It’s been almost three years since I first played Chernobylite, pre-Covid which is something. It came out around the time of the hit miniseries Chernobyl which is based on the Chernobyl disaster. When I was playing it for the first time, it was in early access on Steam. I enjoyed playing it on the PC and wondered how it fared on the PlayStation 5. Does it run smoothly? Does it still hold its own? And whether I would enjoy playing it again on a nice big TV screen rather than a PC monitor. The good news is that it looks incredible and played smoothly and I haven’t come across any bugs or problems that would affect my gameplay or experience. It is £24.99, which for a next-gen title is cheap, you can pick it up digitally or physically depending on which one you prefer. My main goal for this review is to see how fair it has come since my playthrough on the PC and whether it managed to live up to the expectation, I outlined in the preview I did many years ago.
For those that might not be in the loop, here is a breakdown of what Chernobylite is about. It is a survival horror RPG that is set in a sci-fi semi-open world. You’ll play as Igor Khymynyuk, who was once a worker at the Chernobyl Power Plant at the time of the disaster. You must uncover the mysterious of the contamination zone and try to find out the truth behind the disappearance of his fiancée, who disappeared thirty years ago in Chernobyl. Uncover the chilling adventure while you try and survive in the beautifully 3D-scanned recreation of the real Exclusion zone and piece together the mysteries, horrors and conspiracy to get to the truth.
The game starts with Igor and his companions trying to break into the Chernobyl Power Plant. You manage to gain access but sadly the plan falls short when a mysterious figure known as the Black Stalker shows up and kills one of your companions and forces you to make an early exit. While you are infiltrating the Power Plant you start seeing flashbacks to the night of the disaster and Igor’s fiancée Tatyana who creepily keeps talking to you and showing up as random hallucinations along your journey. You use a portal gun that is powered by Chernobylite to make a fast escape and are sent to another location where you regroup with your other companion and try to wrap your head around the events of the failed plan. From here it is up to the play to gain resources, companions, and important information to aid them and give them a better chance at having another go at getting into the Power Plant.
Chernobylite finds the player exploring different areas within the Exclusion zones to complete missions, collect resources, and try to avoid capture by the NAR soldiers or being killed by the “Shadows” Chernobyl creatures.
The game progresses on a day cycle, at the beginning, you select what you will be doing, assigning missions to yourself and your companions. Then go into the relevant areas and complete as many of the tasks that you can in that area before heading back with any resources you have collected, companions you have found, and clues that will help you understand what is going on in the game.
Once back at base you can use what you have found to feed your companions to keep them happy and healthy, build furniture and other useful structures to help you on your journey. Craft weapons, medicine and resources so that you can better yourself and your companions before venturing out into the exclusion zones.
As days progress the zones get harder as more NAR soldiers catch onto your plans and increase their activity as well as the growth of the Chernobylite that increases the number of paranormal activities that happen in the area as well as the number of “Shadows” that you come across. Use your wit to try and survive and get out alive. If you do die, it’s not the end as you can go back in time to the beginning of that day or even further back depending on the scenario and can try again. It is a bit complicated to explain but basically, the game can get hard at times and sometimes death is the right option to reset it and make it more manageable.
The base is an important part of the game as you will need to make sure you can accommodate all your companion’s needs as well as have everything you need to kit yourself out for the final mission when you get to it.
The developers went for a first-person perspective which fits the game perfectly. It helps build suspense and tension when traversing the Exclusion zone. Farm 51 has done a fantastic job with lighting and capturing the eerie locations that you visit, the thing that blows my mind, even more, is that the game is heavily based on 3D scans of the real-world location. So, you literally feel as if you are there. Even though it’s a video game it looks so real and it is stunning in all its gloominess. Graphically, there wasn’t any bug and everything looked amazing. The characters looked detailed and the environment was by far the selling point for Chernobylite. The little icon images of characters looked like simple photoshopped pictures that kind of ruined the immersion but you just shrug it off after seeing it a few times.
Sound is key when trying to capture horror in games and Farm 51 knocks it out of the park again. The scary sounds and voices you hear when exploring the exclusion zones put me on edge all the time and the atmosphere just feels off where ever you go which adds to the whole horror feel of the game. Throw in spooky radioactive Chernobyl zombies and laugh kids and you have the right recipe to scare me. The Russian voice acting is probably the best way to get the most out of the game’s voice actors but if you take the English option, be prepared for some cringy moments as the main character Igor does his best a be tough but comes across as lap dog at best. The other voice acting in the game is decent but doesn’t compare to the Russian voice acting.
The replay value for this game comes with its story. When you die you reset and get to tackle everything again with advantages. If you have enough Chernobylite you can alter the story in your favour and correct any wrong choices that you might have made along the way. It does get quite repetitive though if you keep dying ad you relive the same sort of experiences it is part of the fun. Sometimes the best option is to reset, it might be getting too difficult for you to progress. All in all, once you have completed the game there are a few other things you can go back and do but once you know the story and how it ends that’s where for me, I stopped playing.
Closing Statement
It is so nice to see how far the game has come from when I first played it back on PC in 2019. Chernobylite runs a lot more smoothly, feels really polished and the finished product is an enjoyable gaming experience. It got a recent visual update for the next-gen consoles and I will be jumping back onto it to see how this has affected the game’s world, though to be honest, it looks fantastic the way it is now. If you are in the market for a new and affordable game then look no further as I have found the one for you. It is repetitive but in a good way, even though it feels like you are doing the same things over and over it seems engaging enough to put up with it. The resource collecting, crafting and horror elements really work well together and make for a horror experience I actually found myself getting scared at. It’s been a long time since a game has made me worried about entering a building or a room as I’m truly scared about what could be inside. The story is clever and the gameplay is simple and effective for these reasons, I’m giving Chernobylite a score of 7 out of 10.
Grab your copy here https://store.playstation.com/en-gb/concept/10002921
Developer: The Farm 51
Platforms: PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X and Series S, Nintendo Switch, Microsoft Windows
Publishers: The Farm 51, All in! Games, Perpetual Europe
Screenshots from the PC version of the game.
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