STALKER 2: Heart Of Chornobyl - Review In Progress

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There's a certain kind of profound confusion inherits from the series' namesake, Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film,. Both are heavily influenced by the 1972 novel, by the Strugatsky brothers. Despite and in light of their many differences and similarities, all three share one important facet: the Zone, a setting fundamentally incomprehensible to the human mind. Developer GSC Game World admirably and ambitiously brings this setting to life in, an open-world, survival-horror immersive sim.

Experiencing everything has to offer can take 100 hours. With this in mind, is publishing this article as an unscored Review In Progress. The review will be updated — and a score added — when our reviewer has spent more time with the game.

You play as Skif, who is drawn to the Zone because it practically requested his presence by mysteriously destroying his house with an Artifact, a fist-sized, anomalous object that has lost its reality-warping powers precisely because it is now located outside the Zone. Seeking a way to restore the Artifact's power, Skif ultimately begins the life of a Stalker, a title given to eclectic loners who broadly seek personal enrichment via the Zone's mysteries, whether that be monetarily or spiritually. In the universe, the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone suffered a second disaster in 2006, mutating all life within and manifesting an untold number of physical, meteorological, and geological phenomena.

The Zone is consequently a more important character than even Skif, the protagonist, as it dictates not only the narrative, but also 's gameplay. It's here that delivers its inherited and satisfying confusion, constantly conjuring new, baffling scenarios. It's a survival game where it's impossible to predict the next hurdle, made brutally frantic by strict and engaging immersive sim elements. Unfortunately, there's another kind of confusion that occasionally seeps into, one inorganic to the experience and caused by not only a litany of bugs, but also its own ambitious