Chernobylite | Xbox Review

The year 1986 saw three major events that shook the world and changed history. First there was the space shuttle Challenger disaster, then there was the accident at the Chernobyl power station in the Soviet Union. Finally there was the birth of yours truly. I call it the Triple Threat of ’86. Chernobylite, developed by The Farm 51 and published by All In! Games, focuses on the second event. 

For those unfamiliar, in the early morning hours on the 26th of April 1986, a reactor core at the Chernobyl Nuclear Plant in Soviet Ukraine exploded. This accident resulted in tons of deadly radioactive contamination being spewed into the region. Thus prompting the Soviet government to evacuate its citizens, and turning the area into what is now known as the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, a literal radioactive wasteland. The fact that this game is based on actual events truly emphasizes the “horror” in this survival horror game.

In Soviet Russia, Game Plays You

Chernobylite is a first-person survival horror shooter set in the present day within the Exclusion Zone. After the disaster, a strange material has begun to appear in the reactor core and is spreading throughout the region. This is the chernobylite, a crystallized substance that appears to have supernatural properties of an inter-dimensional nature. You play as Prof. Igor Khymynuk (Kim-yin-ook), a Ukrainian physicist who used to work at the plant. He has returned to investigate the disappearance of his missing fiancee. Igor’s first attempt to enter Chernobyl and find answers fails as he is ambushed by the NAR, a private military contractor that has occupied the zone and is studying chernobylite for military purposes. 

The story’s prologue is about as close as this game gets to the historical accuracy of the disaster. The control room of Reactor 4 where the accident occurred seems to have been lifted directly from photos and other historical records. But once the supernatural elements come into play, that’s where the history ends.

“Plan, Strategize, Take It Slow”

The game has a day/night cycle, and you start each day at your base of operations. It is here where you’re presented with a daily list of quests to complete. The Exclusion Zone is separated into different areas, and each area will have a specific task to complete. These range from food, ammo, and medicine drops. As you explore the Zone and progress the campaign, you’ll come across other survivors in the Zone, some of whom can be recruited to your team. Over the course of the game, you will be seeing the same environments over and over again which can grow tiresome.

As each day begins, you assign your NPC companions to the different areas to complete tasks, while Igor goes on the story missions. The success of these missions are determined by the health and morale of your team. The team building mechanic is one of the many things that separates Chernobylite from other survival games of this sort. It’s a really neat mechanic, and I’ve never seen anything like it. It adds a whole other layer to the game and narrative that I haven’t seen in survival games.

All Your Base are Belong To Us

A major gameplay aspect is base building and maintaining balance and comfort within it. You use the resources gathered in the zone to make everything from upgrade stations, workbenches, and power generators, to making beds for your team to sleep. When you build a power generator, it’ll create exhaust fumes, thus you must also craft and build air purification systems. Maintaining a comfortable environment is essential; you’ll also need to add decorations and other accoutrements to your base like some sort of post-apocalyptic Sims game. 

Not only do you need to monitor the health of yourself, but also the health and morale of your team. If the living conditions of your base are poor, and if you don’t give them a place to sleep, food to eat, and don’t treat their wounds, your companions are less likely to successfully complete missions. If you don’t tend to the needs of your team, and don’t make your base as comfortable as possible, they’ll eventually desert you.

Exploring the Zone

As you’d expect, the majority of Chernobylite takes place in the Exclusion Zone, a truly hostile environment. Whether it’s NAR soldiers, chernobylite infected creatures, or the radiation itself, everything either can or will kill you. After the prologue as you begin your first day exploring the zone, you are equipped only with a dosimeter and a pistol. You must keep an eye on your three different vitals: health, radiation and psyche. Remedies can be crafted or collected for each.

The dosimeter is your best friend as not only does it detect radiation levels, but it can also seek out resources and pickups for you. A simple press of a button and it’ll send out a sonar wave which highlights items in the vicinity. Later, it can also be upgraded to highlight enemies as well. Finding other weapons will be a challenge as the game uses that trope of guns having biometric locks, meaning you can’t pick up and use them. It’s becoming quite the cliché these days.

The Technicals

Overall, the graphics, sound design, and the voicework is top notch. Chernobylite can be played with either English or Russian dubs. For authenticity, I played in Russian for the first couple hours but I switched to English once I started having trouble following the story. I enjoyed exploring the different areas accompanied by somber acoustic guitar instrumentals, enhancing the atmosphere of a game set in a real life wasteland. Unfortunately, I was experiencing many technical issues that nearly ruined my overall experience. 

My entire playthrough of Chernobylite was riddled with framerate issues, slowdowns, and other hiccups. Autosaving was also a big issue for me, in that it happens way too frequently. We’re talking every 30 seconds or so and every time this happens, the game would briefly stutter until the save is done. I don’t mind the occasional autosave, but doing it every time I moved from one side of a building to the other was excessive.

This may sound hyperbolic, but in terms of framerate, Cyberpunk 2077 ran better than this. I’m sure if I was playing this on a Series X or maybe even a One X, this probably wouldn’t be an issue. It’s disappointing that recent releases claiming to be optimized for last generation hardware, are probably referring to the enhanced models and not base units. But that’s just speculation on my part based on my experiences with games as of late. 

Final Thoughts

Overall, despite the technical issues, I still got some enjoyment out of Chernobylite. I’m fascinated with the history surrounding the Chernobyl disaster and I watched the HBO miniseries about a dozen times now. I’ve seen other reviewers compare this game to the S.T.A.L.K.E.R franchise, a PC exclusive series I’m personally not familiar with. But after watching a couple gameplay videos also taking place around Chernobyl, the similarities are obvious. At first I thought the story felt convoluted at times, but it all made sense to me once I reached the third act. 

I’m not usually one for slow burning survival horror games, but when I first saw trailers for this game I immediately got excited and the final product still provided me with entertainment. I recommend checking this game out for yourself. I will definitely revisit this game in the future, hopefully on better hardware. My suggestions would be to play on an Xbox One X or PS4 Pro, hopefully that’ll alleviate some of the technical issues I experienced.

This review is based on an Xbox copy of Chernobylite provided by Stride PR for coverage purposes. It is also available on PlayStation and PC via Steam, Epic Games Store, and GOG.