Barely 20 minutes into a Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl demo a gravity-distorting anomaly orb turned my insides into my outsides. It was my fault, I guess: Following a linear tutorial sequence, the game spat me out into the open world surrounded by the strange orbs, and instead of treating them like deadly hazards, I kept hurling bolts at them and inching as close as possible to their murky exterior to learn what their deal was. Their deal was, evidently, “Stay the hell away from me or you're dead,” which turned out to be universal advice for playing Stalker 2.

The best thing going for Stalker 2 is how weird it is. It's far less structured and “triple-A videogamey” than games I expected it to resemble like Far Cry or Metro Exodus. There are parallels—open world maps with compounds you can approach from any direction—but where Far Cry leans into the player's role as an apex predator, I spent most of my Stalker 2 time running away from monsters that would literally eat me.  

Then there's Stalker 2's map: the expansive “Chornobyl Exclusion Zone” with a scattered population of horrific mutants and organized factions seeking their treasure. It's an interesting detail about the Stalker universe I'd never picked up on in years of hearing about these games, but never playing them: This ain't no post-apocalypse. Stalkers can come and go as they please, which made it all the more surprising when I made it to a town full of people who choose to live 100 meters from a road where pillars of fire occasionally erupt from the ground.

After meeting the locals, buying an extra magazine of AK ammo, and stocking up on bread, side jobs started rolling in from every direction and I immediately forgot about the main story. There's always work for a stalker, apparently. In one job, I was collecting a debt from a guy on behalf of a vendor, but when I showed up where he was staying, another gang he'd borrowed from were already there waiting for him to come out. They let me talk some sense into the guy, who told me I'd find what I was looking for at the top of a nearby water tower. The only thing at the top of the tower was a sniper rifle, so I took the hint and shot all the bandits instead of cutting a deal.

Job security

That job established a formula that carried into other quests: I'd find a guy, then either shoot some guys or make a choice to dip out before things get ugly. In a larger multi-step quest, I tracked down a missing soldier to a house in the middle of nowhere. The soldier had died, but I met a member of the Monolith—a cult of Zone worshippers—who'd tried to save him.

Context clues told me everyone else thought these guys are bad news (I found out later that the Monolith are frequent antagonists in the series), but he treated me nicely, so when a gang of stalkers showed up to kill the Monolith soldier and he recommended I sneak out the back, I helped him out instead. Barely an hour into my Stalker 2 career and I was already jumping into bed with a cult of fanatics. I was a little bummed when that choice had no noticeable consequences. When I told the quest-giver the news back in town, he was a little confused that I buddied up with a cultist, but agreed I'd completed the job all the same.

It speaks to an impression I'm getting of the Stalker 2 experience after a few hours wandering the Zone: Stalker 2 is difficult, but it's surprisingly straightforward. Once you know how anomalies work, avoiding them is so simple that I stopped worrying about them. I had a few close scrapes with bandits that shouldn't have gone my way, but the game lets you spam medkits fast enough that I felt unkillable as long as I had some on-hand. Same for Stalker 2's light survival systems: There's a stamina gauge that slowed me down when it got low, but I always had plenty of snacks on hand to quickly replenish it. There are milsim elements here, like loading/unloading magazines to loot extra ammo, but this is not a game where you need to craft splints for a broken leg or find sources of fresh water. Though I kinda wish it was, because I got a little bored by hour two.

Off track

I was let down by exploration: Quest markers point exactly where to go, a personal bugbear I've developed with open world games when it's usually more fun to interpret directions than follow a GPS. I usually like to take the long way around in open world games, hitting up points of interest along the way, but sticking to roads in Stalker 2 was apparently signing up for hard mode. Bandits loved to spawn in the trees for a quick ambush every few minutes. It got so bad that I was burning through most of my ammo before I would get to the quest where I'd have to fight more stuff as soon as I get there—a nasty cycle. So I ditched the road-less-traveled approach and walked in straight lines from where quests started to where they ended, ducking behind trees after every unfamiliar noise and hoping I wouldn't attract packs of mutant dogs along the way.  

The rising tension of conserving ammo over long stretches and trying to sneak around unnecessary fights adds to Stalker 2's horror, but I wish the game would chill out sometimes and let me exhale. Maybe this is antithetical to the DNA of Stalker, but I don't want to fight or go full stealth mode every 90 seconds like I'm in Escape From Tarkov.

My Stalker 2 demo wasn't very moving, but I don't think a few hours of playtime was long enough to eke out its best qualities. I struggled to find a groove in gunfights or get comfortable conserving ammo when it often took three rifle headshots to kill a single bandit. But I was also rolling with presumably the worst gear in the game, so I'm sure that power curve improves. I was too dirt poor to afford a gun that didn't jam or to even buy more than the most basic armor from the town technician. I also didn't get my hands on many artifacts—freaky little rocks that boost attributes when equipped.

What I'm sure of is that Stalker 2 is fully embracing its dangerous setting. The Zone will happily chew you up and spit you back out if you don't tackle every mission with a plan. I'll come up with a better one when I dive into the full game on November 20.