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As icy as Park Chan-Wook’s Stoker was tempestuous, this Russian black comedy won’t thaw out; no matter how many corpses the titular boilerman – elderly war hero turned gangland stooge (Mikhail Skryabin) – feeds into his furnace.
Director Aleksey Balabanov makes strong use of Skryabin’s deadpan features and paints a portrait of modern Russia as an honourless wild East, with the spiralling violence measured against the stoker’s old-school stoicism.
Be warned, though: patience will be tested by the most intrusively jaunty score in history.
Stalker 2 sleuth discovers why the AI feels particularly harsh - it's because it is, but the devs say they're already working to fix the broken monster spawns
STALKER 2 Budmo walkthrough and should you steal the stashes?
Stalker 2 is secretly a spiritual successor to Fallout: New Vegas, and after 45 hours in The Zone I'm ready to die on this irradiated hill
