Chernobylite

Kickstarted this game. They've taken their time and modeled a beautiful world with those moments that make your hair stand on end. Theres tons of potential but it is in EA and does need some work. The timed missions (30min) is a general con for most people, myself included. The music is really nice, currently we only have Russian voice with English subtitles. There are still some localization fixes that will come with time in EA like most the issues the community has mentioned to the team. One gripe I have is I wish GOG had an EA program so I could have the game here rather than over on Steam, but thats a personal preference in the end.

I'm seeing a lot of reviews referring to the timer in the game that initially scared me off from buying it while it was on this sale. After doing some research through Steam's discussions and in other places I decided to take the risk and look into it and at least as far as I've managed to play (a few hours, maybe 5 days ingame) there has not been a single timer. The game beyond that is a mixed bag, though; and one I find myself liking overall. A couple of thoughts, in no particular order: -The UI is a bit clunky. I have seen that they are planning some revisions on the dialogue system that look more appropriate and I hope this polish extends to inventory management. --Inventory capacities are small to encourage you bringing things you need with you, but setting up storage and managing these things is a hassle. There are no shortcuts like CTRL click to quickly drop or move a stack to the storage container. Additionally there is no feedback when you're changing the quick item slot that an item goes into, but this is something that you can get used to prety quick after a moment of fumbling. -The game is absolutely gorgeous and atmospheric. Sound and visual design are top-notch. The temp voices are like you've suddenly started listening to the parents from Peanuts, but that IS temporary so whatever. The VA that IS there (in Russian anyhow) is enjoyable even though I don't speak the language. There's a lot of gorgeous particle effects and solid visual design in the game. -Combat is clunky. I like that you can't shoot from the hip, but the melee attack is largely useless and anything less than a headshot feels like wasted ammo. The Chernobylite ghost guys take an obscene amount of bullets if they're not shot in the head and the soldiers fared similarly. This may be a hard difficulty only thing. -Scarcity of resources is weird. I'm playing on hard mode for both difficulties, and find that I have too much ammo, too little of anything else. Is good, not great. Yet.

I was kind of expecting "Stalker Lite", but this game has it's own identity and gameplay loop. It's a nice combination of base management, FPS and Horror game... and so far I find the story quite engaging. Sound and Visuals are great, though I find it's sometimes easy to get stopped by scenery that looks like you can pass through. I highly reccomend the Russian voices with the English subtitles.

I wasn't sure I would enjoy this game much after playing the intro, but once the actually game began, I was quickly impressed. The gameplay loop is ingenious and gives the player a feeling of control and magement without making anything overwhelming or grindy. The graphics are still great in 2025. The story is interesting as well. The writing and voice acting are a little weird, like they used Google Translate instead of hiring someone to localize. Small issue. This game offers tons of fun and tense moments.

First of all, my review is going to be very subjective but I will also point out some things that creators in my opinion could improve. The most annoying for me was that it's really hard to play with a pad. There is no button assigned for running, for opening the inventory or map. I tried all of them and didn't find those functions. Apart from that sometimes camera moves when I don't press any button or move the analog, this is really frustrating too. There isn't any input instruction for pad either. The keyboard one definitely lacks some keys (like for inventory, map, quick access menu...) I don't like characters' animations, they often move very unnaturally but the worst thing is that characters don't have face animations and you can see through Olivier's mask that his eyes don't move, they don't even reflect anything. In prologue there was a moment when my both friends walked through a door at the same moment and their run animations started in the same second, so it was clearly visible that they use the same set of animations and they run identically. I agree with someone's opinion below that it's not clear what you are supposed to do, I mean should I kill enemies or just hide? One shadow used half of my ammunition... When it comes to assigning a mission, I didn't figure out what % below companion means. At first I thoughts it's about chances they will make it, but then I got 59% for staying at home and 78% for a mission so how staying at home is more possible to fail? After my companion failed a mission I couldn't even see what are the consequences and I didn't know what the icon means. Maybe it was because I played with a pad which isn't very functional now... So yep, lots of unexplained things. I played for 2 hours and got 6 crashes in different moments, but mostly during viewing available missions. I really love the environment though, 3D artists did great job (except for some pools) and the climate of abandoned area with monsters is also well done.