Summary
- Shadow of Chornobyl outperforms Heart of Chornobyl in performance, with fewer bugs and better stability.
- Heart of Chornobyl wins in immersion, boasting detailed visuals and realistic gameplay elements.
- Heart of Chornobyl excels in graphics, utilizing Unreal Engine 5 for stunning visuals, leaving older Shadow of Chornobyl behind.
Before 2024’s Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl shook up the gaming year with one million copies sold in 48 hours, fans had endured a long wait. It took a decade and a half for the much-loved series to receive a new entry: the previous game, Call of Pripyat, came out in 2009.
There is a 17-year gap between the original game and Heart of Chornobyl, so with nearly two decades of technological advancement on its side, Heart of Chornobyl has the upper hand. But is it really better than 2007’s Shadow of Chornobyl? Is the classic still the best one? Let’s find out.
8
Performance
Winner – Shadow Of Chornobyl
In a perfect world, it would be inconceivable for an older title to perform better than a newer one. But this is not a perfect world. Shadow of Chornobyl was a fairly buggy game in its own right, running on the X-Ray Engine and a prayer. It is often cited as an example of ‘Slavjank’ in the FPS community. But it functions in the present day.
Despite being a much flashier title, Heart of Chornobyl suffers from game-breaking bugs up the wazoo. You can lose progress just because a side character decided to wander into an irradiated slag heap and die.
Heart of Chornobyl also suffers from myriad issues regarding its shader compilation at the start of the game, and drops frames in towns. A game that looks this good shouldn’t feel this buggy. Shadow of Chornobyl, for all its flaws, performs better and has fewer bugs to mar your enjoyment.
7
Immersion
Winner – Heart Of Chornobyl
The clear winner when it comes to immersion is Heart of Chornobyl. Not only is it the most detailed game in the Stalker series, but it’s one of the most immersive first-person shooters on the market as a whole.
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This is a game that wants you to know how much work went into it. Gun models are lovingly crafted. Reload animations are brilliantly accurate. The open world is seamless. There’s an animation for nearly every action and countless lines of NPC chatter. Shadow of Chornobyl, 17 years behind in technology, just can’t compete.
6
Graphics
Winner – Heart Of Chornobyl
Shadow of Chornobyl started development in the early 2000s, used an in-house engine, and had a relatively small, unknown development team. Heart of Chornobyl runs on Unreal Engine 5 and ranks highly among its 2024 contemporaries on visual fidelity.
This is hardly a fair contest, but we’ll give Shadow of Chornobyl its due: it looked very good for the time, and it still holds up today. Objectively, Heart of Chornobyl blows it out of the Zone on graphics.
5
Sound
Winner – Heart Of Chornobyl
As with the visual aspect, the sound design in Heart of Chornobyl is top-notch. The game’s audio is well-mixed, the Ukrainian dub is excellent, and the English dub is decent – though for some odd reason, everyone speaks with a British accent.
Music is equal parts stirring and intriguing, with radios in bars across the Zone playing local tracks. Subtitles also make the game more accessible for hearing-impared players. Shadow of Chornobyl did very well for its time, but once again, this is a case where the march of time turns against it.
4
Story
Winner – Shadow Of Chornobyl
In a surprising twist of fate, Shadow of Chornobyl handily overtakes Heart of Chornobyl in terms of story. For all its expansiveness, the plot in Heart of Chornobyl feels unfocused. The factions feel undefined, and there is the constant feeling that the plot is secondary to the series’ trademark gameplay.
The new protagonist, Skif, is simply an expy of his predecessors Strelok, Scar and Strider. All three of those characters make appearances too, for reasons that feel more fanservice-oriented than is appropriate for the story. Shadow of Chornobyl had a far more focused plot with its Wish Granter, giver of shocking endings.
3
Gameplay
Winner – Shadow Of Chornobyl
Shadow of Chornobyl is a survival game that knows it’s just a passable FPS. It plays to its strength by focusing on the immersive sim aspects and not having too much combat until the ending section, because it isn’t Call of Duty and was never trying to be.
Heart of Chornobyl can’t quite decide what it wants to be: is it a horror game? The mutants feel far too inconsequential for that. Is it a survival game? It sure is a very cumbersome one, where the problem isn’t having enough bandages but having to sit through the animation to apply them every time. Is it a first-person shooter? Kinda. It’s a very beautiful game, but the gameplay is middling at best.
2
Mods
Winner – Shadow Of Chornobyl
Here is one manner where the passage of time has suited the older game. Shadow of Chornobyl has been a beloved game for so long that it’s amassed a wealth of mods.
It’s actually a bit moving to visit Nexus Mods and see how much love the game’s audience has for it: there are countless mods for improving the game’s visuals, gameplay mods so that you can play the game the way you believe it should be played, and just downright funny conversion mods (the above image is from Girly SoC, which makes everyone in the Zone female).
Heart of Chornobyl also has a modding scene. One that’s mostly dedicated to fixing the game’s myriad bugs. Doubtless it will amass its own notable mods in time – it’s an Unreal Engine game – but for now, Shadow of Chornobyl is where it’s at.
1
Verdict
Winner – Shadow of Chornobyl
It is a miracle that Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl got made at all. It is a miracle that, in the midst of harsh real-life circumstances, GSC Game World was able to make such a massive game that can compete with any other triple-A title from 2024. After all the delays and hardships endured by the team, the game’s success is well-deserved.
But there can only be one game that will forever be the classic, and that game is Shadow of Chornobyl. Neither Clear Skies nor Call of Pripyat could outdo it, and Heart of Chornobyl fell short too. Luckily, the game is now available on modern consoles as well as PC, so you can come and see why this game’s fanbase holds it so dear.
- Platform(s)
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Xbox Series X and Series S
, Microsoft Windows - Released
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2024-00-00
- Developer(s)
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GSC Game World
- Publisher(s)
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GSC Game World
- Engine
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Unreal Engine 5
- ESRB
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