Wear your best attire against radiation exposure as we embark on an adventure that blends survival, management, and RPG elements with first-person action gameplay and supernatural elements - with Chernobylite now 4 years after its initial release, is still worth it? We look forward to sharing more about this underappreciated shooter game in our review... If you want to find out what I was thinking about this shooter when it was released, I suggest you read my previous review: Chernobylite - You
Wear your best attire against radiation exposure as we embark on an adventure that blends survival, management, and RPG elements with first-person action gameplay and supernatural elements - with Chernobylite now 4 years after its initial release, is still worth it? We look forward to sharing more about this underappreciated shooter game in our review... If you want to find out what I was thinking about this shooter when it was released, I suggest you read my previous review: Chernobylite - You Have to Survive in the Exclusion Zone. I did not change my views, but the rant about the developers is irrelevant now. Reviews belong to their time and moment, this is why I revisit the game today.
What is Chernobylite?
Chernobylite can best be described as an action RPG that combines shooter elements with base building/team management. While this combination might seem unlike anything you would typically play on PlayStation 4, I can honestly attest that at minimum it works extremely well together to keep you engaged for hours on end! Chernobylite is made for shooter players looking to buy cheap PS4 games. While its PlayStation 5 performance may occasionally not meet expectations (with occasional frame drops from time to time and loading times that range up to 20 seconds max), its excellent mind management properties more than makeup for its limited consistency when played in Performance Mode and loading time that ranges up to 20 seconds max!
Lots of RPG Elements in this Hybrid Shooter - RPG
Scrap metal is a great source of scrap and various other metals as we leave the base (electronic elements or fuel ...), from Chernobylite we can create various kinds of items and work tables, ranging from simple kitchens in which we can cook some meals and prepare medicines and tables that are specifically designed for crafting or upgrading weapons such as traps, ammunition or even armor. A mission that is soon put to waste due to the appearance of the mysterious Stalker who can kill one of Igor's fellows and hurts another. However, Igor gets some Chernobilite the bizarre substance Igor had been looking for, and permits opening "wormholes" to allow the transport to different areas.
The Narrative Experience Checks All My Boxes
Chernobylite excels as a narrative experience because its branching storylines allow players to make crucial choices that impact not only themselves but also other characters as they search for their missing fiancee. To me, if you buy PS4 shooting games in 2024, Chernobylite is a no-brainer. From choosing companions and resource allocation decisions to dialogue choices that change outcomes - your decisions in Chernobylite's branching story provide endless ways for outcomes to change the game!
Survival Is More than a Physical Strive
Chernobylite puts our readers into the shoes of Igor, an engineer at the Chernobyl power plant who, upon receiving mysterious images from his deceased wife who vanished after its explosion thirty years prior, decides to return back into work at its site. Survival in Chernobyl is not simply about physical survival - it also takes an emotional toll. Nuclear terror reemerged during Ukraine's conflict when attacks against Chornobyl's facilities occurred, leading to more speculations surrounding the nuclear disaster. This title brings this topic front and center.
Conclusion: The Gameplay Is Better Than Expected
In my opinion, that may be a little skewed in favor as I enjoyed this game, Chernobylite is among the best PS4 games you can buy in the first-person shooter space. The gameplay in The Zone itself is captivatingly entertaining: Resource management becomes paramount as you scour for materials to craft equipment to tackle its anomalies and hostile factions; combat is fast-paced but focused around tactical approaches utilizing the environment as you target enemy positions; it is never about mindlessly shooting at foes; each bullet counts. Furthermore, the base building adds another level of strategy, permitting crafting gear, researching upgrades, and forging alliances between survivors, all while the countdown to each mission ticks away inexorably.
Forspoken is the inaugural AAA release of 2019, as well as an exclusive PlayStation 5 console exclusive, garnering considerable anticipation due to its anticipated impact. As players learn the controls for Athia's vast open-world environment and engaging in combat becomes an adventure full of thrills; reaping rewards by mastering its intricate systems can prove lucrative indeed. However, Forspoken's narrative trajectory remains uneven. While buoyed by an amazing lead performance and memorable pl
Forspoken is the inaugural AAA release of 2019, as well as an exclusive PlayStation 5 console exclusive, garnering considerable anticipation due to its anticipated impact. As players learn the controls for Athia's vast open-world environment and engaging in combat becomes an adventure full of thrills; reaping rewards by mastering its intricate systems can prove lucrative indeed. However, Forspoken's narrative trajectory remains uneven. While buoyed by an amazing lead performance and memorable plot twists, the overall experience was marred by suboptimal pacing and delivery; similar to watching an expertly executed play where key moments stand out but its glory fades due to uneven pace or delivery; ultimately preventing its full potential from being realized.
Forspoken stands out in the gaming landscape by creating an expansive world and thrilling combat dynamics that engage its player base, yet sometimes experience moments of brilliance being overshadowed by pacing issues - this story of two dimensions where gameplay excels in providing an adventurous and exhilarating experience while storytelling struggles to keep up a steady cadence is told through forspoken. Fospoken orchestrates gameplay to another level, so what I've got is as fluid as a serenade, if you know what I mean. Of course, this entices players to discover and buy PS5 games of the same kind once they finish Forspoken because they get the taste of adventure and miracle worlds.
Forspoken - An Immersive RPG
Forspoken is an enjoyable fantasy-world RPG when exploited properly; yet patience must be exercised during its slow, somewhat cumbersome initial phase. Unfortunately, lengthy story interludes that lean toward verbosity fall short of communicating its true potential; these imperfections prevent Forspoken from rising to be the next great open-world game; though fans of fantasy realms should find plenty of enjoyable moments while traveling across its sprawling world as formidable sorceresss.
Beginning Forspoken is like entering an intimidating maze - initially slow-paced but ultimately rewarding once explored fully. Unfortunately, its narrative sometimes succumbs to long-winded passages which overshadow its core strengths; similar to an engaging stage performance where brilliant moments fail to shine amidst less impactful dialogues. Fospoken's gameplay is a marvel, like a tapestry interwoven with finesse and ingenuity, if you allow me the comparison, simply beckoning players of all ages and levels of experience to harmonize their gaming journey into Athia, far from everyday problems, a means to escape and enjoy a different reality. With an assortment of tantalizing cheap PS5 games, there is the slight chance to overlook Forspoken - my advice: don't!
Verdict
Forspoken is an immersive fantasy world full of charm, challenges, and moments of pure delight that are sure to enthrall fantasy fans of any kind. Though not among the elite open-world games, Forspoken offers fantasy enthusiasts a fantastical gaming experience where magic collides with exploration for an unparalleled gaming adventure, yet beneath these early obstacles lies an amazing fantasy world to be explored. Fantasy enthusiasts will take immense delight in traversing vast landscapes as a powerful sorceress - it's an exhilarating journey with plenty of magical prowess and open-world exploration, eventually showing its strengths despite initial missteps.
Steam store page
One of my favorite activities in Minecraft is going deep inside the caves and just exploring them. A few years ago, the developers behind Cave Digger reached out to me and asked me to review their game. Not too long after, the sequel got released and looked like it would be a VR exclusive. Until I noticed that it appeared on the Nintendo Switch eShop. So, I thought, maybe it also released on Steam, since after playing the Switch version, I felt like this game was better p
One of my favorite activities in Minecraft is going deep inside the caves and just exploring them. A few years ago, the developers behind Cave Digger reached out to me and asked me to review their game. Not too long after, the sequel got released and looked like it would be a VR exclusive. Until I noticed that it appeared on the Nintendo Switch eShop. So, I thought, maybe it also released on Steam, since after playing the Switch version, I felt like this game was better played with keyboard and mouse. Now, a non VR version is on Steam now… But is it worth it? Well, after playing the first sections of this game, I want to talk about it. The latest update was on May 28th, 2024 when writing this article. Now, before we dive right into it, I want to invite to you leave a comment in the comment section with your thoughts and/or opinions on this game and/or the content of this article.
Risk of Staleness
In this game, we play as an unnamed miner who is throwing into the deep end, when his digger broke. You arrive at a mysterious valley. In this valley, a hardy explorer once did his research. But why? Which secrets are in these valleys and the accompanying mines? That’s for our miner to figure out. Now, the story is being told by various comic book pages you can uncover and, according to the Steam store page, has multiple endings. I’m quite curious where it’s going to go.
So far, I haven’t gotten too deep into the story. But, from what I can read on the Steam store page, I think it has potential. I have my doubts on how the multiple endings will work. Since comic books mostly have one ending, right? Unless, it all depends on which page(s) you find or in which order or where. That’s something I’ll discover when I’m deeper into the game.
If this game is like the original game, the story overall will take a backseat for the gameplay. And after 5 hours in, that’s the case. The original game didn’t have a lot of story to begin with, but more story in a game like this can be interesting.
There is one voice actor in this game. He does a pretty fine job and brings some life to the atmosphere. I replayed a bit of the first game and I have to be honest, I appreciate the small voice lines during the exploration. Even when you quickly hear every different line, it’s a nice break since they aren’t spammed and don’t appear that often.
One of the biggest changes in this game is that the cave this time around is randomly generated each time you enter. So, this game becomes a rouge like to a degree. But, you can always exit via the lifts to safety. Since, dying in the caves means that at least half of your obtained loot is dropped. The atmosphere this time around is very cohesive. This game presents itself as a sci-fi western game, and it really feels like that. Something I really like in this game is that it doesn’t go overboard in the sci-fi genre and stays grounded. The technology could realistically exist today, apart from the unique enemies in the cave, that is.
With the story taking more of a backseat, it’s quite important that the gameplay loop is enjoyable. The gameplay loop is simple, you have to explore the caves with 4 chosen tools. The three slots above the entrance give you a hint on which tools you will need to bring to gather the most loot. You take the lift down and gather loot, while fighting enemies and avoiding pitfalls to survive. The goal is also to find the other elevator that takes you down to the next level to gather even more valuable ores to bring to the top. You have to fill in the ores you gathered into the grinder to buy upgrades to your tools and environment to progress.
The big risk with this kind of gameplay loop is that this is just a different numbers game. What I mean by that is that, apart from maybe the visuals changing, the core concept is always the same. This risks that the game becomes stale and repetitive. It’s possible that it is just a “me thing”, but I enjoy games like this more when there are some variations on the gameplay or some different puzzles. Thankfully, this game has that. There are a lot of things you can upgrade and improve to make each run feel rewarding, and each type of cave you can visit has different enemies types and unique lay-outs to keep you on your toes. In a way, I dare to compare the idea a bit to Cult of the Lamb in a degree.
The music in this game is also a blast. It fits the atmosphere of each area like a glove. My favorite track is the track that plays in the lake caves. It sounds like you image a typical track like that to sound. And it gets more intense while you are fighting enemies down there. Now, the silent moments when the music doesn’t play feel a bit long, but I always know that there is more music coming and that it fits the atmosphere perfectly and draws me more into the game. Sadly enough, this isn’t the only problem with this game, and I’d like to talk about them.
No feedback
This game has an addictive gameplay loop, and I’m really curious how the multiplayer works. I haven’t tested the multiplayer in this game, but it looks like fun. Now, this game can be played solo perfectly fine.
Now, I don’t know if VRKiwi took the VR version as a base for the non VR version, since I have the impression, that is the case. I especially notice that with the controls in this game. It feels a bit floaty, like you aren’t really connected to the ground. It also feels a bit stiff, like you have to move your mouse like you would a VR headset. You really have to play with the settings until you hit that sweetspot that feels right for you. For me, I had to lower the sensitivity to 80, amongst other things. I highly recommend that you tweak the settings to your liking, since on the Nintendo Switch version, I had to lower the sensitivity to 40 before it felt right.
Still, the character control doesn’t feel right. At first, I thought it was because the controls felt floaty… But, after some testing, I think I found a few other problems with the character control that might cause it to not feel quite right. First, the jump in this game is just silly. You can’t really rely on it, since it doesn’t always trigger when you hit the spacebar, and it’s just a pathetic jump. You can’t even jump out of ankle high water sometimes.
Secondly, there are no sound effects for walking on most floors. You feel like you are floating, and it’s jarring when you suddenly hear a sound effect when you walk over a table or a railway. Thirdly, climbing on ropes amongst other things is just insanely picky. There is also no real feedback or sound to show you grabbed the rope. Fourthly, the scroll order between tools is extremely weird. You get numbers on the wheel counter clock wise. But you go down, right, left, up. Which still confuses me after 6 hours of playing this game.
And finally, some things are extremely picky. For example, there are safe riddles you can solve down in the caves. But to rotate the letter wheels to make pick the right letter is more difficult to do. All of these things give you a feeling that you aren’t always in control of your character and that you don’t get the feedback as a player on what’s happening. Making you unsure what’s happening and doubt if you are doing the right thing.
Prompts like “Use W/S to use the crank” should be “Hold W/S to use the crank”. Since, you need to hold the key instead of pressing it. Small things like that could also improve this game and it’s controls quite a lot. Overall, the controls are good, but they lack feedback to the player sometimes. Either with sound effects or with some visual effects. Like with the hammer, you barely have any sound effects when you use it, and it has some wind up animation, making you unsure if you are using it or not.
That is one of the biggest flaws in this game. The lack of feedback on your actions. Things like not knowing how many bullets are still left in your revolver or a sound effect when you hit an actual enemy. I think if there is one thing I’d use the built-in feedback tool is to report various cases/moments when I expect feedback from the game, like a sound effect or visual effect. Maybe they appear in the form of rumble effects… But, I’m not playing this game with a controller.
When you read this section of the article, I wouldn’t blame you if you think that this game isn’t good. Small bugs like the text of “Press R to reload” when your gun isn’t equipped or the bullets not leaving from the gun but from the player model don’t improve things either. Yet, I find myself looking past these problems since the core gameplay still works. I find myself getting used to the jank in this game and finding a very rough diamond. If the developers keep up with their promise of improving this game, I think that more action feedback will bring a lot to the game and maybe fixing the small bugs like in this paragraph as well.
Things like the animation of the shovel looking weird sometimes. The animation looks like the arms go through each other after a dig. Speaking of the shovel, the last dig is annoying since you have to move a pixel or two for it to count and give you your goodies. But the bug I’d love to see fixed most is the freeze for several seconds when you pick up something new or get a new codec entry. The game locks up like it’s about the crash, but it doesn’t.
What’s next for us?
Usually, I’m not really picky when it comes to the visuals of a game. As long as a game looks consistent, I’m quite happy. It needs to have a certain style so that you can quickly identify what’s what and enjoy the game.
Yet, for this game, I do have some things that I not really like in terms of the visuals. Firstly, the contrast of some ores and the floor isn’t clear enough. Sometimes I was passing up on ores since I wasn’t able to notice them on the ground.
There are also a lot of objects to give more details to the cave, but you can barely interact with them. I’d love to see lilly pads in lakes to move a bit when you walk past them or something more than just being able to clip through them. As well, a sound effect when you hit a wall you can’t mine. You get shouted at when you use the wrong or a too weak tool on something, so when not for the rest?
I think the biggest mistake that the visuals make is that it has an identity crisis. What I mean by that is that it isn’t a cohesive style. There is a lot of shell shading going on, but there is also a lot of details that give off a more realistic vibe. Some textures aren’t detailed enough and strechted too wide giving wrong impression the rest of the visuals that look more modern. The floor textures sometimes suffer most from this issue.
Looking back at this article, I think I’m being very critical for this game. I have played a lot worse and broken games for 15€. But, in this game you even have customisation options for your character and thee developers are extremely open for feedback. This game has a lot going for it. Fun achievements to hunt for, bosses at the end of runs and an amazing auto save system.
Apart from improving the character controls and adding some feedback on actions, I think this game is pretty decent. Yes, there is some polish missing like not having a tooltip with the lever at the cave entrance on what that lever does. I personally feel less conflicted about this game compared to the original. The growth in this title is immense and brings me a lot of hope for either some amazing updates, DLC or a new entry in the series.
The basis of for an amazing title is here and if you look past it’s short comings, this game is a blast to play. Maybe it’s a bit too repetitive for some and can be more fun in short bursts. But, when this game sinks it’s hooks into you, it really clicks. There is some polishing left to do and for a rather new VR focused developer, this is amazing. It’s their second non VR game and it shows a lot of promise.
The game is a perfect relaxing game to wind down, since it isn’t too difficult. The game is rather forgiving. I wouldn’t be surprised that I play this game after work to wind down and try and finish it slowly. Then again, while I’m writing this, I have summer holidays and I wouldn’t be surprised that I finish most of this game during my summer break.
Like I said earlier, I feel less conflicted about this game compared to the previous title. This game has a lot more going for it compared to the original. It’s less repetitive and it has a lot more going for it. It has it’s problems, yes. But, if you enjoy games like Minecraft, Steamworld Dig or Cave Digger, give the demo of this game a chance. The demo gives a very good idea on what you can expect from this game and if you enjoy it, buy the game. I’m enjoying myself quite a lot with this game and I’m happy that I have chosen the PC version over the Switch version since I feel like it just plays better. But maybe, if I get used to the Switch controls, I might enjoy it on Switch as well.
With that said, I have said everything I wanted to say about this game for now. Maybe when I finish this game, I might write a full review with the final thoughts and opinions on this game. But for now, I think the best conclusion for this game is that it’s an amazing step up from the original and besides some unpolished things… It’s a great game and comes recommend from me.
So, it’s time to wrap up this article with my usual outro. I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. I hope to be able to welcome you in another article, but until then have a great rest of your day and take care.
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