STALKER 2 Recaptures the Tense and Awkward Soul of the Cult Series | gamescom 2023

ign.com:

It has been 16 years since STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. That means it’s also been 16 years since I last played a STALKER game. I admired the original but never loved its wonky, ambitious heart enough to explore its two follow-ups. But despite that decade-plus time away from the series, when I sat down to play STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl at gamescom 2023 it felt like I’d never been away. As if reactivating a long-dormant muscle, I found its creeping pace and scrappy gunfights instantly familiar. That’s good news for devout fans of the cult PC series, but perhaps more of a challenge for the potential legion of newcomers that will arrive at launch via Game Pass.

Despite its Unreal Engine 5 base and prominent Microsoft support, the fifteen-minute gamescom demo suggests that STALKER 2 still sits in the ‘eurojank’ category; the colloquial term for eastern European games that are overly ambitious and technically wobbly. This sequel’s animations are stiff, its human faces look like haunted waxworks, the AI struggles to stay smart, and inventory management is fiddly. But in exchange for that you get a Soviet bloc world that feels authentic and layered with opportunity. This demo may have been short, but its small areas featured numerous angles for stealth or action approaches, fun flanking routes, and a variety of side objectives.

My sample misadventure through the rusted carcass that is the Chornobyl Exclusion Zone begins with a rabid dog mauling away at my ankles. The mutt is dispatched by kicking it into an anomaly; the rippling miniature storms that litter STALKER’s world. The dog explodes into a dozen gory chunks, demonstrating that these anomalies are to be steered well clear of. I’m also given some bolts, which can be