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Chernobylite is a game that I was very much excited to give a try for a long time. I let it sit on the back burner because I constantly heard mixed opinions on it, and now that I've played it I can very much say I enjoyed the majority of it. This game is not great, by any stretch of the word, and I think that's part of the charm that makes it so good. An Indie team definitely poured some heart into this and I think that's why I found myself sticking to it, even if some swings are a miss. This game is a janky combination of survival horror and first person shooter mechanics that as much as I enjoyed, really did have me getting drained towards the end of it all.
You play as a scientist named Igor, trying to find his Wife after the Chernobyl disaster, which broke dimensional barriers, introducing this new mineral called "Chernobylite" and bringing forth these monsters into the world. You explore the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone fighting these supernatural creatures, dealing with a PMC group called the NAR that has taken over the Zone and will shoot on sight, and recruiting a band of misfits along the way to help you in the quest for finding your wife. As far as stories are concerned, this is nothing to write home about but the mystery and world building did have interested enough to keep me invested for the remainder of this relatively short game.
The sound design is decent for the most part, I like how the weapons sound, the atmosphere of the world, the little audio queues scattered about. It fits the world, it's good. The only thing I cannot stand, is there is this one ear piercing supernatural sound that plays every now and again that's so out of place it makes my ears bleed and it's used quite a bit. You can also play the game in English or Russian Voice Acting and I absolutely had to go with English, because they got my man Vernon Locke (Payday 2) as the protagonist, but I think the majority of people will choose Russian with subtitles because it definitely fits more.
The game-play loop, is the probably where most people will either enjoy the game and find it a nice chill time or give it up so quickly because it gets repetitive with not a lot of variety to spice it up. Every day you awake at your base of operations, this torn down warehouse, and send yourself out on quests that send you into the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, which they have 3D scanned areas of the real place which makes it mesmerizing to explore. Each morning will bless you with a new main mission quest to go on which progresses the story, and other minor missions that you can send your party members out on to explore and have them bring back resources for. There's only a handful of different maps to explore, which you'll absolutely learn the layout of pretty fast because you keep coming back. You loot, shoot, and repeat, while running from point A-B-C before using your Rick and Morty themed Portal gun to teleport back home.
When you get home, you can then spend the resources you've obtained to deck out your base of operations, building different tools to help you along your way. Work benches to craft weapons, armor, attachments, ammo, med supplies, etc. Storage lockers to hold your supplies, Crops for your food (Everybody has to eat right?), and quality of life tools for your companions that move in with you. Now this mechanic can be as hard or as easy as you'd like it be, because the devs were nice enough to throw in a slider that either throws resources at you left and right or makes them so scarce you're fighting for scraps. I think you'll find a right balance if you're into that, which can completely trivialize this part of the game.
As your party grows, you uncover more of the world in a mixture of missions and notes/documents that you can use on your handy dandy Investigation Board to connect the dots on what actually happened and uncover the truth about your wife, antagonists, and other world elements. Honestly this was one of my favorite parts of the game, because when you obtain enough of those documents you get to enter a simulation using a Chernoyblite powered VR headset that shows you how it happened firsthand.
Story missions have repercussions for what you do in the timeline, your party members can either love or hate you based off what you pick, so if you want everyone to stay with and work with you, it turns into this management sim of min-maxing everyone's feelings just enough so they don't leave. If you don't like a choice you made because it conflicts with something, angering someone too much or getting someone killed, etc, it doesn't matter because CHERNOBYLITE! Go back in time and undo it, change outcomes, twist the past to perfect your future leading up to the final Heist and the ending you want.
This game was fun, janky mess. I never had any major issues with this game, no crashes or freezing but I did have Voice lines talking over each other a couple of times, and subtitles not being accurate. I had one soft-lock with a black screen where I had to reload a slightly older save but personally I expected so many more issues out of this game.
To me at least, Chernobylite has enough charm to keep me glued through it until the end, and I'm absolutely looking forward to the sequel they have announced to be in development because it has a lot of potential. This game won't be for everyone though, but if you can catch this game on sale, and want something to just chill with through I do think it merits at least trying but I personally see this as a one and done. I don't think I'd play through it a second time but I'm glad I did it.