There are dozens of first-person shooters vying for your attention in 2025, from competitive live service titles to violent power fantasies that harken back to the genre’s earliest days, but few hit quite like GSC Game World’s flawed masterpiece, Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl. It takes aspects common to modern open-world games, like exploration and tense firefights, then turns the intensity all the way up, creating the bleak but compelling feeling that you’re surviving by the skin of your teeth. Now that Stalker 2 finally hit the PlayStation 5, it’s the perfect time to jump in.
As the name suggests, Stalker 2 is a sequel to the 2007 cult classic Stalker: Shadow of Chornobyl. Loosely based on Arkady and Boris Strugatsky’s science fiction novel Roadside Picnic (and the 1979 Andre Tarkovsky film adaptation, Stalker), these games are about surviving the harsh aftermath of a second, fictional Chornobyl crisis. You play as a Stalker, someone who explores the deadly Exclusion Zone in the hope of finding monetary gain.
