STALKER 2’s solid gunplay picks up a lot of the slack in its combat’s faults. Whipping around a decked-out assault rifle with a nice red dot sight to make headshots easy, or pumping shells into a mutant from a fully modded shotgun and slowing its charge with their impact had me looking forward to those high-stakes, kill-or-be-killed situations.

STALKER 2: Heart of Chornobyl is a lengthy game, with players potentially spending hundreds of hours exploring everything it offers. However, if you're solely focused on the main story and aren't interested in side content, you'll finish much earlier — though not too quickly.

Forged in adversity, this Ukrainian-developed shooter delivers a beautiful open-world survival-shooter like no other.