Chernobylite PS5 – Review

My Geiger counter starts ticking steadily within the first five minutes of Chernobylite.. The ominous croak fades into the background as I keep up with my two grizzled Stalkers. To my knowledge, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant holds a great deal of potential.

The Farm 51, the company behind the game, is open about its influences. Just looking at Chernobylite doesn’t show how much effort was put into creating their own unique take on the Stalker genre.

Chernobylite has a straightforward premise for a supernatural sci-fi survival game. Igor, a former physicist, is on a mission to find his wife, who went missing thirty years ago under mysterious circumstances.

Finding clues in the real world helps Igor in his investigation (which includes betrayal, romance, and the KGB), which he uses to run a virtual reality simulation that can recreate past events. String-web intricacies of a pin-up board chart your progress as in all great investigations.

When it comes to finding answers at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, Igor is convinced that a shady private military firm has secured the facility, making entry impossible without assistance.

As a result, the actual game has begun. You’ll go on a series of missions to assemble the right crew and gather all the necessary equipment and data before the big heist. You’ll be able to pick and choose which daily tasks you complete from a warehouse base high above the exclusion zone.

In Chernobylite, the mission structure is similar to that of Dishonored. It’s a lot like playing a video game where you’re dropped into an open world with a few side objectives and a main goal to accomplish along the way. If you return to the map in future missions, your actions in these tasks can have a direct impact on the environment. A second playthrough would have a very different ending than the one I got the first time around because of the game’s decision-making system.

If you make too many disapproving choices, your supposed allies will turn against you. This is one of the most important decisions you’ll have to make in the game. Without giving anything away, tens of seemingly minor decisions can have a profound impact on the outcome of the heist. Despite this, it is a solid system.

The missions in Chernobylite are enjoyable, despite the game’s tendency to focus on a small number of locations. Since your supplies and health are limited, you’ll have to pick and choose your battles carefully, usually using stealth to take out targets one by one. Gunplay is still enjoyable despite the lack of variety in enemies, which feels like a lack of use of the supernatural.

Outside of combat, the game flirts with horror, but it doesn’t go all in. A jittery, stutter-stepping ghost is one of the scariest parts of the film, but the cheap and frequent jump scares detract from the overall experience for the non-Stalker.

Chernobyl was a frequent destination for Farm 51 researchers, as evidenced by their reports. As a result, the game immerses players in environments that look and feel exactly like the irradiated version of the real world. From the Red Forest to the Port of Pripyat, the Exclusion Zone is brought vividly to life in each location.

To top it all off, I was able to play at maximum settings with my ageing 1060 graphics card. There is no motion blur, which was quickly turned off because it was so nauseous to look at.

There will be time to relax and unwind after a mission is completed. Additionally, you’ll be able to use any skill points you’ve accrued throughout the day to unlock powerful bonuses.

By handing over skill points to members of your team, you’ll be taken on a short mission to learn the perk. In addition to making you feel more connected to the world, it’s a nice touch.

Even though you live in a warehouse, it’s hard to feel connected to the place you call home, even though you spend most of your time there. Many options exist for building, but most of them are unnecessary and waste resources that could be better spent on actual supplies. Thus, rather than creating a comfortable home worth spending time in, the system feels more like checking off a list of items (comfort, air quality, etc.).

Chernobylite’s biggest flaw is that it’s not restricted to the warehouse. It’s difficult to feel like you’re truly living in the world because of the game’s segmented missions. A shame, because so much effort has clearly been put into making the environment believable, but the disconnect between every area is just a little too much.

In my mind, that sums up my grievances with Chernobylite. It’s got all the building blocks – and a good portion of the whole, spooky house – to be a great game. What is the premise of being a Stalker day in and day out? Incredible. The supporting cast is interesting, and I had fun juggling the demands of my team while pursuing the game’s central quest, which is woven into a web of conspiracy theories.

It’s a real shame, but the general sense of disconnection persists – as if too many numbers-based mechanics and loading screens are the only thing preventing players from fully embracing the Stalker lifestyle.