STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl makes a hell of a primary impression – the opening moments see your player-character, Skif sprawled throughout the ground of a rad-blasted forest, trying down, and seeing a mutant canine chewing on their leg. Cue a panic, a jammed gun, and the canine being fortuitously picked up by a close-by atmospheric anomaly and, properly, exploding. Like I mentioned, hell of a primary impression.
This long-awaited sequel to the cult basic first-person immersive shooter collection is clearly aiming to seize consideration from the off – and getting the likelihood to go hands-on with this primary ever playable construct at gamescom exhibits that off in additional methods than one.
The most stunning aspect for a showfloor demo is the freedom you’re supplied. Developer GSC Game World makes clear that this can be a tiny slice of an unlimited recreation, and nonetheless work-in-progress, however barring a brief scene-setting dialog with a mysterious stranger – who directs us to talk to some locals – the demo makes no calls for of you to do something apart from discover. It’s a transparent marker of the recreation as a complete, a world that provides you selections from the starting, and the alternatives to make them the way you’d like.
Those selections hang-out me from the starting – I creep via a body-strewn checkpoint, looting what I can, earlier than reaching a shack surrounded by canines. Suddenly, I see a determine emerge toting a weapon – and I instantly open fireplace. Little do I do know that I’m taking down the locals I’ve been directed to, merely defending themselves from the similar canines I might be in the aftermath. Admirably, the recreation doesn’t give me a fail state for this – I made my (hasty) alternative and I must pay the penalties for that. I lose the skill to complete a sidequest – however the additional loot I achieve doesn’t go unnoticed.
Gunplay is fast and brutal – weapons don’t a lot fireplace as hammer, with a definite kick to even the smallest pistol. I encounter a camp of enemy bandits who assault on sight, and tear via them briefly order – however must make liberal use of my very own medkits due to the sheer quantity of injury they deal themselves, and a few artful AI that sees a few of the pack flank me whereas others hunker down behind partitions and automobiles to attract fireplace. The lesson right here is evident: be ready, be good, and be ruthless.
Along the means, GSC Game World makes clear the energy of Unreal Engine 5, imbuing magnificence to a distinctly nasty world – The Zone (the identify given to this different Earth’s post-nuclear Chornobyl Exclusion Zone) is filled with element: deserted buildings lower via with low, wintry gentle; threadbare forests damaged up by oily, shimmering bubbles of warped actuality; and pockets of quiet humanity being scratched out in the wilderness.
Eventually, I make my means in the direction of one other goal: looking for an area village, Zalissya. Just as I attain it, nonetheless, I hear an area radio broadcast saying an imminent ‘Emission’ – I shortly discover out what which means as the wind picks up, the sky turns blood pink, and lightning begins pelting the floor. I rush to the entrance of a fallout shelter, and see a remaining cutscene play out – a masked determine emerges from the door and pulls my soon-to-be unconscious character inside in the nick of time.
It’s a neat nearer on that first impression – STALKER 2 is aiming for participant freedom, set between blockbuster moments, all whereas retaining the chilly brutality and tantalizing thriller of the unique video games. It’ll be fascinating to see what different horrors and discoveries The Zone holds relating to Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC (with Xbox Game Pass and PC Game Pass).
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