This will not be a normal game review and I apologize for that. There’s a good reason for it and don’t worry, it won’t take too long to get there. First off, let’s talk about Russian sci-fi. There’s some absolutely fantastic stuff out there. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is the stuff of legends with a sequel coming soon, the Metro series is simply outstanding, and Russian fiction has a rich history of science fiction. In fact, S.T.A.L.K.E.R. is actually based on a brilliant novel called Roadside Picnic from 1978 by the Strugastsky brothers from and they have a wide variety of spectacular science fiction novels. Metro 2033 is also originally a novel by Dmitri Glukhovsky and is quite good. If you’re not familiar with the Russian movie Night Watch, you should definitely check that out too, based on a series of novels by Sergei Lukyanenko. Even the famous 1984 by George Orwell was inspired at least in part by a novel by Russian writer Yevgeny Zamyatin in 1921 entitled “We” and banned by the Russian state until 1988. You get the idea.
Chernobylite from The Farm 51 and publisher All In! Games continues the storied tradition of Russian science fiction. You play Igor, a physicist trying to save his wife Tatyana, somehow lost in the Chernobyl meltdown 30 years ago. He’s developed a time portal gun based on crystals forming at the meltdown site and it’s just a matter of breaking in and saving her. Unfortunately for Igor, things don’t exactly go as planned. Chernobylite is a mission-based base-building game where you switch back and forth between scouring for resources, recruiting allies, and acquiring the materials needed to break back into Chernobyl, use the portal gun, and save Tatyana. Somehow. It’s a fairly dark game with some heavy themes, realistic gameplay (as much as gameplay can be at least), and solid interface and visuals.
So why isn’t this a normal game review? Well, it turns out that Chernobylite runs like garbage on Xbox systems. The game is poorly optimized and doesn’t work well on the Xbox Series X. In fact, during play, I encountered so many problems that the game was literally rendered unplayable. Sure, I know what’s happening in Chernobylite. But it doesn’t matter if you can’t play it. We’re not talking weird bugs like Cyberpunk either. On the XSX, I’d be playing the game and then suddenly I’m on the home screen. Abrupt critical failures without warning, over and over and random spots, never the same one twice. That’s pretty irritating. What’s worse is that when I’d go to reload, no matter how far I’d played through the game, the only save that would load was one near the beginning, even if I’d manually saved later on. Sometimes I was unable to progress past the introduction of the game without reloading, as I would get to a point where I would have to interact with an NPC to progress and their dialogue box and confirmation didn’t appear, forcing me to reload and repeat the section. Did I mention that I couldn’t actually put away my inventory items either? They were simply stuck out all the time and could not be unequipped once they were selected.
THIS SHOULD NOT HAPPEN IN A MODERN RELEASE. This is what I’d expect from an alpha or a rough beta build of a game, not a released retail product. It was so bad that on contacting the company, I was recommended to “install the game on an Xbox One” as it has some issues with the Xbox Series X. Well, that was definitely true. And the inventory issues? A known issue, they said. So, much as I was loathe to do so, I installed Chernobylite on my old Xbox One. Naturally the load times were significantly longer, which is irritating. But would it work? Turns out, not so much. Yes, Chernobylite runs better on the Xbox One than the Xbox Series X. At least you can load saves sometimes. However, the continue function kept reloading the same older save point from the introduction, not the latest save and after about a mission and a half, boom, critical failure, back on the home screen. The simple fact is that my personal experience with Chernobylite was an unmitigated disaster, even with a fresh install on different hardware. The game just didn’t want to work. And when I finally managed to complete one mission, my companion failed his, I was low on supplies and warned when I went to bed that my base was in such a poor state that it would lower the morale of my allies. This is after the very first mission where I was just happy to have gotten things working…right before they crashed again. And again. And again. By that point there was really nothing more I could do. Now we’re several days after retail launch for this game and those problems still have not been fixed.
Chernobylite was a huge disappointment. As a huge fan of Russian sci-fi, I was excited to finally give this one a go on the console. The opening gameplay hooked me, was interesting, had some neat elements, and was gorgeous to look at. I was genuinely impressed by the ideas it presented, at least as far as I was able to get into the game. But it’s a technical disaster that won’t run properly on either of my Xboxes. Because of that, I am literally unable to review the game properly since I cannot play it on my systems. It just won’t run. I can tell you the concept is cool, the interface was well-designed (when it worked) and the entire experience that I had when the game worked was good. But I cannot in good conscience recommend Chernobylite to anyone with an Xbox One or Xbox Series X/S system because the game didn’t work right. And at $30, that’s $30 for a game you can’t play. I have never encountered an issue like this one before in any game on any console. It’s a first for me. If you’re dying to play the game…maybe it will work for you. But maybe it won’t and if it doesn’t, don’t say I didn’t warn you.
This review was based on a digital copy of Chernobylite provided by the publisher. It was played on an Xbox Series X and an Xbox One and ran slightly better on the Xbox One (but sadly not well enough). Chernobylite is also available for PS4/PS5 and PC on Steam. Screenshots are press photos for obvious reasons. Please note that this review was based on my personal experience with Chernobylite and other players may not have the issues I experienced.
