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Stalker 2 Is Secretly A Cozy Game In Disguise

By 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Sam Hallahan

Published May 30, 2025

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After a long day of work, 🎉video games can be a wonderful way to relax. You could drive around gorgeous landscapes endlessly with some music on. You could go fishing in the most remote mountains. You could organise some furniture to create your dream home.

Or - hear me out - you could endure the living and non🅘-living terrors of a supernaturally mutated landscape, right in th🃏e Heart of Chornobyl. Perfect.

Stalker 2 Might Actually Be A Cozy Game

Stalker 2: Heart Of Chornobyl - Strelok on a rooftop admiring the view of pripyat.

I never did play the original Stalker, but I loved the notably similar 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Metro: Exodus, so when I was looking for a game to get stuck into recently, 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Stalker 2: Heart of Chornobyl caught my attention. An open-world game about surviving 🍎the Zone, made up of several areas that have been overrun with radiation, anomalies, and mutants, and is notoriously brutal and unforgiving when it comes to the threats you’ll encounter.

And so, naturally, it꧑’s become my relaxing post-work wind-down ritual at the moment. I load it up, set off to go explore some locations or take on some quests, listen to the sounds of nature (ignoring the occasional banshee-like screeches echoing in the distance), and let the evening unfold into whatever silly little shenanigans I get myself into.

There’s something about the draw of its gameplay loop that makes it feel particularly chill, despite the game very much not being ‘chill’. I love being able to just wander around at my own pace, manage my little backpack with the loot I gat🔯her, and stop off at campfires dotted around the map to sit for a while and play guitar. Sometimes I’m interrupted by things that would love nothing more than to kill me, yes, but a little danger doesn’t mean I can’t be cozy.

No Plans, No Expectations

player looking at the house where the stash #3 in STALKER 2 Heart of Chornobyl-1

I think what makes Stalker 2 feel particularly chill is that I don’t have to have a plan. I don’t have to worry about what I’m going to, I just need to pick a direction and explore, or track a questꦍ and go do whatever it is. Sure, there’ll be anomalies, there’ll be caves and monsters, and there’ll be plenty more of those inexplicable banshee screeches, but I don’t have to worry about anything else. There’s a main story at play, but it’s not predominantly demanding. I’m not being hounded by a big bad or pushed in specific directions, and while many open-world games are happy to let you explore freely, there’s something so laid back about Stalker 2.

Even with an unpredictably dangerous world, that’s what makes it 🌞so relaxing. I don’t know 💞what to expect, so I’m not worrying about any particulars - I’m just going to see what I encounter, see what comes my way, and have fun while I go. It’s a horrific, beautiful map to explore, and I don’t feel like I have any looming world-ending threats or bigger-than-life objectives; I’m just doing what I want to do, fascinated by the strange anomalies as I go, and even in the face of terror, I just feel at ease compared to the attention a lot of other games demand from me.

And th💎en I got to the Poppy Fields, and I was immediately stressed out by the persistent and unstoppable threat of death by petals floating around. I need to go back there for a couple of stashes, but I don’t want to.