Reviews
[Review] ‘Chernobylite’ Brings the Haunting Exclusion Zone to Life, But Supernatural Flavoring Leaves a Sour Taste
The fascination with nuclear apocalypse as a form of horror is understandable given how the threat of it lingers in the background of our own lives as silent and menacing as radiation itself. The harrowing impact of a radioactive disaster can be seen in gut-punching films such as When the Wind Blows, where the terror is born from the bleak reality of what it can do.
Games tend to treat it as a grim playground, with the odd example party grounded in reality (S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Metro 2033). Chernobylite is another to take the real horrors of nuclear disaster with a large side of the fantastical. Does it do enough to differentiate from its fellow nuclear horror brethren?
As the name implies, the reality aspect of the game is in its setting of Chernobyl. Chernobylite attempts to faithfully recreate the surrounding area of the infamous real-life disaster, right down to the power plant at the center of it. Thankfully there’s no awkward attempt to sell it straight in the story. While the tale is undeniably linked to those tragic events, it manages to craft its own story through tough moral choices and flexibility to its survival systems.
Chernobylite sees the protagonist, Igor, once a physicist working at the power plant itself, haunted by his wife’s disappearance during the disaster some 30 years previous. He re-enters Chernobyl searching for her whilst forging unsteady relationships and encountering those who raid the wastelands for its tainted loot. If only that were the only threat out there. It seems the disaster has brought out something far more unpleasant and otherworldly. So far, so S.T.A.L.K.E.R. then, right? The comparison is fair as it naturally takes a lot of inspiration from that. The story structure is what sets it apart. Along the way, you’ll have to make choices, both on a personal level and in how you move forward and develop your headquarters. Any of these decisions can tilt the balance of an already hostile environment in favor of you or against you.
Choices in games are often quite straightforward when examined from afar, and usually have a negligible impact on the game world and its story overall. By ensuring both the narrative and the world can be altered in ways that are both big and small, Chernobylite’s exclusion zone manages to make you feel like you’re a part of its ecosystem.
The game’s depiction of Chernobyl is impressive. Not only as a recreation of the place itself (helped along by developer the Farm 51 actually going to Chernobyl and using 3D scanning tech to translate the real-world exclusion zone into digital form) but in the visual style, that captures the abandoned hell of the place in the present. Not as a rubble-strewn land of post-apocalyptic disaster, but as a place truly abandoned and feasted on by scavengers and invaded by nature, I’d almost prefer to explore it as is, rather than have the supernatural element digging its claws into the place, because plenty is haunting about Chernobyl without the need for ghouls and portals.
The meat of the game is about survival, so most of it is spent venturing into the exclusion zone, fending off the many hostile presences out for your blood, whilst looking for supplies and materials. That includes the titular Chernobylite, a fictional mineral created by the disaster zone that can be used to power a portal gun that can jump back and forth in time. Handy considering you’re searching for your wife, who vanished 30 years ago. The Chernobylite’s effects mean there are trips back in time to see the disaster as it occurred. It’s not the first piece of media to attempt such a depiction. Still, it naturally carries a risk of being tasteless, given real people actually died and others were impacted horrifically because of negligence and stubbornness. Thankfully, Chernobylite plays it fairly safe and respectful, preferring to focus on its own fictional, fantastical story first and foremost (even if that’s not necessarily the best part of exploring the exclusion zone).
Stealth is essential for survival here. Whilst there are firearms and plenty of unfriendly folks out in the exclusion zone, it’s often far easier to avoid confrontation by creeping around, conserving ammo for when you’ll really need it. When you have to interact with certain stalkers, words become just as impactful as any hollow points. Five particular character encounters can provide Igor with a new friend teammate; others are less permanent however you approach them. Trust is fragile, and good intentions won’t necessarily stop a ‘new pal’ from setting you up for an unwanted deadly retirement party, but if you’re to make it in this irradiated hell and hope to find Igor’s wife, having a few friends to hand is worth the risk. The key recruits are an interesting, if stereotypical, bunch—lots of dour guys with dark humor and a penchant for murder.
What makes the risk that choices bring less of an issue is the power of the Chernobylite itself. The portal between the past and the present allows Igor to view his own history, and alter certain events if he so pleases. So if you got betrayed and left for dead by a stalker who seemed friendly, you can go back and change the outcome so long as you have the required Chernobylite shards. It’s an interestingly open approach to choice-based mechanics, and much of the fun in this 15-hour game comes from rewriting Igor’s past and, as a result, transform the very dynamic and structure of the world itself.
Another key component of the game is building up Igor’s headquarters to accommodate his new roommates and gadgets better. Essentially acting as a hub, Igor’s base of operations can be upgraded by heading out and finding the right equipment and materials. It’s also an essential part of getting Igor ready for Chernobylite’s endgame; a daring heist that can be taken on at any time but is best tackled by assembling a team and getting the right tools for the job.
From this hub, Igor can send any of his buddies out to complete missions of their own in one of the six regions of Chernobyl or go out himself, and while it is a fascinating place to explore, what life is, or should be, there feels so disconnected from how real the exclusion zone can seem. Enemies, especially, are a backward step at present, looking and acting more like triggers for encounters than actual foes naturally wandering and interacting with the world.
The weird, but somewhat apt, side-effect of that is this ghost town ends up being more like an old-fashioned haunted house ride, with naff mannequins popping out once you trip a switch. Mentioned before how stealth is the optimal approach, and a big part of that is because actually fighting enemies is not all that enticing or enjoyable. There are too many bullet sponges and not enough tactical flexibility to make things interesting. It’s not bad combat, just a bit dull.
Unfortunately, the horror element does little to spice things up in this department. A persistent enemy with similar abilities to Igor shows up a lot to pursue him, but what threat this masked man carries is severely malnourished. Instead of being a symbol of certain doom, this pursuer has all the menace of a guy on the street with a clipboard and a worthy cause to sell you on.
The general spooky parts are similarly undercooked, with an unenthusiastic lineup of the ‘spooky things in first-person games checklist.’Again, I have to say this was definitely an instance where a game could have been plenty unnerving without resorting to the supernatural. Still, if you’re going to do it anyway, there are more inventive and effective ways to go about it.
So the true horrors of Chernobylite are best found in the haunting beauty of its bleak setting and the accompanying history it houses; luckily, there’s plenty of that and a fairly solid reason to take a look at it.
Chernobylite review code for PC provided by the publisher.
Chernobylite is out now on PC, and hits PS4, and Xbox One on September 7.
It’s a day of the month ending in Y, and that means it’s time for another killer shark film. Why? Because they’re inexpensive to make, play into an easy fear, and keep finding audiences willing to give them a spin. The Bay is the latest entry in the shark attack subgenre, and while it’s noticeably better than last month’s Chum, it still struggles to barely stay afloat.
Emma (Francesca Eastwood) and Lani (Dani Oliveros) are best friends who’ve traveled to Thailand for a destination wedding, and a chance encounter at the buffet table leads to an unexpected adventure. Mandal (Alexander Wraith) is a friendly, knowledgeable transplant who connects with nature and makes a living by offering boat tours through the area’s scenic waterways. The trips culminate with the opportunity for tourists to witness a shark feeding with local tiger sharks. The tourists aren’t meant to be the food, obviously, but sometimes accidents happen.
The Bay checks off most of the subgenre’s expected beats – an attractive location, an iffy ensemble of characters, a series of poor choices – but it does a few things differently along the way. For one thing, while we see plenty of sharks in the build-up, the first attack doesn’t happen until past the film’s midpoint. Writer/director Phil Volken fills the time leading up to that attack with engaging enough character beats, some genuine suspense, and an abundance of dialogue about how sharks aren’t typically a threat to people – or threats like people. “Sharks hunt,” says Mandal, “humans kill.”
It’s a bit of foreshadowing, perhaps, but it’s also the film’s presiding theme. Sharks don’t want to hurt or kill humans, but “mistakes happen.” Mandal offers up numerous eco-friendly spiels about the role sharks play in the environment, how overhunting could lead to disaster, and how humans are the ones invading their territory. “Don’t act like prey,” and you won’t be bitten, eaten, digested, and shat out by a shark. Pretty simple, if you think about it.
Trouble starts when they toss a chunk of meat into the water attached to a chain and a large female tiger shark gets caught up in it. Mandal’s sidekick, a local man named Ruhan (Ta’imua), panics and starts stabbing at the thrashing creature. He has a history of being bitten by a shark and is clearly frightened, and as the situation worsens, he becomes a far more active threat to the others’ safety than the actual sharks. That character type is pretty common in these films, but it’s a curious choice to make the film’s sole indigenous member of the ensemble the morally weak link.
To be clear, Ta’imua is playing a local but isn’t actually Thai. He is, however, Hawaiian, and The Bay was filmed off Oahu, meaning he’s the only indigenous representation on both counts. The other three characters, all Americans, are brave and willing to risk their own safety for the group, leaving only Ruhan to put a face to the cruel, selfish humans mentioned earlier in the film. It’s certainly a choice!
His performance is somewhat stifled by the desire to make him seem menacing, but it’s passable. The others are equally okay as performers, but it’s only Oliveros’ Dani who stands apart as a spirited individual worthy of viewer fist pumps. Cinematographer Helge Gerull delivers some attractive landscape shots destined to make you consider a Hawaiian vacation, and composer Gad Emile Zeitune finds some effective aural backdrops for the film’s teasingly emotional moments.
Then there’s the sharks. A major drag on the subgenre these days is the use of cheap CG effects (including the abysmal use of A.I. in Chum), but The Bay sidesteps that problem for the most part. There are real sharks here, lots of them, but they appear to be solely present via stock footage edited into the film. Some CG is used here and there, too, with shots being comped together to tighten the proximity between humans and sharks. Most effective, arguably, are the practical effects used to create fins cutting through the water near the characters.
There’s a sense of grounded reality to the shark kills, and while they’re less showy, they’re weightier as a result. Wounded bodies drift away, and the moment where shark nibbles turn into ferocious feasting feels more inevitable and affecting than sudden or scary. The sole exception to the general quality of those kills is the film’s final shark encounter, which doubles down on the poor choices by pairing a silly CG beat with some poorly matched stock footage.
Pretty much every shark attack movie lives or dies on its presentation of the sharks themselves. There are exceptions, of course, with Steven Spielberg’s Jaws being chief among them – everything about that film, from the writing and acting to the directing and editing, helps make it a masterpiece despite the mechanical shark looking goofy as hell outside of the water – but The Bay isn’t Jaws. It’s not even Jaws: The Revenge. Its live sharks are mildly effective, though, and give it a subdued realism that will likely appeal to viewers averse to CG intrusions. Will that be enough to win them over, though?
“When you enter the ocean, you enter the food chain… and not necessarily at the top,” says an opening onscreen quote from Jacques Cousteau, and something similar could be said for shark attack movies in general. When you make one of these movies, you enter a well-trodden and densely populated subgenre… and you’re all but guaranteed to not be at or even near the top. The Bay is closer to the ocean floor than the water’s surface, and while that still puts it above the bulk of the genre, it’s probably not enough of a reason to step foot in these waters.
The Bay opens in theaters and on demand on July 17, 2026.
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