Author: TheAleosha

Completed Chernobylite.
Storywise, Tatyana, the woman in the red dress that Igor looks for, got kidnapped by KGB for being anti-communist. It’s not clear if she really was a traitor, or if it was just Boris ploy for Tatyana refusing him. Then KGB discover that she’s pregnant with a special child, and grow the child in a lab until he escapes.
Boris goes on to experiment on himself, his face gets scared, and he becomes the Black Stalker.
Chernobylite is a multidemnsional organism. When traveling through portals, people travel through its “veins”. And zombies-Shadows are the white blood cells.
It’s a bit annoying getting to the best ending, as the choices you need to make are very particular and not very obvious. For one, you need to interrogate Kozlov, any other way of disposing of him, and there are many, including a sniper rifle, will not give you all the clues you need. And you need to let the little kid out of his cell, not keep him there “to be safe”. The only way to know about that, is to play the mission multiple times, as bad outcomes give you clues to what you’ve been missing.
The final plot twist is good. Black Stalker is not Boris. He’s Igor. Then who you are? You’re Igor’s son, implanted with his memories. Brings everything together nicely.
The game is definitely not for everyone, and I’m glad that I set the crafting bit to “easy”. But still, very glad that I found it, as I enjoyed it far more than I expected.

I knew this game will get me, but it still got me. On the 10th day, you die, no matter what you do. You start your day by dying. But this just brings you to the Fractal Memory. And here’s where the crazy stuff starts. The choices that you’ve made, that I was wondering about: not only they are all presented to you, you can also change any of them, if you have enough of chernobylite. This is basically flipping anything you know about making choices, and reminds me of Zero Escape series on 3DS, which I’m very fond of.

While the initial set of weapons is pretty standard: revolver, shotgun, AK, the authors went quite inventive with the railgun. First, one of the upgrades let it generate ammo. Infinite ammo for railgun! Who’d want to pick up crossbow bolts if you can have infinite ammo instead?

There’s a perk that allows you to see enemies. But I only got it on my second week. Another upgrade for railgun lets it shoot through walls. So, if you really want to, you can spot enemies through walls, and shoot them indefinitely until they die. Neat.

It is not always clear what the correct choice in a quest should be, which is a good thing, really. At one point you’re given a choice of either blowing the famous Chernobyl radar or keeping it to use it yourself. And it’s not clear why blowing it up would be a good thing, except your wife hated it. So that’s what I did.

Found AK47 quickly enough in the Pripyat Port. Even with an upgrade. With it, and the upgraded shotgun against “zombies”, the game becomes more shooter and less stealth. Which is good, as the stealth in this game is not so enjoyable. There are “alert cones”, that point to the enemy that is suspicious of you. But that’s it. Not only you can’t see through walls and don’t have a radar, it’s also very hard to distinguish enemies from their surroundings, and since they all wear masks, it’s hard to tell which way they’re looking either.

“Biometrically locked weapons” are a common trope in games explaining why you can’t just start picking weapons from dead enemies, and need to make do with what you have, like crafting them. But I’m not sure why the authors even bothered, as weapons seem to be quite plentiful anyway.

This looks like a mod for STALKER. Even the local nemesis is called Black Stalker 😬

We play as profressor Igor, who’s searching for his wife, Tatyana.

Or, more precisely, he searches for a material called chernobylite, which can be found, obviously, in Chernobyl.
As gameplay goes, we have a Geiger counter that also can highlight pickable items. And there is a lot of junk to collect.
Every day you pick an area for your and your teammates to investigate. Teammates just return with some resources, but you on the other hand can investigate points of interest and trade with NPCs.

Weapon modification system is surprisingly serious. With pros and cons for different upgrades, and visual queues.
One bit I was generally impressed by is the leveling up system. Instead of just picking a skill, you actually get to do a small training mission before you can acquire each of them. For silent takedown, for example, you have to sneak up on your teacher.

There are some pretty obvious references. Like the device that can detect object history based on radiation that the professor was developing was called Ariadne. And when searching for clues to find his wife he speaks of “pulling the thread”.

Another character talks about Rat King and leaves a ballerina music box as a clue, a reference to Nutcracker.