(from original post in 2021) a game that could've been great if it had more content. I hope it gets dlc to expand on its mechanics
(from 100% post on august 8th 2021) not that hard considering most of the achievements are for completing all of the story missions but GG regardless
(from 100% post on august 8th 2021) not that hard considering most of the achievements are for completing all of the story missions but GG regardless
I honestly had to push myself through to completion on this one. It's rough around the edges. I went in expecting S.T.A.L.K.E.R and that is not what I got, which was disappointing considering the marketing heavily leans on S.T.A.L.K.E.R
tatyana trying to sound ominous and ultimately failing is just so cute and funny
This game is an odd experience for me, because it sometimes borders on being a pure walking simulator, which is something I usually don't have patience for, but I ended up kind of loving this game and cherishing the experience. It's moody, atmospheric, looks incredible, the writing is interesting and the game design is sort of a combination of all of your favorite post-apocalyptic franchises in a more lightweight and easily digestable package.
What you do in the game is prepare for and make runs into the exclusion zone, which is divided into a few quite small but open worlds. You can either go on story missions or scavenging missions, and you can choose to go yourself or send one of the companions you end up recruiting along the way. Inbetween missions, you can work on solving the mysteries while also expanding and improving your base facilities for combat preparation, health and companion comfort. You will build little plantations for food and healing salves, craft ammo, dismantle weapons and set up beds, couches, air purifiers and TVs for your companions so they don't go stir crazy in your rotting, irradiated warehouse overlooking Pripyat. Once you're done preparing, you tell Mikhail to go scavenging for ammo while Olivier goes to kill a "shadow" for chernobylite, while you go on a story mission to try to find out what happened to your wife and the power plant since, of course, the story ties into the disaster.
As an aside, I loved just starting a mission since you do so from an overlook far above Pripyat, where you can see the famous ferris wheel and the Duga radar array looming in the distance. You also, quite cleverly, use this view to obtain hints about what your run will be like. If an area on the map looks heavily irradiated from the overlook, it will be once you spawn in. The game straight-up tells you this in a dialog box, which is nice, because I never would've noticed that the overlook serves a purpose other than looking very striking.
When you've made your choices and spawned into the zone, you will explore the area by following markers while also being free to explore however you want. The exploration and the missions objectives are usually quite simple and, most of the time, you go on little 5-minute missions where your only objective is to sneak past a squad of guards to for example a radio and then you interact with the radio and the mission is over. The markers are for the mission objective, but also little scenarios that you come across and play out in front of you. Sometimes it's soldiers feeding you exposition about what's going on, and sometimes you're presented with a little moral choice scenario, which the game is absolutely packed with. This might sound dull, but the short and simple mission structure was perhaps the game's greatest strength for me, and this is what I meant earlier by saying that the game is a borderline walking sim. Missions are generally very short, and it's not rare to spend more time in your base than in your next mission, and I see that other reviews don't like this at all, but I found it refreshing to head into a fairly tiny open world, admire some incredibly atmospheric graphics, pick up some herbs and metals for crafting, and see cool and interesting scenes play out. The missions do also get more intense towards the end of the game, and you do have very solid progression from being helpless in the beginning to being a stealth/murder machine that can easily sneak past or murder a squad, depending on what you feel like doing and what's the shortest route. I started out by being afraid of every guard and just sneaking past everything, which made missions feel tense but perhaps low on action, but by the end I was blasting everybody but the kind of pain in the ass heavily armored guards because it was faster and easier.
And, really, the choices must be given their own paragraph, because this is Make Decisions: The Game. You're presented with some kind of choice that has some kind of consequence literally all the time, and it's presented as both dialogue boxes and scenarios playing out in real time in front of you. The first interactive and dynamic choice I ran into was spotting some guards doing something in the distance, so I crept closer and noticed that they were about to execute some stalker. This would also be my first time going guns blazing, so I hesitated until they killed him, but decided I didn't like that outcome, so I reloaded save and struggled through my first fight - since this is the kind of game where recoil is heavy, iron sights are bad and aiming is difficult because you also shake heavily when getting shot, so it's not a "murder 100 dudes a minute" type game at all - and saved the guy. That meant that he would now be alive and could be find in future missions, even though that guy in particular didn't end up being a major choice and I don't think that character ended up serving a purpose. Other choices, however, change how the whole story plays out and you can even end up making choices so wrong that you don't get to play all missions. The twist there is that there is a feature that allows you to turn back time and change your choices, with works with the story since chernobylite, the material, has the ability to let you travel through time and space. You can also be locked out of missions because your ultimate goal is not from the regular missions board, but a big heist that has its own mission board and that you're supposed to spend the whole game preparing for, and the game does allow you to attempt the heist from the first day if you'd like. You will fail miserably since you haven't collected all the clues and figured everything out, you don't have any ammo or healing and you don't have any companions, but the game will let you do it, which is really cool.
The clue system deserves a mention too! I really liked it. The way it works is that your base has a typical movie conspiracy theorist board with pictures of culprits with strings between them and everything, and you collect major clues by completing story missions while finding minor clues in the little open worlds (which are not marked in any way and you have to actually just find them). Once you've gathered enough for a case, you can use the chernobylite tech to "relive" the situations you've gathered information about, so the game both presents the pieces of evidence to you, fully readable so you can form your own theories and conclusions, and then when you're done with a case, you walk through a 3D "presentation" of the events you uncovered. Oh, and the function for changing choices is also a 3D space where you walk between little dioramas that represent the choice scenario, which is just more impactful than picking from a menu of dialogue boxes.
I don't know, I could probably keep going with praise as I very much enjoyed everything about this game. It has some of the best, if not the very best, naturalistic lighting I've ever seen. The individual pieces of the graphics, like the polygonal objects and the textutres, might not be the best in the game, but the overall visual direction of this game is incredible. I initially loved how if you get "killed" by the opposing military force (and not the environment), you're not actually killed and are instead sent to a prison you have to escape from. The fact that there's a "black stalker" that will show up sometimes if you take too long is great. The sorrowful theme of everything is touching and wonderful.
Is the game flawless? Definitely not. Getting arrested instead of getting killed was awesome at first, but like the 20th time got old, and there was a mission with unusually heavy guard presence I didn't feel prepared for, so I messed it up several times, and had to escape prison like 7 times in a row. That was frustrating, and it was even more frustrating that these clever bastards made sure to save the checkpoint of you in prison before you even go down, so if you try to dashboard as you're in the dying animation, you'll still spawn back into prison. The game is also just disappointingly easy. At no point was I struggling for food, and the only resource I had trouble with was herbs, and that was probably because I just didn't plan ahead well enough for those and I got lazy with looting in the latter half of the game. The game does have difficulty sliders for both combat and survival, but the problem is that you can't notice that a survival game is too generous with resources until you're filthy rich in materials and I didn't want to start over at that point. Combat could be difficult, but stealth was very easy as you really only have to run around a corner and hide in a bush if someone spots you. It's a very minor point, but it's also unfortunate that they clearly lost the voice actor for Igor, the main character, at some point. A few lines of dialogue are obviously spoken by an entirely different person (in the russian dub anyway, but who plays this game with the english dub?). Finally, I wouldn't have minded if the game had more of a reason to keep playing it, though maybe that would've worked out if I had known to play with survival set to hard, so that I at any point would've needed to stop playing story missions in order to focus on building my base and feeding my companions, because with how easy the survival ended up being, the base became more and more of an afterthought as I played and I didn't end up unlocking all skills because I never had to spend any time doing the generic resource missions instead of just knocking out story mission after story mission.
Even with a few flaws, the lack of difficulty being a major one, I still loved this game and would recommend it to anyone who likes atmospheric, dark and sorrowful games, exploration/extraction games with survival mechanics or are just fascinated by the Chernobyl exclusion zone. This is a well-made, thoughtful, soulful game made with gusto and passion, and if you know that this is the same developer that hit us with the amusingly terrible Deadfall Adventures a decade ago, it's kind of mindblowing how good this game is and how much they've improved. This game is something special. It really reminds me of Spec Ops: The Line in how it's a game from a developer that used to be a bit shit, and that's much more thoughtful and intelligent than you might think. This isn't "rule of cool" Chernobyl, even though you can end up building a railgun and shit. This is fascinating, engaging, contemplative, romantic, sorrowful and beautiful. It doesn't reach the whole way and isn't a slam dunk 5/5, but it's something special that deserves your attention if you're even halfway interested in any of it's themes.
What you do in the game is prepare for and make runs into the exclusion zone, which is divided into a few quite small but open worlds. You can either go on story missions or scavenging missions, and you can choose to go yourself or send one of the companions you end up recruiting along the way. Inbetween missions, you can work on solving the mysteries while also expanding and improving your base facilities for combat preparation, health and companion comfort. You will build little plantations for food and healing salves, craft ammo, dismantle weapons and set up beds, couches, air purifiers and TVs for your companions so they don't go stir crazy in your rotting, irradiated warehouse overlooking Pripyat. Once you're done preparing, you tell Mikhail to go scavenging for ammo while Olivier goes to kill a "shadow" for chernobylite, while you go on a story mission to try to find out what happened to your wife and the power plant since, of course, the story ties into the disaster.
As an aside, I loved just starting a mission since you do so from an overlook far above Pripyat, where you can see the famous ferris wheel and the Duga radar array looming in the distance. You also, quite cleverly, use this view to obtain hints about what your run will be like. If an area on the map looks heavily irradiated from the overlook, it will be once you spawn in. The game straight-up tells you this in a dialog box, which is nice, because I never would've noticed that the overlook serves a purpose other than looking very striking.
When you've made your choices and spawned into the zone, you will explore the area by following markers while also being free to explore however you want. The exploration and the missions objectives are usually quite simple and, most of the time, you go on little 5-minute missions where your only objective is to sneak past a squad of guards to for example a radio and then you interact with the radio and the mission is over. The markers are for the mission objective, but also little scenarios that you come across and play out in front of you. Sometimes it's soldiers feeding you exposition about what's going on, and sometimes you're presented with a little moral choice scenario, which the game is absolutely packed with. This might sound dull, but the short and simple mission structure was perhaps the game's greatest strength for me, and this is what I meant earlier by saying that the game is a borderline walking sim. Missions are generally very short, and it's not rare to spend more time in your base than in your next mission, and I see that other reviews don't like this at all, but I found it refreshing to head into a fairly tiny open world, admire some incredibly atmospheric graphics, pick up some herbs and metals for crafting, and see cool and interesting scenes play out. The missions do also get more intense towards the end of the game, and you do have very solid progression from being helpless in the beginning to being a stealth/murder machine that can easily sneak past or murder a squad, depending on what you feel like doing and what's the shortest route. I started out by being afraid of every guard and just sneaking past everything, which made missions feel tense but perhaps low on action, but by the end I was blasting everybody but the kind of pain in the ass heavily armored guards because it was faster and easier.
And, really, the choices must be given their own paragraph, because this is Make Decisions: The Game. You're presented with some kind of choice that has some kind of consequence literally all the time, and it's presented as both dialogue boxes and scenarios playing out in real time in front of you. The first interactive and dynamic choice I ran into was spotting some guards doing something in the distance, so I crept closer and noticed that they were about to execute some stalker. This would also be my first time going guns blazing, so I hesitated until they killed him, but decided I didn't like that outcome, so I reloaded save and struggled through my first fight - since this is the kind of game where recoil is heavy, iron sights are bad and aiming is difficult because you also shake heavily when getting shot, so it's not a "murder 100 dudes a minute" type game at all - and saved the guy. That meant that he would now be alive and could be find in future missions, even though that guy in particular didn't end up being a major choice and I don't think that character ended up serving a purpose. Other choices, however, change how the whole story plays out and you can even end up making choices so wrong that you don't get to play all missions. The twist there is that there is a feature that allows you to turn back time and change your choices, with works with the story since chernobylite, the material, has the ability to let you travel through time and space. You can also be locked out of missions because your ultimate goal is not from the regular missions board, but a big heist that has its own mission board and that you're supposed to spend the whole game preparing for, and the game does allow you to attempt the heist from the first day if you'd like. You will fail miserably since you haven't collected all the clues and figured everything out, you don't have any ammo or healing and you don't have any companions, but the game will let you do it, which is really cool.
The clue system deserves a mention too! I really liked it. The way it works is that your base has a typical movie conspiracy theorist board with pictures of culprits with strings between them and everything, and you collect major clues by completing story missions while finding minor clues in the little open worlds (which are not marked in any way and you have to actually just find them). Once you've gathered enough for a case, you can use the chernobylite tech to "relive" the situations you've gathered information about, so the game both presents the pieces of evidence to you, fully readable so you can form your own theories and conclusions, and then when you're done with a case, you walk through a 3D "presentation" of the events you uncovered. Oh, and the function for changing choices is also a 3D space where you walk between little dioramas that represent the choice scenario, which is just more impactful than picking from a menu of dialogue boxes.
I don't know, I could probably keep going with praise as I very much enjoyed everything about this game. It has some of the best, if not the very best, naturalistic lighting I've ever seen. The individual pieces of the graphics, like the polygonal objects and the textutres, might not be the best in the game, but the overall visual direction of this game is incredible. I initially loved how if you get "killed" by the opposing military force (and not the environment), you're not actually killed and are instead sent to a prison you have to escape from. The fact that there's a "black stalker" that will show up sometimes if you take too long is great. The sorrowful theme of everything is touching and wonderful.
Is the game flawless? Definitely not. Getting arrested instead of getting killed was awesome at first, but like the 20th time got old, and there was a mission with unusually heavy guard presence I didn't feel prepared for, so I messed it up several times, and had to escape prison like 7 times in a row. That was frustrating, and it was even more frustrating that these clever bastards made sure to save the checkpoint of you in prison before you even go down, so if you try to dashboard as you're in the dying animation, you'll still spawn back into prison. The game is also just disappointingly easy. At no point was I struggling for food, and the only resource I had trouble with was herbs, and that was probably because I just didn't plan ahead well enough for those and I got lazy with looting in the latter half of the game. The game does have difficulty sliders for both combat and survival, but the problem is that you can't notice that a survival game is too generous with resources until you're filthy rich in materials and I didn't want to start over at that point. Combat could be difficult, but stealth was very easy as you really only have to run around a corner and hide in a bush if someone spots you. It's a very minor point, but it's also unfortunate that they clearly lost the voice actor for Igor, the main character, at some point. A few lines of dialogue are obviously spoken by an entirely different person (in the russian dub anyway, but who plays this game with the english dub?). Finally, I wouldn't have minded if the game had more of a reason to keep playing it, though maybe that would've worked out if I had known to play with survival set to hard, so that I at any point would've needed to stop playing story missions in order to focus on building my base and feeding my companions, because with how easy the survival ended up being, the base became more and more of an afterthought as I played and I didn't end up unlocking all skills because I never had to spend any time doing the generic resource missions instead of just knocking out story mission after story mission.
Even with a few flaws, the lack of difficulty being a major one, I still loved this game and would recommend it to anyone who likes atmospheric, dark and sorrowful games, exploration/extraction games with survival mechanics or are just fascinated by the Chernobyl exclusion zone. This is a well-made, thoughtful, soulful game made with gusto and passion, and if you know that this is the same developer that hit us with the amusingly terrible Deadfall Adventures a decade ago, it's kind of mindblowing how good this game is and how much they've improved. This game is something special. It really reminds me of Spec Ops: The Line in how it's a game from a developer that used to be a bit shit, and that's much more thoughtful and intelligent than you might think. This isn't "rule of cool" Chernobyl, even though you can end up building a railgun and shit. This is fascinating, engaging, contemplative, romantic, sorrowful and beautiful. It doesn't reach the whole way and isn't a slam dunk 5/5, but it's something special that deserves your attention if you're even halfway interested in any of it's themes.
This review contains spoilers
Igor, I am your father
if you don't make the right choices (moral) the endgame is basically unplayable and i think that's dum
A great way to explore Chornobyl and Pripyat virtually!
It seems it’s almost obligatory to start a review of Chernobylite by saying how this is a completely different game to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. While this is true, people fail to mention how the studio, The Farm 51, since the beginning of their Kickstarter right until the final release compared their project to “nuclear horror games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” (this phrase was also used in emails when sending review codes to some YouTubers).
I’m one of the early backers on Kickstarter and this is exactly what caught my intention. I’m glad Chernobylite is nothing like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. If I was to say “Chernobylite is like S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” then I wouldn’t give justice to the project and the team behind it.
The main gameplay loop of Chernobylite is simple – you build a base, manage resources, shoot soldiers and nuclear ghosts, and recruit and manage different characters who help you find your wife. The base building and NPC management are very integral to what the game is about. However, It seems like The Farm 51 didn’t have a clear vision. There are a lot of mechanics added and all of them are quite basic, middling at best. After playing for 3-4 hours I started to feel like I’d seen all there is to see and do. The combat is laughable. On higher difficulty, enemies are bullet sponges while being aimbots and see you through walls, trees etc. The game never truly pushes you to collect more resources. You can easily beat the game without ever exploring even on higher difficulty which is a missed opportunity.
You are exploring devastated land by one of the greatest disasters in human history yet It’s a pretty forgiving landscape. All there is really to worry about is pockets of radiation which can easily be cured and the gas clouds… for which you have a gas mask. There are no mutated wild animals or anomalies to worry about. The survival elements of Chernobylite are missing.
The story of the Chornobyl site is persistent. When you die, you don’t get back to a checkpoint (although the game allows it, again – why?). Instead, you get captured and the story continues. Your failure becomes another part of the story and you even get the chance to meet new characters and finish side quests. The strength of Chernobylite lies not exactly with the story itself but more so with how flexible it is. There are a lot of decisions you have to take and your decisions have consequences. From time to time, you get the chance to change your decisions if you have enough “Chernobylite” resources.
Another great mechanic on paper but ruined because of the lack of clear vision is the mental state of you and your team. You play as a nuclear physicist so all the shooting and stabbing is too much for your psyche. But that simply makes the edges of the screen dark and has almost zero influence on the gameplay or story. How do you fix your psyche? By eating a bowl of soup or swilling down some alcohol which is quite clearly supposed to be vodka. A clear spirit in Ukraine – it’s not going to be a Beefeater gin or Bacardi rum. What about the psyche of your team? Just build more comfortable accommodation, clear the air and give them more bread.
“The Zone” is gorgeous and dreadful, and Chernobylite squeezes an impressive amount of variety out of each __cpLocation. This is truly a photorealistic game. Honestly, this might be one of the best-looking indie games I have ever seen. The environments are made with 3D scans of Chernobyl and Pripyat and this is for most people the closest you’re ever going to get to exploring the area. The ambient soundtrack complements the visuals perfectly. Radiation pools expand. NAR soldiers arrive better equipped. Tempestuous "Chenobylite storms" grow more intense.
Despite being a very middling experience, at the end of the day, I recommend Chernobylite because of the weight it gives player choices and the flexibility of the narrative makes it compelling and the atmosphere is truly well done. Congrats to the team for all the hard work and I’m glad I backed the project on Kickstarter.
It seems it’s almost obligatory to start a review of Chernobylite by saying how this is a completely different game to S.T.A.L.K.E.R. While this is true, people fail to mention how the studio, The Farm 51, since the beginning of their Kickstarter right until the final release compared their project to “nuclear horror games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” (this phrase was also used in emails when sending review codes to some YouTubers).
I’m one of the early backers on Kickstarter and this is exactly what caught my intention. I’m glad Chernobylite is nothing like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. If I was to say “Chernobylite is like S.T.A.L.K.E.R.” then I wouldn’t give justice to the project and the team behind it.
The main gameplay loop of Chernobylite is simple – you build a base, manage resources, shoot soldiers and nuclear ghosts, and recruit and manage different characters who help you find your wife. The base building and NPC management are very integral to what the game is about. However, It seems like The Farm 51 didn’t have a clear vision. There are a lot of mechanics added and all of them are quite basic, middling at best. After playing for 3-4 hours I started to feel like I’d seen all there is to see and do. The combat is laughable. On higher difficulty, enemies are bullet sponges while being aimbots and see you through walls, trees etc. The game never truly pushes you to collect more resources. You can easily beat the game without ever exploring even on higher difficulty which is a missed opportunity.
You are exploring devastated land by one of the greatest disasters in human history yet It’s a pretty forgiving landscape. All there is really to worry about is pockets of radiation which can easily be cured and the gas clouds… for which you have a gas mask. There are no mutated wild animals or anomalies to worry about. The survival elements of Chernobylite are missing.
The story of the Chornobyl site is persistent. When you die, you don’t get back to a checkpoint (although the game allows it, again – why?). Instead, you get captured and the story continues. Your failure becomes another part of the story and you even get the chance to meet new characters and finish side quests. The strength of Chernobylite lies not exactly with the story itself but more so with how flexible it is. There are a lot of decisions you have to take and your decisions have consequences. From time to time, you get the chance to change your decisions if you have enough “Chernobylite” resources.
Another great mechanic on paper but ruined because of the lack of clear vision is the mental state of you and your team. You play as a nuclear physicist so all the shooting and stabbing is too much for your psyche. But that simply makes the edges of the screen dark and has almost zero influence on the gameplay or story. How do you fix your psyche? By eating a bowl of soup or swilling down some alcohol which is quite clearly supposed to be vodka. A clear spirit in Ukraine – it’s not going to be a Beefeater gin or Bacardi rum. What about the psyche of your team? Just build more comfortable accommodation, clear the air and give them more bread.
“The Zone” is gorgeous and dreadful, and Chernobylite squeezes an impressive amount of variety out of each __cpLocation. This is truly a photorealistic game. Honestly, this might be one of the best-looking indie games I have ever seen. The environments are made with 3D scans of Chernobyl and Pripyat and this is for most people the closest you’re ever going to get to exploring the area. The ambient soundtrack complements the visuals perfectly. Radiation pools expand. NAR soldiers arrive better equipped. Tempestuous "Chenobylite storms" grow more intense.
Despite being a very middling experience, at the end of the day, I recommend Chernobylite because of the weight it gives player choices and the flexibility of the narrative makes it compelling and the atmosphere is truly well done. Congrats to the team for all the hard work and I’m glad I backed the project on Kickstarter.
A Great Hidden Gem! The base crafting and scavenging are great. Combat could be a bit better, but it evolves as you get better weapons/mods
The only thing questionable about this game is the building system, other than that i loved this game for its aesthetic and gameplay
A somber ode to the stalker franchise that was shockingly pretty fun to play for me. Of course, eventually, the missions will seem quite repetitive after a while. What it does pretty well is its own take with a fallout 4-style base building made a bit simpler which I surprisingly started to enjoy until materials got scarce and had to build things I did not want to, but if I did not the party's morale and health would get lower which was kinda lame. I really liked how your choices did matter when they came up, but unfortunately most of the choices were made into an ultimatum style where if I do something one member of the team would like that and another would not like it which led to me losing a party member at one point which becomes a big pain later in the endgame. Overall it was a game I enjoyed, but not without a few underlying faults.
muy repetitivo
This review contains spoilers
It's a long one, gonna start at plot now:
The plot starts off with you playing as a scientist named Igor, who gets a picture of his missing wife Tatyana, whom disappeared thirty years ago, right before the Chernobyl Incident. Being haunted in his dreams, he goes back to hunt down any leads and figure out what happened to his wife; sneaking into the power plant where him and his wife used to work, s h i t goes to hell resulting in one of his mercenaries that he hired being murdered by a being known as The Black Stalker, him stealing a crystal to create a portal gun, and green s h i t flying. With everything going to hell, Igor decides that he needs to figure out a plan, gain allies, build up his base and find the answers leading to what happened.
To finalize the plot, I wanna discuss the remaining parts that hit me and a part that kind of lost me a bit. You do your final heist, you learn that one of your men is a spy, and then you finally learn that The Black Stalker isn't Boris (a friend who you learn turned himself into The Black Stalker after betraying your wife to the local soviet shadow government after she rejected his advances), it's actually the REAL Igor. You are a clone created during the experiments, given a sweater and dropped off somewhere where you eventually come back after your big bad guy Semonov manipulates events to get you to come back. It also turns out that your wife that's talking to you in hallucinations the whole time has been The Chernobylite itself, which is some cosmic being inside the material, with the portals and wormholes and whatever the hell being the veins. The comparisons to a cosmic turtle really brought to mind memories of Stephen King's It, with the "Good" presence being a cosmic turtle. It's a strange thing, but I really like that idea that you're being manipulated by this cosmic mineral being. The thing I don't particularly care about is the clone thing, cause I feel like that's kind of a cop out and an awful plot twist, I would've preferred if they had just made it an alternate universe Igor who messed up and was the bad guy, or they had just stuck with Boris though I think the alternate universe Igor killed Boris and took his identity? I'm unsure, that whole thing was confusing personally to me and was the one thing about the ending I didn't care for. Other than that, I like the plot twists and turns, how your choices affect the outcome, and some of the sci-fi explanations for stuff as well as the character's personal investment in it. It's not some mind blowing huge scale RPG but it's stuff that I enjoy.
I'll say with the plot that personally I love it, and even though the whole "Alternate Dimensions" thing has been used to death in every form of media these past many years, I thought it's effects on the gameplay were actually really cool. In a cool blending of story/gameplay, you have an option in the early part to burn some documents or save them. If you save them, you get another clue that's closer to finding your wife, however that leads to consequences down the line where it ends up triggering traps that kills a bunch of soldiers but leads you into an ambush where you get thrown out of the building in an explosion and captured. I don't want to go any further in the choices but that to me felt cool, and I didn't expect it coming like that, however you can change outcomes if you have enough Chernobylite too. Go into a radioactive zone and die (at the cost of losing inventory items) or if you have enough supplies to build a radioactive machine, you can kill yourself in the machine and use some Chernobylite to change certain scenes to build up a rapport with your allies or switch around certain fates if you're looking to get other clues. Every decision has an effect on the game in some way and I like it like that.
This segways perfectly into game play for me; don't go into this expecting some giant STALKER or Fallout RPG. Even though it's basically Stalkout 4, it's also not. Chernobyl is split into a couple different sections, each one where you can choose to do main quests or side stuff like gathering supplies or hunting monsters. You'll be seeing these A LOT in your time, and can change day by day depending on your actions or inaction. It's recommended you build as much anti radiation and anti monster machines as possible or you'll be pee pee smacked with numerous radioactive clouds or The Black Stalker themselves going out of their way to kill you if you don't build the machine to halt the cosmic storm though you could complete your mission easily before this stuff happens.
The gunplay is simple, you can pick up and use certain weapons (though you can't loot them off soldiers most of the time because of "Biometric Locks", which blows wads faster than my boyfriend does but I digress) as well as create your own (which are the standard affair of Revolver, Makarov, AK, Shotgun, Railgun, and Crossbow I believe). Each serve their own purpose and can be used effectively defending on your situation. However using these weapons should be used only in certain times cause if you start shooting soldiers for fun, it'll tank your "Psyche". You have the usual health meter as well to worry about, as well as avoiding radiation (which is actually kind of easy to me in this game) which can affect your health meter if it gets filled up too high. There's also certain environments where if you have lock picks or anti-chernobylite flares can open up new areas for clues for your wife's death or loot; as well as strange encounters in the environment with hallucinations or attempted executions, the usual affair. Luckily these are marked on your map with a big question mark.
You can choose to send your allies on the loot missions and you effectively have to balance their "I like you cause you chose what I want" meter, with their hunger meter at the end of the day with rationing out supplies. Also, another Fallout 4 mechanic is building your own base, which mostly leads to building structures like beds, VR headsets (which you can use to alter one of your companions feelings towards you once for each companion per play through in case your struggling keeping up with everything), radio stations, weapon workshops, air filtration units, etc. These companions will also train you with the XP you earn, with these training sessions actually being shown to you in real time (like for Mikhael, running out and looting as much mushrooms and roots as you can in a minute).
The sound design and the art design are fantastic, and the whole green hue fits perfectly with the whole STALKER sci-fi thing they have going. The soundtrack is also good, not too many tracks that standout but it works.
Now for flaws, as it's not perfect. There are moments of genius, but also moments where the game just has a stroke and decides to not to work. There's been times where I've been caught on certain things in the environment but nothing is as painful as the constant crashing and my favorite: the portal gun disappearing. Yes, remember that portal gun I mentioned earlier? The only way you exit an environment is by using this and by god, if you have a mechanic where the only way you can leave is to use this, make sure it works. There's been numerous times where I'd have to exit the game, then reload, only for it to be a hit or miss chance at it coming back. If you want my advice on it, if you ever get stuck, what I did was run way across the map to hit another save checkpoint, quit the game and then come back to it. If it doesn't work keep trying or you might alternatively have to restart the mission which sucks and I had to do that once or twice. Now I heard the dev patched it, so I have no clue why I had it going. Maybe my save was from before the patch? I don't know.
tl;dr: STALKER meets Fallout 4, most of it is small scale genius with a lot of bugs. Get on sale, it's a good one and I wish I could say more here but character limits.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
The plot starts off with you playing as a scientist named Igor, who gets a picture of his missing wife Tatyana, whom disappeared thirty years ago, right before the Chernobyl Incident. Being haunted in his dreams, he goes back to hunt down any leads and figure out what happened to his wife; sneaking into the power plant where him and his wife used to work, s h i t goes to hell resulting in one of his mercenaries that he hired being murdered by a being known as The Black Stalker, him stealing a crystal to create a portal gun, and green s h i t flying. With everything going to hell, Igor decides that he needs to figure out a plan, gain allies, build up his base and find the answers leading to what happened.
To finalize the plot, I wanna discuss the remaining parts that hit me and a part that kind of lost me a bit. You do your final heist, you learn that one of your men is a spy, and then you finally learn that The Black Stalker isn't Boris (a friend who you learn turned himself into The Black Stalker after betraying your wife to the local soviet shadow government after she rejected his advances), it's actually the REAL Igor. You are a clone created during the experiments, given a sweater and dropped off somewhere where you eventually come back after your big bad guy Semonov manipulates events to get you to come back. It also turns out that your wife that's talking to you in hallucinations the whole time has been The Chernobylite itself, which is some cosmic being inside the material, with the portals and wormholes and whatever the hell being the veins. The comparisons to a cosmic turtle really brought to mind memories of Stephen King's It, with the "Good" presence being a cosmic turtle. It's a strange thing, but I really like that idea that you're being manipulated by this cosmic mineral being. The thing I don't particularly care about is the clone thing, cause I feel like that's kind of a cop out and an awful plot twist, I would've preferred if they had just made it an alternate universe Igor who messed up and was the bad guy, or they had just stuck with Boris though I think the alternate universe Igor killed Boris and took his identity? I'm unsure, that whole thing was confusing personally to me and was the one thing about the ending I didn't care for. Other than that, I like the plot twists and turns, how your choices affect the outcome, and some of the sci-fi explanations for stuff as well as the character's personal investment in it. It's not some mind blowing huge scale RPG but it's stuff that I enjoy.
I'll say with the plot that personally I love it, and even though the whole "Alternate Dimensions" thing has been used to death in every form of media these past many years, I thought it's effects on the gameplay were actually really cool. In a cool blending of story/gameplay, you have an option in the early part to burn some documents or save them. If you save them, you get another clue that's closer to finding your wife, however that leads to consequences down the line where it ends up triggering traps that kills a bunch of soldiers but leads you into an ambush where you get thrown out of the building in an explosion and captured. I don't want to go any further in the choices but that to me felt cool, and I didn't expect it coming like that, however you can change outcomes if you have enough Chernobylite too. Go into a radioactive zone and die (at the cost of losing inventory items) or if you have enough supplies to build a radioactive machine, you can kill yourself in the machine and use some Chernobylite to change certain scenes to build up a rapport with your allies or switch around certain fates if you're looking to get other clues. Every decision has an effect on the game in some way and I like it like that.
This segways perfectly into game play for me; don't go into this expecting some giant STALKER or Fallout RPG. Even though it's basically Stalkout 4, it's also not. Chernobyl is split into a couple different sections, each one where you can choose to do main quests or side stuff like gathering supplies or hunting monsters. You'll be seeing these A LOT in your time, and can change day by day depending on your actions or inaction. It's recommended you build as much anti radiation and anti monster machines as possible or you'll be pee pee smacked with numerous radioactive clouds or The Black Stalker themselves going out of their way to kill you if you don't build the machine to halt the cosmic storm though you could complete your mission easily before this stuff happens.
The gunplay is simple, you can pick up and use certain weapons (though you can't loot them off soldiers most of the time because of "Biometric Locks", which blows wads faster than my boyfriend does but I digress) as well as create your own (which are the standard affair of Revolver, Makarov, AK, Shotgun, Railgun, and Crossbow I believe). Each serve their own purpose and can be used effectively defending on your situation. However using these weapons should be used only in certain times cause if you start shooting soldiers for fun, it'll tank your "Psyche". You have the usual health meter as well to worry about, as well as avoiding radiation (which is actually kind of easy to me in this game) which can affect your health meter if it gets filled up too high. There's also certain environments where if you have lock picks or anti-chernobylite flares can open up new areas for clues for your wife's death or loot; as well as strange encounters in the environment with hallucinations or attempted executions, the usual affair. Luckily these are marked on your map with a big question mark.
You can choose to send your allies on the loot missions and you effectively have to balance their "I like you cause you chose what I want" meter, with their hunger meter at the end of the day with rationing out supplies. Also, another Fallout 4 mechanic is building your own base, which mostly leads to building structures like beds, VR headsets (which you can use to alter one of your companions feelings towards you once for each companion per play through in case your struggling keeping up with everything), radio stations, weapon workshops, air filtration units, etc. These companions will also train you with the XP you earn, with these training sessions actually being shown to you in real time (like for Mikhael, running out and looting as much mushrooms and roots as you can in a minute).
The sound design and the art design are fantastic, and the whole green hue fits perfectly with the whole STALKER sci-fi thing they have going. The soundtrack is also good, not too many tracks that standout but it works.
Now for flaws, as it's not perfect. There are moments of genius, but also moments where the game just has a stroke and decides to not to work. There's been times where I've been caught on certain things in the environment but nothing is as painful as the constant crashing and my favorite: the portal gun disappearing. Yes, remember that portal gun I mentioned earlier? The only way you exit an environment is by using this and by god, if you have a mechanic where the only way you can leave is to use this, make sure it works. There's been numerous times where I'd have to exit the game, then reload, only for it to be a hit or miss chance at it coming back. If you want my advice on it, if you ever get stuck, what I did was run way across the map to hit another save checkpoint, quit the game and then come back to it. If it doesn't work keep trying or you might alternatively have to restart the mission which sucks and I had to do that once or twice. Now I heard the dev patched it, so I have no clue why I had it going. Maybe my save was from before the patch? I don't know.
tl;dr: STALKER meets Fallout 4, most of it is small scale genius with a lot of bugs. Get on sale, it's a good one and I wish I could say more here but character limits.
From Steam Reviews: https://steamcommunity.com/id/gamemast15r/recommended/
Me lembra a minha ex.
This is a really gorgeous game that has a gameplay loop that really clicked with me and a story that had me interested until they fumbled it at the end.
It’s also incredibly janky. I had many bugs and a few freezes in my playthrough, with a crash or two sprinkled on top. Most animations are bad and the human characters just look terrible (which is why they all have their face covered). The localization is also full of typos and poor grammar, not to mention having a different voice actor voice at least one line by the main character that you are going to hear multiple times in a playthrough. But none of it was bad enough that it took me out of the experience, I usually just chuckled and moved on.
I really like the snappiness and immediacy of the combat. It’s very quick and brutal like a real gunfight would be. Everyone (including you) dies in a matter of one or two hits from most weapons. The weapons also just feel really good, especially the shotgun.
The survival elements had me on my toes for maybe the first five hours but it didn’t take long for me to get things to a point where I didn’t need to worry about it anymore. At the beginning I had to make a couple tough choices but it didn’t extend much past that.
What really surprised me were how effective the horror elements were. There were quite a few moments where I was genuinely on edge and scared during my playthrough. The monsters are suitably creepy and the music works with the visuals so well that some parts of the game are surprisingly scary.
The story has some really neat things in it and had me interested until the end. I love the setting and I enjoyed going through each character’s story and having to make those hard decisions and sometimes make calls I really don’t want to. The ending was pretty bad though. The lead up to it is pretty cool and I liked the heist a lot but after that it’s just a twist that ruined a pretty interesting villain and a Fallout-esque slideshow telling you what happened to all the people you met along the way. It just left me feeling empty.
Overall, as much as I don’t like the ending, it didn’t hurt the whole experience enough that I wouldn’t recommend it. I genuinely enjoyed much of my time with it despite it being a janky and buggy mess.
It’s also incredibly janky. I had many bugs and a few freezes in my playthrough, with a crash or two sprinkled on top. Most animations are bad and the human characters just look terrible (which is why they all have their face covered). The localization is also full of typos and poor grammar, not to mention having a different voice actor voice at least one line by the main character that you are going to hear multiple times in a playthrough. But none of it was bad enough that it took me out of the experience, I usually just chuckled and moved on.
I really like the snappiness and immediacy of the combat. It’s very quick and brutal like a real gunfight would be. Everyone (including you) dies in a matter of one or two hits from most weapons. The weapons also just feel really good, especially the shotgun.
The survival elements had me on my toes for maybe the first five hours but it didn’t take long for me to get things to a point where I didn’t need to worry about it anymore. At the beginning I had to make a couple tough choices but it didn’t extend much past that.
What really surprised me were how effective the horror elements were. There were quite a few moments where I was genuinely on edge and scared during my playthrough. The monsters are suitably creepy and the music works with the visuals so well that some parts of the game are surprisingly scary.
The story has some really neat things in it and had me interested until the end. I love the setting and I enjoyed going through each character’s story and having to make those hard decisions and sometimes make calls I really don’t want to. The ending was pretty bad though. The lead up to it is pretty cool and I liked the heist a lot but after that it’s just a twist that ruined a pretty interesting villain and a Fallout-esque slideshow telling you what happened to all the people you met along the way. It just left me feeling empty.
Overall, as much as I don’t like the ending, it didn’t hurt the whole experience enough that I wouldn’t recommend it. I genuinely enjoyed much of my time with it despite it being a janky and buggy mess.
Definitely rips from other games - mostly S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Fallout - but compelling enough on it's own and brings enough to the table to be worth a play. Love the sandbox element; throws you to the wolves and says "go" and never lets up, and it quickly becomes a gloriously stressful experience. A vibe game if the vibes were always bad.
Story could be stronger and the characters are woefully lacking, but the final mission and twists are suitably gonzo enough that it makes the whole experience memorable. Mostly a gameplay and atmospheric experience though, and on that front it really succeeds. Looks great for an small indie title too, downright gorgeous at points. Solid stuff!
Story could be stronger and the characters are woefully lacking, but the final mission and twists are suitably gonzo enough that it makes the whole experience memorable. Mostly a gameplay and atmospheric experience though, and on that front it really succeeds. Looks great for an small indie title too, downright gorgeous at points. Solid stuff!
Story was okay, gameplay was okay but got repetitive and it was a blast to explore a 3d scanned Chernobyl, base building i felt it was lacking, just used to craft stuff and i felt it could've been a little bit more important/bigger side of the gameplay. The choices and going back to change them is an interesting idea.
Chernobylite is a fun romp across the Chornobyl exclusion zone that you can easily 100% in 16 hours. It does become quite stale towards the tail end when you figure everything out already, but thanks to its design missions can be rushed through easily. The last mission is quite a fun 'suicide mission' where companions you gathered throughout the game can die, Mass Effect 2 style. The combat is very 'ehhhh', the story is fun with a last-second twist that might not land depending on what you expected from it, and the atmosphere and exploration aspects are second to none. Although, you cannot shake the feeling that this game could have been so much more. I pray for a Chernobylite 2 with an open world, expanded building, and more enemy variety. I am not crazy about open-world games, but this would be perfect for that, or a STALKER-like open areas.
This was fun. It is very rough around the edges but it was a fun experience nonetheless. The day-mission mechanic was pretty cool and the vase building was interesting enough to keep me hooked
Great concept with interesting mechanics and gameplay loop, but fails to execute on being anything other than "grindy"
Chernobylite incorporated a few traditional RPG elements while also attempting to hold up as a first-person shooter, but it mastered none and remained in a middle ground. I found early exploration to be pretty great, the decrepit and bleak environments beautiful due to 3D scanning, yet the maps offered very little later on, and the story suffered with pacing. The missions themselves, which usually consisted of going from point A to B, got repetitive.
The most ambitious thing about it had to be the ability to change every decision, of which there were many, resulting in the timeline being altered. I'd never before encountered such a mechanic.
The most ambitious thing about it had to be the ability to change every decision, of which there were many, resulting in the timeline being altered. I'd never before encountered such a mechanic.
Tourism is fun
A exploration game with RPG elements. Feels like if Metro had a son with STALKER and it had an identity crisis. It really doesn't feel as great as any of the other 2. But it does bring stuff that's interesting to the table.
very beautifull game, gameplay is good, story even better, nothing to complain
ortalamanın bir tık üstü olacak yani 3 puan iyi bir sonu olursa 3,5 puan verecektim ama oyunda içerik tükenmesine rağmen hikaye yeterli hızda ilerlemedi ki belli bir yerden sonra zaten craftlayacak birşey olmadığı için etraftaki lootları toplamayı bıraktım yani full ana görevden gittim. ama yine de son yapmamız gereken panoda asılı olan plan için yeterli 2 kişiyi bulamadım be birkaç şey daha eksikti. oyunda ölünce eski seçimlerinizi değişitirme seçeneği var geçmişte ekibe katamadığım micheal di sanırım ismi kişiyi ekibime katabilirdim ama yine de 1 kişi eksik olacaktık ve oliver plan yetersiz olduğu için yardıma gelmeyecekti yani 3 kişi olacaktık ve plan yine zortlyacaktı. belki oyunu 1 - 2 saat daha oynasam plandaki eksikleri tamamlayıp son vurgunu yapıp oyunu sonlandıracaktım, tatyana ya ne olduğunu felan öğrenecektim. ama bi baygınlık hissi geldi ve katlanamadım. o yüzden puanım ortalamanın bir tık altı 2 yani bir tık kötü felan fıstık llanı
Fun and immersive + atmospheric game, but not without its faults. If I had to give a very overly generalized comparison I'd say its an indie combo of STALKER and Fallout 4, with the good and bad of both included.
The game's pacing in the first half is good, but before the last quarter-ish of the game I had nearly all the materials necessary which trivialized the base building aspect. On normal, I started playing with stealth in mind but you end up steamrolling enemies with all the upgrades and then you're just running through missions to get it completed.
The story snippets get tedious and nearly frustrating in some regard, I did end up skipping through a good chunk of the more narrative-heavy missions near the end. The overarching story is fun though and I like overall how they incorporated progression into your exploration. Missions are segmented into individual levels that you'll return to over time instead of a single open-world experience.
The morality system is...fine...once you realize it's kind of useless I didn't really care about my decisions other than how it might change my companion's standing with me and possible future choices.
You'll likely 100% the game / achievements in a regular playthrough if you do all the missions correctly (I messed up one mission and only realized it at the end, didn't bother to go back to the middle of the game to get it).
The game is somewhat crashy too, to the point was when I went to leave this review I was surprised it wasn't in Early Access lol. The save system is adequate though and I didn't run into the issues I saw in some other reviews.
If the game was any more padded out before reaching the end I'd probably be leaving a negative review. But at a little over 20 hours it didn't overstay its welcome too much. I got this on sale for $15 and it was definitely a steal, knowing what I know now I would've been fine paying the full $30.
My recommendation: if you like the setting and want a STALKER-lite (badum tsh) experience, its worth your money. Just know you might need to push through to get to the end. I definitely see myself replaying this in the future on a higher difficulty.
The game's pacing in the first half is good, but before the last quarter-ish of the game I had nearly all the materials necessary which trivialized the base building aspect. On normal, I started playing with stealth in mind but you end up steamrolling enemies with all the upgrades and then you're just running through missions to get it completed.
The story snippets get tedious and nearly frustrating in some regard, I did end up skipping through a good chunk of the more narrative-heavy missions near the end. The overarching story is fun though and I like overall how they incorporated progression into your exploration. Missions are segmented into individual levels that you'll return to over time instead of a single open-world experience.
The morality system is...fine...once you realize it's kind of useless I didn't really care about my decisions other than how it might change my companion's standing with me and possible future choices.
You'll likely 100% the game / achievements in a regular playthrough if you do all the missions correctly (I messed up one mission and only realized it at the end, didn't bother to go back to the middle of the game to get it).
The game is somewhat crashy too, to the point was when I went to leave this review I was surprised it wasn't in Early Access lol. The save system is adequate though and I didn't run into the issues I saw in some other reviews.
If the game was any more padded out before reaching the end I'd probably be leaving a negative review. But at a little over 20 hours it didn't overstay its welcome too much. I got this on sale for $15 and it was definitely a steal, knowing what I know now I would've been fine paying the full $30.
My recommendation: if you like the setting and want a STALKER-lite (badum tsh) experience, its worth your money. Just know you might need to push through to get to the end. I definitely see myself replaying this in the future on a higher difficulty.
A lovely homage to STALKER/Roadside Picnic that took just under 24 hours to 100%. Really neat timeline change mechanic, and an interesting story with a better ending than most STALKER stories.
Chernobylite é uma obra que apresenta conceitos interessantes. Infelizmente, o game tenta introduzir muitos elementos complexos e acaba não se aprofundando em nenhum deles. Por outro lado, o forte aspecto de jogabilidade de sobrevivência acaba tornando o jogo divertido e variado, principalmente para os jogadores que gostam de adentrar em mundos imersivos e atmosféricos.
Por fim, Chernobylite é um ótimo jogo de sobrevivência, que poderia ter sido melhor trabalhado em seus elementos narrativos e sobrenaturais.
Por fim, Chernobylite é um ótimo jogo de sobrevivência, que poderia ter sido melhor trabalhado em seus elementos narrativos e sobrenaturais.
in a broad sense, AAA game design has abandoned the "fps campaign" game. not even just AAA production, it has for the most part disappeared in the space (no i don't play call of duty). it was a staple whose height was seen with the release of the masterpiece title HALO 3 (2007) and ever since has been in economic rivalry with its competitive multiplayer counterpart. it seems that the 2010's was the decade where "multiplayer" as a concept won out against "story". now, don't get me wrong, there are plenty of narrative driven games releasing everyday. their production was/has never been stalled or stopped. the democratization of game tools in the same decade gave an outburst of independent games giving me some of my most very treasured game experiences i've ever had. i genuinely think too that games are only getting better and better as a medium.
but for this genre and many others, the economics of multiplayer games won out. story production requires narrative cost, models and voice actors and continuity of unique environments. the production of something like halo 3 will probably never be seen again until the player demand curves back towards this brand of spectacle (consider too: MGS4). linear spaces that you traverse from A --> B and never revisit have no additional production value. individual assets can be reused but at that time, that would have been noticed and criticized. expectations have changed and players are fine with static content as long as the perspectives have changed. players go back and forth across the same open-world game or the same map as long as the gameplay remains fun and inviting.
think overwatch and the advent of "battle royale" games. think about the death of medal of honor and staple titles like battlefield abandoning the campaign mode. players are more than ever driven by emergent narrative of their own pursuits. think rust and its huge world of starting from scratch and forming your own massive land empire. think destiny and the shifting towards gaas in the space. the mmo-ization of most games. studios scale around distributed releases of new content. endless esports for those who dream of being the best of the best and endless environments for those who just want to be social with one another.
all of this is my bias, with probably most likely incorrect takes on the industry, based on what has been accessible to me in english language, living in the USA. i miss the campaign shooter, let alone just the campaign spectacle. if someone illuminated me to a whole litany of games of this species, i would acknowledge my foolheadedness of writing this and go straight to playing them. and so when i had heard of chernobylite, i just knew i had to play it. i purchased it two days later.
chernobylite in many ways feels like a game made in reconciliation of all of these aforementioned production realities. it is a singleplayer FPS game indeed, but the systems it uses are an amalgamation of popular mechanics of its time.
pripyat is divided into sections that the player can revisit depending on their given task. that task is a mission assigned daily to the player. the player has a team of possible characters they can assign to missions that have an RNG outcome based on the character and their equipment. there is a main base and a crafting element as well as resource gathering and management. through slow exploration of the many map sections, you can under go investigations and learn vital information about the world all of which will be vital for one final mission, a "heist" as the game declares, which is the focal point you're working towards since the start of the game. the heist has a list of requirements to meet or else you will not be able to do it.
i list out all these systems quite concretely because i want to emphasize this a systems driven game. and that type of game inherently has issues dependent on how well the systems support one another. the biggest issue is that the survival loop is solved incredibly quickly by just engaging with it. if you explore every map starting with day one thoroughly, you will never be troubled for food and you'll have enough materials to go through the building tree by day eight or nine. this is a game that forces you to do only one mission a day and i believe i finished the game around day thirty. you can infer the pacing issues there-of.
most of the enemy encounters are trivial by the point you craft a crossbow which can headshot any enemy (until very late into the game). maybe some players will avoid the crossbow -- most encounters, nearly all can be avoided via stealth. and combat encounters are never overwhelming. at most each map you visit (and revisit) will have a few soldiers on obvious patrol pathing. the only punishment for killing soldiers is damage to your "psyche" meter which is easily healed by an abundant resource (alcohol) and healed by food at the end of the day.
difficulty options are just inherently not great. it's hard in game design to communicate difficulty via different options of "easy, normal, hard" -- i went for normal and essentially made the game trivial 30% of the way through the story. after this point i rushed each area and only did the mission because the back and forth due to each system (micromanaging your team, offloading bulk items, arranging inventory etc) just took too much time itself. this is the issue inherent to systems driven games. if the game depends on all the systems working in tandem to create a certain game presence, if some of them drop out -- the presence disappears. the totality suddenly breaks down into parts. what was fun has become a chore that must be repeated time and time again.
i will remember chernobylite primarily for its bookends. the beginning of the game was great, and so too did i enjoy the heist. i loved meeting the characters and building the base and the feeling of slowly gaining a footing in the world. and although simple, i loved the heist and the decisions involved and how it felt like combat wasn't the focus of it. and i especially loved seeing characters actually modeled and existing in the world, instead of just picking up an audiotape and listening to someone talk at me. and something i didn't mention before, the mechanic of "change", was quite welcome and feels the most realized out of all the systems in the game. even if the narrative doesn't hold up in the end, the fact that i engaged with the game's choices on a deep layer is proof of concept.
but for this genre and many others, the economics of multiplayer games won out. story production requires narrative cost, models and voice actors and continuity of unique environments. the production of something like halo 3 will probably never be seen again until the player demand curves back towards this brand of spectacle (consider too: MGS4). linear spaces that you traverse from A --> B and never revisit have no additional production value. individual assets can be reused but at that time, that would have been noticed and criticized. expectations have changed and players are fine with static content as long as the perspectives have changed. players go back and forth across the same open-world game or the same map as long as the gameplay remains fun and inviting.
think overwatch and the advent of "battle royale" games. think about the death of medal of honor and staple titles like battlefield abandoning the campaign mode. players are more than ever driven by emergent narrative of their own pursuits. think rust and its huge world of starting from scratch and forming your own massive land empire. think destiny and the shifting towards gaas in the space. the mmo-ization of most games. studios scale around distributed releases of new content. endless esports for those who dream of being the best of the best and endless environments for those who just want to be social with one another.
all of this is my bias, with probably most likely incorrect takes on the industry, based on what has been accessible to me in english language, living in the USA. i miss the campaign shooter, let alone just the campaign spectacle. if someone illuminated me to a whole litany of games of this species, i would acknowledge my foolheadedness of writing this and go straight to playing them. and so when i had heard of chernobylite, i just knew i had to play it. i purchased it two days later.
chernobylite in many ways feels like a game made in reconciliation of all of these aforementioned production realities. it is a singleplayer FPS game indeed, but the systems it uses are an amalgamation of popular mechanics of its time.
pripyat is divided into sections that the player can revisit depending on their given task. that task is a mission assigned daily to the player. the player has a team of possible characters they can assign to missions that have an RNG outcome based on the character and their equipment. there is a main base and a crafting element as well as resource gathering and management. through slow exploration of the many map sections, you can under go investigations and learn vital information about the world all of which will be vital for one final mission, a "heist" as the game declares, which is the focal point you're working towards since the start of the game. the heist has a list of requirements to meet or else you will not be able to do it.
i list out all these systems quite concretely because i want to emphasize this a systems driven game. and that type of game inherently has issues dependent on how well the systems support one another. the biggest issue is that the survival loop is solved incredibly quickly by just engaging with it. if you explore every map starting with day one thoroughly, you will never be troubled for food and you'll have enough materials to go through the building tree by day eight or nine. this is a game that forces you to do only one mission a day and i believe i finished the game around day thirty. you can infer the pacing issues there-of.
most of the enemy encounters are trivial by the point you craft a crossbow which can headshot any enemy (until very late into the game). maybe some players will avoid the crossbow -- most encounters, nearly all can be avoided via stealth. and combat encounters are never overwhelming. at most each map you visit (and revisit) will have a few soldiers on obvious patrol pathing. the only punishment for killing soldiers is damage to your "psyche" meter which is easily healed by an abundant resource (alcohol) and healed by food at the end of the day.
difficulty options are just inherently not great. it's hard in game design to communicate difficulty via different options of "easy, normal, hard" -- i went for normal and essentially made the game trivial 30% of the way through the story. after this point i rushed each area and only did the mission because the back and forth due to each system (micromanaging your team, offloading bulk items, arranging inventory etc) just took too much time itself. this is the issue inherent to systems driven games. if the game depends on all the systems working in tandem to create a certain game presence, if some of them drop out -- the presence disappears. the totality suddenly breaks down into parts. what was fun has become a chore that must be repeated time and time again.
i will remember chernobylite primarily for its bookends. the beginning of the game was great, and so too did i enjoy the heist. i loved meeting the characters and building the base and the feeling of slowly gaining a footing in the world. and although simple, i loved the heist and the decisions involved and how it felt like combat wasn't the focus of it. and i especially loved seeing characters actually modeled and existing in the world, instead of just picking up an audiotape and listening to someone talk at me. and something i didn't mention before, the mechanic of "change", was quite welcome and feels the most realized out of all the systems in the game. even if the narrative doesn't hold up in the end, the fact that i engaged with the game's choices on a deep layer is proof of concept.
7/10
Cool atmosphere, strange gameplay and weak story
Cool atmosphere, strange gameplay and weak story
Un juego bastante majo de viajes en el tiempo y supervivencia en chernobyl, se vuelve bastante repetitivo rapido y las mecanicas principales no estan del todo bien explicadas, pero si te molan estas cosas no dudes en darle un intento.