The demo made available by the Ukrainian development team takes place in the very early stages of the game and sees the protagonist of the game awakening while a particularly ferocious dog is pounced on him without particular kindness. Not with little difficulty, our alter-ego manages to shake off the beast and knock it down, before his attention is drawn to the voice of another character, who kindly points out that we are surrounded by a series of radioactive anomalies. For those who have not played the first chapter of the saga, these are particularly dangerous or harmful alterations to health generated following the second nuclear accident that occurred near the city in the fictional reality proposed by the development team based on the cinematographic work by Andrei Tarkovsky. However, this mysterious NPC offers us valuable help, in the form of a simple bolt. An apparently useless object, but which if thrown towards one of the anomalies could make it inactive for a few seconds, providing the protagonist with an escape route.
MX Video – S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl
Not having many other alternatives, I decide to follow his suggestion, so as to get far enough away from the danger zone. From this moment the real playable section of the demo kicks off which, in the approximately 15/20 minutes made available by the developers, saw me exchange a few words with my savior before heading towards a city located nearby. I march to my destination, passing through a breach in the wall to find myself outside a visibly abandoned structure. Before proceeding further, I review the equipment available and discover that I have a decent arsenal, albeit with very little ammunition: a knife, a pistol, an automatic rifle, a shotgun, a couple of grenades and even a couple of healing consumables , such as bandages and medkits.
I decide to explore the inside of the structure a bit, without however finding anything particularly interesting except the corpse of a soldier, from which I recover some extra ammunition and a second pistol. I go back outside and finally start walking in the direction of my goal, clearly indicated by an orange icon in the compass located at the top of the UI. After a very short time, however, my attention is captured by the barks of some dogs, mixed with the cries of a person and some shots from a gun. I turn my gaze in the direction of the sounds and in the distance I see a soldier intent on defending himself from a pack of dogs similar to the one that was trying to make me a party just a few minutes before. I crouch down and observe the scene, trying to figure out if the person is an enemy or a possible ally. Since I don’t have much information on the matter, I decide to intervene to help him but without letting my guard down. I start firing my pistol at the dogs, who immediately turn their attention to me. Some start circling me while others attack me head-on, dealing quite a bit of damage.
I decide not to pay too much attention to subtlety and take up the shotgun, with which I can easily get the better of all the creatures that face me head-on. However, the last specimen of the pack keeps its distance, forcing me to switch to the automatic rifle to finally clean up the area. The soldier I helped is now no longer in sight, but I hear a voice coming from inside a cottage located a few meters away. I head confidently, ending up being hit by a point-blank burst as soon as I cross the entrance threshold of the structure. Died. It’s definitely not an ally. I reload the previous save and decide to let the dogs deal with the enemy, intervening only at the end to finish him off and the surviving dogs. I clear the area, collect some ammo and continue in the direction of the objective until I come across a new structure, which looks like a warehouse or something similar. Inside I find a patrol of soldiers in the same uniform as the one I just faced, suggesting they can never be my allies.
I take up my trusty automatic rifle and start facing them head on, firing short bursts as I move from cover to cover. A short-sighted choice. STALKER 2, just like its predecessor, is in fact proposed as a tactical shooter, in which contemptuously facing groups of enemies alone almost never leads to a positive outcome due to the constant numerical inferiority combined with the amount of damage caused by each single hit immediately. In a few moments I therefore end up succumbing, finding myself again in front of the game over screen. I load the save and opt for a more stealthy approach, using as much as possible the shelters in the external area to take down some of the enemies present before being discovered. The firefight that ensues is immediately more within my reach, but still not easy. A close burst forces me to fall back towards the farmhouse visited previously, while the surviving soldiers chase me relentlessly. I find shelter inside the structure and try to hit the attackers by briefly leaning out of one of the doors present, to shoot precise bursts myself and season it all with the launch of a few grenades.
The tactic works and I manage to get the better of it, but I also collect a lot of damage which forces me to resort to both one of the medikits available and some bandages to return to a reasonable level of health. I return to the depot and, on the way, I browse the corpses of downed enemies to recover ammunition, weapons and consumables, but end up getting stuck due to exceeding the maximum transportable weight limit. In order to move, I necessarily have to leave something on the ground: after a brief discussion, I decide to abandon all the extra guns collected and some food, so as not to have to give up ammunition, treatments or grenades. Once this phase is over, I dedicate myself to exploring the deposit, from which, however, I collect practically nothing of use. I get back on the road and set off again towards the city, which after a small descent materializes in front of me in a traditional network of roofs, streets and buildings of various sizes. Meanwhile, the sky in the background begins to cloud over and turn red, suggesting the arrival of a new and powerful anomaly.
I decide to risk everything and start running along the path to my right, to then take the first useful road and reach my goal, an underground refuge, just as the anomaly begins to manifest all its destructive violence in the form of lightning and gusts of wind. I’m safe…or maybe not. The door is in fact closed and there don’t seem to be many other options available to me, but just when all seems lost a masked figure opens the door and drags me inside. End of the demo, but not of the time available to me. One of the developers of GSC Game World informs me that I have indeed reached the end point of the demo, but that I can use the remaining time to explore a little more the portion of the game available for the test, which included a couple more buildings and some extra fights with other soldiers or dogs made particularly aggressive by radiation.
Nothing particularly different from what has been played up to that moment, but still useful for getting a clearer idea about some of the fundamental aspects of the gameplay. Although a test in the genre is not particularly significant, the demo showcased the software house’s willingness to once again offer a gaming experience halfway between survival and tactical shooter, all within a freely explorable world by the player. The feeling of the weapons with mouse and keyboard seemed good to me (unfortunately it was not possible to play with a controller), as well as the general atmosphere and the feeling of actually being alone in a “contaminated area”. The difficulty seemed high enough to me, but the impression is only that you need to play a little more to better familiarize yourself with the peculiarities of the gameplay. The presence of various accessories then suggests that the game wants to focus a lot on the customization of the equipment, an element that unfortunately it was not possible to test at this stage but which should make the whole experience even more customizable. The sensations regarding the technical sector were decidedly different, from which I personally expected something more. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl in fact, it exploits the UE5 and, since its first appearance, it has showcased a very high-level graphic presentation, of which unfortunately we have not found a trace in the demo made available for the test.
Nothing we’ve seen comes even remotely close to what has been shown not only in the past but also in the latest trailers, both in terms of graphic quality and in terms of general cleanliness, texture definition, animation realism and AI management. , once the test is over, is that of having played a decidedly immature version (perhaps an alpha) absolutely unfinished, put together with the main intention of demonstrating to everyone that the game is real and is currently in development despite the unimaginable adversities that the Ukrainian team had to face and overcome in the last 18 months. In this sense, the presence of the team and a build at gamescom undoubtedly represent a positive signal, which we hope will be followed by other more concrete ones in the coming months that will allow a more faithful assessment of the potential of the title that can only be glimpsed below a general presentation that I will limit myself to defining “very rough” from all points of view.
No wonder then that the launch of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl is now scheduled for 2024. From what has been tested, it is in fact evident that GSC Game World still needs a lot of time not only to finish the development of the game, but also (and above all) to refine the experience in a way appropriate to the capabilities of a team that, albeit with many limitations, has already shown that it can do much better than this. The hope is not to have to wait much longer to get your hands on the title and, perhaps, to be able to try a more advanced demo of the title in the near future capable of making us understand if the new chapter can really be the worthy successor of one shooter that, net of the undeniable defects, has somehow been able to leave its mark in the hearts of all fans of the genre.