This game is RAD.
Chernobylite has a very addicting gameplay loop. As you venture out into its radiated forests and encounter soldiers and strange monsters, you’ll gather essential resources to bring back to your HQ to construct a comfortable living space for you and your teammates and to further prepare you for the road ahead. This is all while putting the pieces together about a mystery surrounding Igor’s beloved Tatyana, and the appearance of a substance called Chernobylite. The choices you’ll make during Igor’s journey will change the story, how your team perceives you as a leader, and the fallout of the final mission. Despite my incredible enjoyment with Chernobylite, it’s filled with several technical shortcomings and a save system that is both confusing and temperamental.
Farm 51 has a very interesting game here, a survival game with rogue-lite and horror elements, all fused to create a very compelling experience. It’s also one that richly fills the void until we finally see the release of the upcoming S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl. Hell, even the character you are playing as is given the Stalker title. While my own experience is extremely minimal with that franchise, I felt a lot of Fallout 4 and Metro 2033 vibes here in more ways than one. Chernobylite was released back in September of 2021 for last-gen consoles but recently has been upgraded to take advantage of the Series X/S and PS5. While character models still don’t look amazing, the environments are often jaw-dropping, especially its stunning 3D-scanned exclusion zone. While this new version is certainly an improvement to its original release, it suffers from several technical issues, as I had the game crash well over a dozen times, causing me to lose hours of progress and a few instances of some pretty drastic frame drops.
Across a roughly 15-20 hour campaign, you’ll play as Igor Khymynyuk, a physicist who was present during the infamous Chornobyl incident of 1986. However, sometime after, his wife, Tatyana, went missing. Igor’s mission in Chernobylite is to track her down and find out where she’s been for the last thirty years, putting together some sort of trail from the few bread crumbs he is able to find. As you complete missions and meet new and interesting characters, you’ll finally get a grasp as to her whereabouts as well as a few answers to other equally mysterious questions.
Right from the start, Igor will gain the ability to slip into a strange dimensional rift, which he uses to access his HQ as well as teleport to all locations within the exclusion zone. His high-tech gadget runs on Chernobylite and there are several moments where you’ll actually see inside this strange warped reality. You can also use Chernoblylite to time travel, allowing you to alter choices you made earlier. This may result in characters who died or left your group due to something you did to return. In fact, you may need to make different choices to see the game through as the final mission, which is very similar to the infamous suicide mission from Mass Effect 2, can result in your entire team dying if you don’t plan it accordingly. You also need to make sure your teammates respect you as one character left my team as we prepped for the final assault, claiming that I didn’t have enough of the picture figured out and left due to frustration.
Chernoblylite’s story has several threads that often tie into one another, offering bits and pieces in the forms of clues and intel. If you have enough of both, you can enter into a VR simulation that collects all their bits of narrative in one compact mission, giving you clarity on every little clue or conversation you’ve had or found. It is possible to complete these simulations without having every single piece, but running exclusion zone missions and paying attention to your surroundings is a good way to dive deeper into this radioactive rabbit hole. I ran nearly a month’s worth of missions, as each venture out into the exclusion zone is based on a 24-hour cycle, before finally understanding enough of what was going on to run the final heist.
The writing is pretty damn enjoyable with equally impressive characters filling out certain roles and personalities. Every time you come back to the base, they will have conversations to take part in, as you get to know a bit more about them. You can also use them to train, giving Igor more health, more item capacity, or a boost in his damage output across a few guns he can wield. You can also figure out what their needs are as maybe the air in the base isn’t clean enough for them or that you haven’t made the space really that comfortable to suit their needs, even if they don’t make use of the decorations or furniture. Regardless, I enjoyed interacting with them, even if a few characters’ voices got on my nerves, especially Mikhail. I found it hilarious that the actor who voices Olivier also voiced Mikhail, as while there is some overlap in tone from time to time, I didn’t once find him annoying.
While there is some reading when it pertains to the clues, nearly the entire story is told either through spoken dialogue, or Igor talking to himself as he sums up the various bits of intel you find. It is possible to skip out on a lot of the story if you are impatient to collect as many of the various clues before undertaking the final mission. After a certain point, dying will allow you to use the Chernobylite you find to change past events. If you didn’t want to destroy a batch of intel in a previous mission and dig into it instead, you can do that, you simply have to deal with the fact that certain companions may look down on you for doing so. Having a stacked team for that final mission can prove useful, so feel free to play around with time to get your team in a good spot for that final push.
The loop for Chernobylite is heading out into the exclusion zone to take on a variety of missions. You’ll do this across five areas: Moscow Eye, Pripyat Central, Pripyat Port, Kopachi, and the Red Forest; each with numerous landmarks, bunkers, and long-abandoned homes. You’ll find countless resources from fuel, and rations, to herbs, and metal scraps that all can be used to craft a variety of items back at HQ or out and about in the field. Each time you venture out, 24 hours will take place, so you can only use the day to complete one central task. As you complete a variety of tasks or exploration, you’ll level up, earning skill points that can be used to learn skills from each of your companions, so be sure to recruit them when you can. Missions are also randomized after a certain point, so you’ll often do things in a different order than anyone else.
Missions are set up as you look out across the exclusion zone from high atop your base. To ensure success on the priority missions, you’ll want to task Igor with taking on those, while you send out your remaining companions on other menial tasks, such as heading out to retrieve food, fuel, or medical supplies. Each mission will have a percentage check with your companions, so sending someone out with a 45% success rate isn’t going to be worth the trouble. As you return, so will they, detailing if they were successful or not. You’ll also want to keep them fed if you want them to remain happy. Ensuring you have the resources to keep them happy and fed, not to mention armed, is crucial to the whole overall journey.
While the missions have a narrative purpose, I often loved mindlessly exploring and just taking in the gorgeous environment. You have a scanner than can be tooled to detect a certain resource, but it thankfully scans and grants attention to everything around you, regardless of what it is. This allows so much of what could have been tedious exploration to easily bear fruit, allowing you to see everything in a certain radius. Despite the simplicity of some missions, I would scavenge for hours in a single location, and while some parts have dangerous radiation, I either dealt with it via medicine or found another way around. You’ll also find numerous NPCs that can trade with you. I did find an NPC a second time that didn’t realize we had previously met and I went through the same dialogue with him a second time.
As you explore, you’ll encounter a military force that will shoot you on sight, not to mention a monster type that you’ll encounter a few hours in. While you’ll be able to craft a few traps to take advantage of certain patrol paths or lure something towards you, most of your encounters will rely either on a full-on assault or stealth tactics that really just consists of sneaking up on someone and choking them out. While you don’t have a huge arsenal to choose from; the pistols, shotguns, and various special weapons pack a punch, even if combat can feel a tad clunky. I don’t think the shooting is anywhere near top tier but it’s at least far more functional than not.
Killing enemies or taking damage will affect Igor in different ways. You can find armor to equip that can be used to absorb most incoming damage, but taking a life can take its toll on Igor’s mental state. I did find it to be in rather poor taste that you can use alcohol to address this, but there are different medicinal items that can be taken to lower that stress and get Igor back to his senses. You can craft a variety of different medications that can aid Igor through his ordeals, and some NPCs may actually be interested in some of those concoctions as well, so it’s good to keep them stocked at all times.
Once you’ve tackled your missions, scavenged for resources, and possibly brought someone new back to the base, it’s that very base that you’ll be adding to and crafting supplies for the next day’s excursion. Hidden in an abandoned building, with a clear view of the exclusion zone, is your base. This multi-floor location has a briefing floor as well as your own personal room that cannot be affected or added to, but everywhere else is fair game. The resources that you’ve gathered can be used to make a cooking stove, various weapon and armor stations, air and radiation infiltration systems, as well as the generators to power them all. You can make little herb and food gardens, apply lights to see everything, and cupboards and containers to house everything you don’t want to have on you. Thankfully, your inventory when crafting pulls from every source, regardless if you don’t have it on your person, which is such a great quality of life feature that I wish a certain Nintendo game would have included.
Whether it is upgrading and tinkering with your rifles or attempting to make small intricate little bedrooms for each of your companions, the base building is certainly a fun component of this game because of how much of it is a palate cleanser to the rest of the experience. It breaks up the combat and narrative components by giving you something else to focus on entirely, even obsess over. I don’t think the variety of items is impressive by any means, but I do enjoy the creative ability to craft your living arrangements how you see fit. Had the base building been segmented so that certain stations had to be placed in certain places, or tediously connecting electrical lines to ensure things were powered, then we would be having a very different discussion here, but overall, it’s a decent but fairly shallow system that goes a long way to creating enjoyment out of what is at its core, a fairly silly thing.
I've mentioned it before, but Chernobylite often looks incredible, with some of the best outdoor environments on any platform. Indoor locations are decent enough, especially when they are designed to rely on your flashlight to create close-quarters tension. The current-gen upgrade allows two settings; performance and resolution, which is pretty much the standard offer we tend to see. Each mode has its perks, such as performance giving you a slick 60fps at 1080p, whereas resolution drops the game to 30fps but brings out 4K resolution. I ended up going with performance since the game already looked incredible at the lower resolution and benefitted from that added framerate. However; when moving around the base, there was always one spot where the game had incredibly choppy frame drops and oddly enough, only ever in one particular spot, regardless of how much stuff I filled my base with.
I mentioned it in the opening paragraph, but I just didn’t get on with the game’s saving system. While you can save almost anywhere you want, it will only save back a short period of time and not at that very moment. You’ll go to save and it will say something like “your last save was 9 minutes ago” or “your last save was 24 seconds ago”. While that was overly fine, some missions within the other dimension wouldn’t save at all. I had the game lock up at the end of a few of these, making me replay them from the start, and these have visions you need to see play out; so you cannot skip them. I had the game lock up several times and crash, especially during combat encounters. And in one instance, despite the appearance of an auto-save feature, I lost nearly 2 hours of playtime, however; I do chalk that up to me forgetting to save, but still, it’s such an odd system that occasionally seems to save correctly, but never when you want it to.
Chernobylite, despite any issues or technical problems I had, was a very engaging and fantastic experience that I thoroughly enjoyed. Its final mission made me really care about the friendships that Igor and myself made along the way, and being able to change my choices allowed me to really consider what was best for my overall path and team. The loop of heading into the exclusion zone for resources or whatever the narrative had for me kept my interest greatly and I never got tired of any of the few areas and the places I would visit again and again. While it does lack big overall set pieces, the variety of action, exploration, stealth, and an engaging story, certainly hit some pretty good highs for me and is an experience I won’t soon forget.
Developer - The Farm 51. Publisher - All In!. Released - April 21st, 2022. Available On - Xbox One/Series X/S, PS4/PS5, Windows PC. Rated - (M) Blood and Gore, Drug Reference, Strong Language, Use of Alcohol, Violence. Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - A review code was provided by the publisher for the purpose of this review.