Anyone here played Chernobylite?

[Sarafan]

I grabbed the game recently on Humble Budle via the Survival Instincts bundle and it was a good decision. It's not a game with very big budget and you have to take that into account when playing, but the atmosphere is unbelievable. It's even better than in STALKER series. The game actually managed to scare me at some point, which didn't happen in years. It's worth your attention even solely for the atmosphere.

I also enjoy the story. It doesn't focus on saving the world, but rather on a personal tale. Nice refreshment from most games. Gameplay has its flaws though. You have to visit the same locations multiple times, but again, we have to keep in mind that the game had a limited budget. Also it seems quite easy on medium difficulty. Probably I should've picked something higher. The game has also a very specific pace. Mostly it's quite slow which intensifies the atmosphere. But there are moments when the action speeds up (mostly during fights).

The developers didn't cut the spending on graphics however. The game supports ray tracing and looks tremendous. All this thanks to photogrammetry, which ensures the textures are very realistic and taken straight form the Chernobyl exclusion zone. Check out the screenshots yourself. Ray tracing on Ultra + DLSS on Quality mode.

 

[Frindis]

Will try it out at some point before Stalker 2 releases. I got most of the game in the Survival Instincts bundle, so I have to wait for another deal. It looks quite sharp and it is almost like I am seeing Stalker 2, which says a lot about the quality.

 

[Sarafan]

Will try it out at some point before Stalker 2 releases. I got most of the game in the Survival Instincts bundle, so I have to wait for another deal. It looks quite sharp and it is almost like I am seeing Stalker 2, which says a lot about the quality.

The Survival Instincts bundle costs almost the same as Chernobylite on Steam and GOG when it was on sale lately, so even if you own most of the games, it's still an ok deal. And you can donate almost everything to charity, if you want.

As for the game, it indeed looks as good as STALKER 2 on trailers and screenshots, so that's a major achievement for such a small studio. Also I doubt that STALKER 2 will beat the game's atmosphere.

 

[Frindis]

@Sarafan I appreciate that you can donate everything to charity. I did that with Runescape: Paths to Adventure Bundle and gave everything to the charity. I think HumbleBundle could do better at mentioning that because a lot of people don't know that you can adjust the donation slider.

 

[Sarafan]

@Sarafan I appreciate that you can donate everything to charity. I did that with Runescape: Paths to Adventure Bundle and gave everything to the charity. I think HumbleBundle could do better at mentioning that because a lot of people don't know that you can adjust the donation slider.

That's true. The custom donation proportions sliders are hidden unfortunately. But it's not in the publishers interest to make this option fully visible. They might be afraid that too many people would decrease the publishers share. The bundles are also a form of business and charity is only an addition.

 

[Brian Boru]

If I recall correctly, @Frag Maniac played it a while back and liked it.

 

[ipman]

I'd really like to play this game and a few other similar ones, but I can't get my head around FPS, or FP driving games.

I suppose it's because all the games I've played aren't FPS. I wish all games had options about that.

 

[Sarafan]

I'd really like to play this game and a few other similar ones, but I can't get my head around FPS, or FP driving games.

I suppose it's because all the games I've played aren't FPS. I wish all games had options about that.

Does it have something to do with motion sickness?

 

[ipman]

Does it have something to do with motion sickness?

I do get motion sickness, but I think it's just because all the games I played had a 3rd person perspective and I just got used to it. But I am fascinated by that whole Pripyat area and there are at least three games I wanted to play.

Maybe someone will mod them. But I find driving a car FP to be a nightmare, maybe a steering wheel helps.

 

[Frag Maniac]

If I recall correctly, @Frag Maniac played it a while back and liked it.

Initially I did, but after finishing it I also said I really didn't like the need to micro manage your rep with the team you recruit. If your rep isn't at a certain level, you can't even finish the final mission. Yet they also make it SO easy to change decisions you make via a walk through another dimension where all the encounters where you made those decisions are presented, at which point you can just rearrange things until you find a result that lets you finish the game. You only have to collect and spend Chernobylite you find in the game to get the decision remapping option. Chernobylite is easy to get once you build the Chernobylite Burner from resources you scavenge.

It's basically a game that had great potential, but these two glaring problems really stick out in both an annoying and contradictorily easy way. It's like they fool you into believing every decision matters hugely, only to find you can easily change them. Through much of the game I was worried that a decision I made to kill one particular guy would ruin my rep with a crew member. It turned out it did, but once I found out how easy it was to fix, I didn't know whether to feel relived, or foolish for thinking my decisions had consequences I would be forced to deal with.

One other thing I didn't like is the only way to get English voice overs in the game is via voices that don't have Russian accents. That may not be a huge problem for some, but to me, it stood out as something that broke down the immersion.

There's a couple other things I didn't like, but I will spoiler tag it...

Spoiler

If you have good rep with your crew and make all the right decisions on the final mission, you can do it with hardly any combat, meaning you only have to fight the main villain. The main villain seems very scary at first, his voice, the weapon he wields, and the way he can teleport in out of nowhere and track you can leave you feeling intimidated. I found out he is very easy to deal with though. His weapon requires a battery, and when it drains, he leaves. The time it lasts is a little longer each encounter, but they show a countdown timer onscreen. So I took to just finding a small structure or even a big rock, and just kept circling around it until his battery drained to save ammo and health. It can be a problem if you're inside a building when he comes, or so I thought. A lot of buildings have dilapidated elevator shafts with broken steel framework inside. All you have to do is jump down onto part of that framework in between floors and he can't even find you. I just sat there laughing until he left. There is one encounter in the main part of the game before the final mission where you have to fight him if I recall, and it's not bad. The battle at the end though is not too hard if you just pop in and out of cover and use a fairly decent weapon. However there are monsters and other humans in the game that are interesting to battle. The story is mostly well written, especially the ending, but some of their choices on gameplay design felt off to me.

Other than that it's a pretty decent game, but I feel they really limited it's potential with some of the design decisions, which unfortunately are NOT ones that can be easily changed like the ones you make in game. Overall though, I have to agree with Sarafan, that's it's a valiant effort for The Farm 51, which is a relatively small team.

 

[ZedClampet]

I enjoyed what I played of it. I'm just not much of an SP shooter guy.

 

[avatar888]

I stream the game it has taken thousands of hours away from my life.

 

[Sarafan]

More juicy screenshots. The last one is really creepy...

 

[Ryzengang]

I'm definitely going to pick this game up once it's cheap enough on sale. I really just want it for the virtual tourism because it's really a beautiful game.

 

[Frag Maniac]

...it has taken thousands of hours away from my life.

I've learned far too many times that can be a good thing, but also a bad thing.