![]() ![]() They were damaging and effective with the right upgrades, and combat could often be wonky in its controls. There are revolvers, shotguns, and even plasma weapons that can all be upgraded, but I stuck with a revolver and shotgun. Combat against enemies is fairly uninspired. You can take down human enemies with stealth, which is preferred as killing them with your guns leads to your sanity lessening. Neither are particularly difficult to face. Oftentimes you’ll encounter NAR soldiers or extradimensional creatures called Shadows. When you’re exploring the main world, you’re often given a certain story objective. The storytelling in these moments is the best in the game, even if it is a lot of exposition. It does, however, show how lacking much of the game’s main world is. These worlds have buildings, ships, and structures suspended in a twinkling sky and honestly, they’re often breathtaking. The best environments in the game, though, are the ones you visit when you step through a portal or revisit memories. By contrast, there are some moments where things look a little muted and muddy – especially when scavenging in buildings. The PS5 version shines best when you’re exploring areas with soft light filtering through the trees or windows. Much of the world does look good, though. With a setting like Chernobyl, a lot more could have been done. The little that is there tells some worthwhile stories, but I wanted more out of it. Survival horror games often thrive on environmental storytelling, but despite a few instances like a pit full of skeletons and a creepy abandoned summer camp, it isn’t present here. While there are some things to uncover, the world is mostly full of empty spaces and buildings with supplies to pick up. When I read that was the case, I expected a bit more to do and see. The world you explore is a 3D-scanned recreation of the real Exclusion Zone in Chernobyl. In the front half, I explored a lot, but in the second half, I found myself reaching an area, completing the objective, and going back to base. This added a bit of unevenness to the game. As you progress through the story and complete the optional events, you’ll find yourself going into an area and beelining straight for the main objective. On the game’s compass, there are a variety of markers that lead you to some story-based events and other notable interactions. In Chernobylite, however, it’s hard to say exactly why certain areas are available during specific moments, but there were whispers of what I loved about Deathloop here. ![]() To give it some context, it sort of reminded me of Deathloop’s map with different areas that have places available depending on when you go. Each day, you go out into a part of the zone to find supplies, try to recruit people to join you in finding Tatyana, and take down the NAR. The game has an engaging gameplay loop propelled by exploration. From here, things go wrong, you leave the plant, and you must devise a plan to get back in and find her. Igor is haunted by visions of her and is compelled to search for her in the Chernobyl power plant. Why he’s waiting that long to try and find her, you’ll just have to find out. Igor, a Ukrainian physicist, arrives in the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone in search of his fiancée Tatyana, who went missing thirty years prior. Despite that, the protagonist, Igor, and its cast of characters, while cartoonish, make it easy to stick it out to the end.Īt its heart, Chernobylite tells the love story between Igor and Tatyana. Part of that is because the game is trying to balance several things and ultimately, it isn’t overly successful at any of them. While there are scary things in the game, it never reaches the survival horror heights of games like Silent Hill or Resident Evil. While the game is billed as science fiction, survival horror RPG, I often found myself struggling to find the horror in the game’s world and much of the RPG elements felt bare. Chernobylite suffers from an identity problem. ![]()
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