Chernobylite launched back in 2019, bringing with it mostly positive reviews and an interesting hook for a horror-infused 3D survival game – it was made using 3D scans of the actual Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. This points to the developers' intriguing attention to detail, and on more powerful hardware the effort pays off, giving the game an impressive atmosphere full of hazy lighting and palpably tragic ruins. But on the Switch, the impact of the game's most unique feature is unfortunately lost in the visual downgrade.
By far the strongest part of Chernobylite for us was its ambitious storytelling. The story follows Igor Khymynuk, whose goal — to find his wife Tatyana, another scientist, missing in the zone — is convincingly brought to life as he hallucinates through missions and struggles to piece together the clues and trigger the climactic attack on the Chernobyl facility. alone, Tatiana's last known location.
But (and there are several buts) we have rarely played the game so much that it required on-the-go targeting. No matter how much we tweaked the settings, including turning on assist mode, we couldn't find the sweet spot that would make our targeting work. The effect on the FPS side of things – a significant part of the game – was to make it mostly frustrating. We died a lot either aiming at the gray sky, or slowly turning his gaze towards the intended blow to the head. Or a bullet to the body – any bullet to keep us alive.
It should be noted that Chernobylite emphasizes stealth over direct combat. You are not meant to get into these fights if you can avoid them. But being stealthy means crouching and slowly creeping up to each enemy. This gets tiresome and you'll be tempted to fire one of your many pistols as an alternative.
We died a lot, and dying revealed some questionable design choices. Most of the time we ended up trapped (other times, we ended up in a surreal time vortex – you'll have to play to find out why) with our gear stolen and hidden somewhere in the same enemy military base each time. There is a story for that, and it's a very minor variant, but we soon discovered that it was repetitive. Sure, you can save the scum to avoid it, but the momentum of the game suffers.
Other elements – building a base, managing people – were lost in the fallout. Our landings in the exclusion zone, collecting resources, crafting and finding ways to progress in the game were addictive at first like in other survival games, but we soon realized that this loop was difficult. The key elements – equipment to upgrade, unlocking new levels of things to build – are done well enough if you like that flow. For the right person, Chernobylite will still be a very enjoyable time.
We liked a lot of Chernobylite and it's a port that can be played at a pretty solid frame rate, but too many things kept us from giving it a higher rating – the graphical downgrade, the tiresome death loop and, most strangely, the multiple crashes that we experienced in its entirety. We never lost any progress, but it's worth mentioning almost a dozen crashes during the 15-20 hours of operation.
