill you.
Enter a world full of ruined settlements, creepy bunkers and sewers, and radioactive forests complemented by a dynamic weather system that brings out the best (and the worst) of a beautifully detailed game environment.
You play as Skif, an ex-military from the Mainland – basically the safe area outside of Chornobyl.
One day, an artefact – one of the many magical items from the Zone – comes crashing into your apartment, causing you to venture into the Zone to figure out how it ended up there.
You soon find yourself stuck in Chornobyl, with faction wars, savage mutants and even the land itself trying to end you.
Getting into the game, it struck me how many different ways the game tries to kill you.
As I explored the Zone, I encountered Anomalies, essentially unnatural disasters that can take the form of lightning on the ground, patches of toxic waste, or my favourite, a massive bubble that turns you inside out.
While you do get a device and some bolts to throw at Anomalies in order to figure out where not to set, my oblivious self often wandered right into them, resulting in some frustrating restarts.
As for Skif, it is some tough work trying to keep him alive. Apart from the untold horrors trying to turn him into kebab, he needs to eat semi-regularly, hydrate with water and energy drinks to regain stamina, and after all that, can die in a few gunshots.
This fragility does make combat intense and I do love the gunplay in Stalker 2. Hastily exchanging gunshots and the odd grenade with enemy stalkers do make for some satisfying gunfights.
As a self-certified loot goblin, I had a blast scurrying through ruins and sewers, with my desire for a bigger gun overpowering my fear of creepy tunnels where there was definitely something there that would kill you.
I did enjoy the weapon customisation, being able to tailor my gun to my needs and whatever the Zone is going to throw at me. However, I was mostly saving up Coupons, the Zone’s currency, to buy ammo rather than upgrades, due to the strange scarcity of ammunition in Chornobyl.
It isn’t all sunny (or rainy) in the Zone – I suffered massive frame drops during my playthroughs. At times, the game was reduced to little more than a slideshow, leaving me bemused after simply trying to climb a ladder.
At times, cutscenes did have some visual bugs, sometimes grass outside clipping through the wall, a disembodied voice instead of a person speaking to you and the usual the framerate simply evaporates, leaving you with little more than an audio recording.
I also felt that weapons and gear broke too easily, and looted weapons were often in such an abysmal state I had to repair them before selling to the vendor, barely making a profit.
Despite this, I still found the game enjoyable, wandering around the massive map admiring the gorgeously atmospheric world and the intense fights for survival make it a great experience.
Just maybe wait a bit while they buffer out the anomalies in the game, lest your journey into Chornobyl may be cut short by frustration.
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