Developed by The Farm 51, Chernobylite is a complicated mash-up of various ideas in which players take on the role of Igor Khymynuk, a scientist braving the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in search of his missing fiancé only to uncover a massive conspiracy and horrors beyond his comprehension. Part survival horror, part first person stealth shooter, and part RPG, Chernobylite has a wide range of gameplay for players to enjoy; however, this also means that the quality of the gameplay can wildly fluctuate at the drop of a hat. The story tying it all together is similarly a mixed bag. Chernobylite is a game of incredible highs and disappointing lows.
Starting out with a positive, the survival elements of Chernobylite are the parts I had the most fun with by a wide margin. The various areas of the Exclusion Zone are so well modeled and mapped that the act of exploring it never gets old. I’d often find myself wandering around abandoned structures and the woods around them just scrounging for supplies and taking in the atmosphere. While the character models aren’t anything to write home about, the environment looks pretty good and the music when out of combat has a soothing feel to it.
The player can take these resources and, like any other survival game, can make various weapons and items to help them out on their quest. Personally speaking, I spent the majority of my resources making healing items to regulate my physical health, state of mind, and radiation level. Additionally, I found myself enamored by the base customization. Early on in the game, the player will gain the ability to customize their base. Each piece of equipment and furniture added will affect one of the base’s five stats: comfort of life, power, air quality, radiation security, and bedding. Additionally, there are gardens you can plant for extra materials and food rations and storage bases to stash excess resources. Finding the right balance between these stats to keep up team morale and placing items in a way that made the base both aesthetically pleasing and not completely cramped was an unexpectedly compelling aspect.
Speaking of team morale, the team-management aspect of the game was also surprisingly fun. Chernobylite will allow players to recruit five other characters and act as their field commander. While the primary use for team members (outside of the final level, that is) will be to go out on smaller missions and collect extra resources, this isn’t the most compelling aspect of this system as it amounts to pairing each member to the mission they have a high chance of succeeding at. The real nuance of the companion system comes from maintaining their morale and Igor’s relationships with them. I have already touched on how base customization plays a big part in maintaining high morale. Poor air quality and radiation safety can lower morale which can lead to team members quitting the party. Additionally, poor food management can lower morale. Food is sparse in the Exclusion Zone, and it’s up to the player to scrounge up enough of it (either through their own missions or the missions of their companions) to make sure both they and their partners are well fed. On a final note, the game’s narrative offers a multitude of choices that will affect both the story and Igor’s relationship with his companions, many of them forcing the player to choose between two separate characters. The struggle to keep the team from hating Igor’s guts and in generally high spirits is a necessary one as each member is vital for the final mission to succeed.
Moving on to more mixed elements, the stealth is fun though basic. Players will spend most of their time in this game crouching and hiding in bushes to avoid soldiers and the occasional radiation zombie (with quite a lot of emphasis on the word “occasional”). You can stealth-take-down the human enemies with the exception of enemies with body armor. Player’s can also build traps to help take down enemies, though every time I tried to build a trap near enemies it would stop, I’d catch their attention, and I’d have to engage in the game’s admittedly stiff gunplay. It’s a basic system, but it works surprisingly well. There were even a few encounters that made me feel tense, as if one wrong move could spell my end or, in the case of human enemies, a tedious trip to and escape from a prison camp.
That said, the gunplay is enough incentive to stick to stealth; however, I can’t say it’s bad either. The kickback of the weapons makes them feel good to shoot. It’s just that they feel slow to handle, and the time to aim down sights isn’t fast enough in combat encounters. This presents a problem when the player can only shoot their guns by aiming down sights. Still, it feels satisfying to shoot enemies and loot their bodies.
If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed that I’ve described Chernobylite as atmospheric, tense, strategic, and even soothing. You may have also noticed that I haven’t spoken much of its horror attributes despite it being advertised as a horror game. Well, that’s because Chernobylite’s biggest sin is that it simply isn’t scary. It certainly tries to be, don’t get me wrong. There are monsters abound as well as elements of both psychological and eldritch horror, but it all feels hollow. The radiation zombies (the game calls them “Shadows,” but outside the ability to teleport, they are basically zombies) don’t look menacing in the slightest, and the way they run headfirst into the business end of my shotgun and go down in one-to-two shots doesn’t do them any favors in the fear department. The game tries to be scary in other ways.
Occasionally, the open world will throw illusions at you, sometimes of Igor’s missing wife and sometimes of random NPCs staring at you while twitching wildly. Neither are scary, and the latter feels like such an overused cliché that I found myself rolling my eyes. And then there’s the Black Stalker (that one edgy looking guy in the gas mask you’ll see in the marketing). If you’re out exploring for too long, a Chernobylite Storm will appear and then Discount Darth Vader will appear and try to kill you. It’s pretty easy to avoid, though. He doesn’t seem to appear in story missions, and if you see the signs of the storm, you can just portal gun out of there if you don’t feel like messing with him.
On the note of the game’s major antagonist, I suppose it’s time to talk about the story. I’ll try not to spoil the story, should anyone reading this want to check out Chernobylite. For me, the best thing about this game’s story is the number of choices players can make. I touched on it while talking about the game’s companions, but the choice system goes far beyond affecting the relationships and can even go so far as to affect the story itself. More specifically, I was surprised that many of the choices I made had an effect on the final mission of the game, and I ended the game with all my companions making it out alive based on decisions I had made hours before that moment. Granted, you can use Chernobylite to change some choices when you die which can cheapen it a bit, though I never used this. Additionally, this option is actually commented on by the game’s narrative, which I found quite interesting.
Though, I can’t say this game’s narrative is a masterpiece. It isn’t. A megacorporation hiring mercenaries to conduct experiments to evolve humanity (and creating zombies in the process) feels rather … redundant to say the least. Also, during that final mission (which, by all accounts, is a really cool piece of gameplay barring its final minutes) includes an encounter with the Black Stalker that amounts to a really bad twist followed by minutes of last-minute exposition and a boss fight that I can only describe as frustratingly bad. I won’t spoil what that twist was, only that it made Igor’s single-minded drive to find Tatyana … deeply, deeply uncomfortable in retrospect.
Chernobylite is a mixed bag. When the game is about collecting resources, commanding a unit to survive an irradiated wasteland, making critical choices, and sneaking past dangerous mercenaries, it is a fun game. When it tries to be a first person shooter or horror game, then I found myself wishing I was playing one of the newer Resident Evils instead. I admire The Farm 51’s ambition, but ambition can only take this game so far. I’m giving Chernobylite a 6/10.
For more information about Chernobylite, including full language support, visit the official Chernobylite Website, Steam, Twitter, Facebook, Subreddit, and Discord server.
I love games and love talking about games. Some of my favorites include action games (both 2D and 3D), metroidvanias, roguelikes, shooters, and Indies.
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