Chernobylite 2: Exclusion Zone Steam Charts & Stats

chernoblyat 2

oh I've mixed feelings on this.... but I'm thumbing it up. For early access it's alright and it shows a lot of promise. I'm not captivated or blown away - but I didn't bounce of it as much as I expected. Performance started out as acceptable with the occasional bottleneck in the open world (I'm assuming the game is loading in assets and might be happier on an SSD?) although it seemed to get worse the further I progressed in the game. In terms of story the idea of factions trapped under a Chernobyllite dome duking it out with mutants works for me and I'm easily won over by open worlds. Exploration, surviving and finding your way is fun. Or at least it should be. There's a lot here I'm unsure about. I haven't put a lot of hours into the game - so I may have missed things somewhere. But so far... There doesn't seem to be a lot to do outside of missions. The original gave you a map with a specific objective (retrieve ammo, meds, whatever) with the option to pick up resources on the way. With a larger map there's the invitation to explore and players need to be rewarded for going off the beaten track. An open world which is just a backdrop to trundle between story missions is wasted. We need to be able to rummage around and discover things for ourselves. Add to that I've come across the occasional scrap between mutants and humans - I'm guessing these are are scripted (which is fine)- but I'd like to discover characters outside the main story somewhere in the Zone (perhaps occasionally giving me something to do which may annoy, or woo, a faction along with a reward). And there's many a building that *looks* interesting from the outside - and that's as far as it goes, because once it you get closer you find the entrances boarded up. This is a lot more combat heavy. The original impressed that combat was something best to be avoided, or low key and tactical. This fully embraces slugging it out in melee and firefights, and it's easy to run into a mob of chernobylite riddled mutants and get into a tussle. The inclusion of 'bullet sponge' enemies (thankfully going to be addressed) was a wrong move and contributed to much frustration in the early game - having to take one down for things to open up. There is a tension... I miss the slower pace of the original where you felt vulnerable in the face of opposition. EZ throws plenty of mutants at you, but then the game starts to feel a bit too hack & slash (or point & shoot). It becomes less of a tense encounter, which if to do the original justice - is how it should feel, and more of hacking/gunning through a mob of enemies to get to your objective. I'm intrigued by the RPG elements, winning over faction members to develop specific skills, watching relationships change based on decisions made during missions and having skill checks in the open world. From what I've seen so far this looks promising (although watching your character attempt a skill, and using a probability mechanic to determine success rather than having it blocked off altogether if your stat isn't high enough would work better for me). There isn't the sense of battling "against the Zone" - so improved survival mechanics will be welcome. At the moment I'm collecting resources to expand my base - in the original I was able to decide who ate, who ate less, and who went to bed hungry whilst being worried about who would up sticks and simply walk out on me. For the atmosphere - again I'm mixed. The original had the sense of weirdness "breaking in", here it's taken everything over with some weird Chernoyblite winged beastie encountered in the first area of the game. This is tough-- it changes the tone but in the same vein I don't think it would have worked to have remade the first game (a'la Stalker). It's less a continuation of the story, more of a development of the concept... what would happen if Chernobyilite was harnessed on a commercial scale? It's taking some time to grow on me. On the picky side, I'm not won over by the modelling of the main character... when downing bad guys / mutants lets have an option to autoloot... having to hold down a button to crouch is slightly annoying (because the delay is just long enough to irritate me)- and am I the only one who found the English voices a little jarring? Despite all this, I've kind of enjoyed it so far. Reading the updates from the devs I'm excited. There's a lot of passion going into this and I'm confident they'll iron out the quirks and rework this into something on par with the first game. I'll stick with it and looking forward to the August update. i7-10700F GTX 4060 32 GB RAM

Even with many patches the game is still jerky. Player freezes, and often gets pushed into the back ground, at boss fights.

Be clam and patient with development, its a great break away from cookie cutter AAA crap and if this was a mod to something like DayZ the negative comments would go away but its time to move forward and this gives me HF vibes which I really enjoy, I do no have many hours in the game but I am also comfortable with the development time. Plus if you are aware of how many minutes there are in a day, the hour meter doesn't even compare.