There's a certain kind of profound confusion STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl inherits from the series' namesake, Andrei Tarkovsky's 1979 film, Stalker. Both are heavily influenced by the 1972 novel Roadside Picnic, 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 irably and ambitiously brings this setting to life in STALKER 2, an open-world, survival-horror immersive sim.

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 STALKER 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 STALKER 2's gameplay. It's here that STALKER 2 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 STALKER 2, one inorganic to the experience and caused by a litany of bugs, its own ambitious systems (or the partial absence thereof), and even its story.

STALKER 2 Is Frequently Brilliant & Endlessly Engaging

Welcome To The Zone, A Hauntingly Beautiful Place

The Zone is exceedingly dangerous, which makes STALKER 2 unforgiving. Especially in the game's opening hours, plenty of mistakes are made and lessons learned. Its immersive sim and survival horror halves work perfectly in tandem to deliver a game that almost singularly revolves around methodical navigation of the Zone. Food, medical supplies, ammo, Artifacts, and intact gear are all in short supply, and all of it has weight, including every single bullet. Deciding to abandon a couple bottles of vodka (a hefty swig is useful for combating the effects of radiation) could mean the difference between life and death if a particularly nimble mutant happens to be encountered.

But that's just the conundrum: what if a particularly nimble mutant isn't encountered? What if I just have to tread carefully between patches of electrified grass, or deftly avoid a handful of serenely bouncing giant bubbles lest they come in with me and explode into clouds of noxious gas, or make quick work of a patrol that mistakenly sees me, a lonely Stalker, as an easy source of loot? My time in the Zone has taught me how to handle all of these things, so maybe I'll risk hobbling slowly for a kilometer and a half so I can sell my bounty to the nearest trader.

There's great satisfaction in the way STALKER 2's systems teach you to be a better Stalker, even if the lesson is often making Skif the Zone's latest victim swiftly and unceremoniously. You could be halfway through the game, well on your way to becoming a legend of the Zone, when a mission takes such an unexpected turn that you're stuck far from the relative safety of a base almost back at square one – running low on ammo, and holding onto worryingly few Medkits.

Even dozens of hours in, STALKER 2 can be surprising. What seems like a fairly straightforward objective to meet up with a squad from one of the Zone's vying factions quickly veers into a psychotropic delve down a massive crevice, culminating in a terrifying close-quarters skirmish against a pack of gas-mask-clad mutants in the pitch-black tunnels they call home. There are also conversely and surprisingly meditative expeditions in STALKER 2, like a long, peaceful trek through calm but pouring rain after a particularly revelatory main mission.

It's unclear if this sequence in the rain was scripted, or if it was a lucky quirk in STALKER 2's A-Life 2.0 simulation (more on that later), but this exact confusion is what makes the game so endearing.

Except when in relatively populous areas, STALKER 2 is singularly intense. It uses the trappings of the survival horror genre well, but it's not necessarily overtly terrifying. Dark, blood-soaked corridors and repulsive monsters are mainstays, but I haven't found myself truly scared, just frequently unnerved. And that hair-raising feeling persists out in the open world as well – the forests, swamps, and derelict Soviet architecture are as eerie as they are picturesque, and there's always the risk you'll stumble upon a brand-new phenomenon. I've caught myself many times saying more explicit versions of "What is happening?" out loud while I play.

STALKER 2's Ambitious Systems Can Sometimes Feel Too Obtuse, Or Not Even Present

A-Life 2.0 Feels Impressive But Also Unwieldy

STALKER 2 is very much its predecessors' sequel in that it's a modernization of STALKER's cult-classic trilogy of shooters, Shadow of Chornobyl, Clear Sky, and Call of Prypiat. Its most consequential system is the latest iteration of the series' proprietary A-Life simulation, which is essentially responsible for making the Zone feel like a contributing member of the game world. Unfortunately, A-Life 2.0 has been stunted for optimization purposes, according to GSC Game World CEO Ievgen Grygorovych in an interview with IGN, and on top of that, it's bugged.

There are times when it's clearly working and not noticeably limited, leading to the aforementioned gauntlets of obstacles. Every jaunt to the next objective is constantly running into another environmental puzzle or encounter. Essentially, there's a radius around the player where NPCs are constantly doing things out of sight, and the occasional eruption of gunfire in the distance shows that A-Life 2.0 is apparently working on some level.

Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainian developer GSC Game World has opted to adopt its native language's Romanization for the series' spellings, retroactively adopting "Chornobyl" and "Prypiat" for the original games.

A-Life 2.0's goal is to ensure that the player isn't the only influence on the Zone. Patrols from rival factions will get into firefights, or start blasting packs of mutants if they've unwittingly approached a lair. Following the sounds of gunfire and staying out of sight until the action is over is a great way to score some easy supplies if you're in dire straits. It can lead to what feels like satisfyingly organic encounters; a couple of times I've had to flee a pack of mutants because my guns are jamming too frequently from low durability, only to be saved by a patrol that happens to be nearby.

There are other times that it feels like you're inadvertently peering behind the proverbial curtain, likely all symptoms of A-Life 2.0's constricted range and/or bugs: hostile NPCs popping up right in front of you, or back-to-back-to-back-to-back encounters because the game is clearly spawning AI in your vicinity to keep things interesting, but now it's starting to seem like you're the only Stalker the Zone knows about. These frustrations are hardly detrimental to the overall experience, though; they're clearly quirks of a system that's trying to do something fascinating, and largely succeeding, even if not at the large scale the developer hoped for.

This is the confusion that feels inorganic to STALKER 2 – unfortunate moments that pierce the simulation, where it's unclear if everything is working as intended. They're particularly noticeable in the game's barely defined faction system. A tooltip will tell you that wanton acts of violence against of a faction will result in kind, but it's often inconsistent or simply unclear as to why NPCs attack Skif.

One particularly odd example resulted from a dust-up with a small group that was trying to shake me down for some Coupons, the Zone's de facto currency. The conversation turned to violence, and I was later told by their faction leader to watch my step, as further transgressions would make me persona non grata. I figured I'd let bygones be bygones, since said leader was involved in a quest, but when I returned from the errand he sent me on, the rank and file opened fire on me anyway.

Funnily enough, this criticism is minimized by STALKER 2's framework itself – who's to say this wasn't merely a consequence of the Zone, a place almost entirely inhabited by people with deep psychological trauma, both preexisting and inflicted by their current surroundings. The Zone is unknowable, and so are the bizarre people who decide (or are compelled) to call it home. There are certainly more confounding things to encounter than a power-grabbing gang leader who decided, "actually, I lied, let's kill that Stalker when he comes back."

A Sprawling, But Often Scattered Narrative Holds STALKER 2 Together

The Fate Of The Zone Is Unsurprisingly Hanging In The Balance

The main story is not necessarily the star of STALKER 2, but that doesn't mean it's not compelling. It's exceptionally interesting at a base level; the Zone once again shines, and by virtue of having a fascinating setting, STALKER 2 remains interesting as Skif pulls on its many dangling threads. STALKER 2 attempts to wrangle a whirlwind of eccentrics and anomalies with varying degrees of success. Most of the game is spent traversing the Zone and dealing with the dangers that accompany that endeavor, so story beats often feel like they spark, burn brightly, then fade quickly back into the background.

What results is often some unwelcome confusion about what the overarching goal of a main mission is. One objective could be several kilometers from its preceding one – and fast travel is exceedingly limited, which isn't necessarily a bad thing given how engaging the moment-to-moment gameplay is – and just because of STALKER 2's nature, it's easy to get waylaid by all sorts of happenings along the way. I often found myself creeping through mutant-infested ruins looking for... something: some piece of tech whose exact purpose or significance I wouldn't have been able to name before finding it, whereupon there's an, "Aha, now I ," moment as the relevant conversations pick back up.

This is partly because STALKER 2 is simply a very long game, whose seemingly urgent stakes can sometimes feel in conflict with its open-world, methodical gameplay. The biggest hindrance to the story is its insistence on capping big moments with truly irritating boss fights. A vast majority of the game rewards you for smartly using your resources, but too many times narrative crescendos lead to rooms with a suspicious surplus of ammo, prelude to bullet-sponge bosses who fail to introduce any sort of compelling twist on STALKER 2's otherwise excellent gameplay.

Luckily, these are overshadowed by the game's production value and branching narrative. When NPC models aren't bugged out, their cutscene animations are quite delightful, and the writing itself often broaches philosophical overtures worthy of STALKER 2's inspirations. Major choices throughout can also have significant consequences on how the main quest plays out, altering which characters and factions become Skif's closest allies. It feels as though there is a great deal of consequential player choice, which makes the possibilities of an individual experience quite varied, especially when A-Life 2.0 (at least when it's working) is thrown into the mix.

STALKER 2 Is Buggy & Slightly Unoptimized, But Already Getting Better

Pre-Release Patches Are Making Strides

Bugs are par for the course with STALKER games, but I will preface this brief discussion of them with this: STALKER 2 looks great and runs irably on the Xbox Series X, and even though I have encountered plenty of bugs, they've been so minor and the game so compelling that it's very easy to look past these technical issues. I have not encountered a single issue that couldn't be resolved by saving on the spot and immediately reloading that save.

The biggest marks on STALKER 2's general performance seem to be inconsistent frame pacing in Performance mode (though it seems to hover relatively close to its 60fps target) and frequent, noticeable pop-in. Other issues are more comical: two NPCs using the same chair, a character scooting closer to the fixed conversation camera every time they utter a new line (see the image above), a person's head turning 180 degrees while you're talking to them, enemies shooting at you while they're up to their chest in the ground's geometry, etc.

GSC Game World seems to be on top of these issues already, though. A massive pre-release patch for the Xbox version (roughly 139 GB) has seemingly improved performance and fixed some bugs, and the game is already confirmed to be receiving significant post-launch , including story expansions and a multiplayer mode, which will all presumably (hopefully) come alongside greater optimization. More importantly, A-Life 2.0 will go through further optimization, which hopefully means the game becomes even more engaging.

Final Thoughts & Review Score

A 9/10 For STALKER 2

STALKER 2 is massive and dense, with developers noting a complete playthrough could take 100 hours, if not more. Simply exploring the Zone in STALKER 2 is a delight, even if it is an anomalous hellscape. The moment-to-moment action and the game's UI may feel a bit cumbersome at times, but it's far from the so-called "Eurojank" that the original STALKER trilogy is often a paragon of. The combination of STALKER 2's myriad quests, interesting locales, and unpredictability via A-Life 2.0 make the game constantly engaging, like being led by an exceptionally sophisticated carrot-and-stick.

A decent amount of side content feels almost compulsory to be prepared for the dangers that lurk deeper in the Zone. GSC Game World estimates the story can be mainlined in roughly 40 hours.

In the best way possible, STALKER 2 delves into the drudgery of surviving in a place that's intrinsically incompatible with human life. Immersive sim elements reign, often reducing your pace to an entrancing crawl through the Zone. The 15-year wait for STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl paid off; it's unique and confusing like its predecessors, but poised to become more than another cult classic.

A digital code for Xbox Series X/S was provided to Screen Rant for the purpose of this review. This review was initially published as an unscored "Review In Progress" and has now been updated to include final thoughts and score.