After the acclaimed HBO series Chernobyl, many people became interested in the infamous events of the last century. This is an excellent opportunity for the media industry to start producing films and video games with a Chernobyl theme. But most of the projects could not boast of special quality and a realistic demonstration of a radiation disaster. What can we say about games like Chernobyl, Escape from Chernobyl, Chernobyl: Road of Death, where the plot is an incredible feat of imagination from the writers.
In turn, the developers of Chernobyl Liquidators promised to show all the horrors of the Chernobyl disaster and the most realistic demonstration of the events of April 26, 1986. Did Live Motion Games manage to surpass the HBO series and create a reliable accident settler simulator? Or did we get another one-off craft this time? Now let’s look at the Chernobyl liquidators together.
House flipper in the Chernobyl landscape
Long before the release, the developers said that their game was an exciting simulator of a real nuclear disaster in 1986 with difficult moral decisions that would affect the fate of the world. No mutants, nonsense about treating radiation with vodka and improvised means, fictional stories and plot devices often used in other projects about Chernobyl.
The Chernobyl Liquidators demo clearly demonstrated the heroic performance of the team in eliminating the consequences of the accident. Most gamers were happy with what they saw and added the game to their wishlist. But no one, including us, could imagine that the release version would be a boring copy House Flipper, where the variety of ‘washing and cleaning’ skills was replaced by mindless walking and investigating spy intrigues.
The main story of Chernobyl Liquidators is divided into chapters. Each has its own gameplay mechanics, bugs and misunderstandings. In the first chapter, we as curators extinguished the flames at the foot of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and tried to go to the roof to measure the level of background radiation. On the surface it sounds epic, but in reality the gameplay boils down to connecting a hose to a fire hydrant, reloading a save due to a malfunctioning shovel to collect radioactive debris, and jumping crookedly onto platforms. Misery and dampness manifest themselves in every element.
On the first mission we managed to connect several hoses to one fire hydrant pipe at the same time. Then when they opened the door with a crowbar, our curator still had a pair of hands that decided to replace the gas mask filter. After a few meters we encountered an invisible wall, which disappeared after reloading the save. And the highlight was a failed jump, which threw the main character outside the game world.
Despite all the bugs and lopsided implementation, Chernobyl Liquidators’ first mission isn’t as bad as everything else that follows it. The aforementioned House Flipper begins with the second chapter. After an epic firefight, you are released into a fairly quiet area, where you have to ‘wash’ objects and buildings from radiation contamination. A dustpan, a brush, a Geiger counter and a spray bottle will help with this difficult task. None of the items are susceptible to infection and are used quietly for their intended purpose until the end. The same cannot be said about the main character, who can easily die in a ‘dirty’ environment or by falling off a small ledge. It is also important to keep an eye on your stress, health, stamina and radiation levels. And also use first aid kits, iodine, cigarettes and… vodka in a timely manner. Yes, the panacea for the effects of half-life products and dead nerve cells is used in Chernobyl Liquidators for its intended purpose.
In addition to cleaning, it is necessary to build strong ties with the population, who stubbornly refuse to leave the contaminated area. The game has a very simple dialogue system with moral dilemmas as a show. Choosing answers leads to nothing in most cases. In each situation you will have to complete a simple quest or give an NPC a certain item.
Would you like to visit the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant Exclusion Zone?
Evidence Eliminator
Chernobyl Liquidators was positioned as a realistic story about heroic liquidators, but in reality it turned out to be another nonsense with “bloody” intelligence officers who, instead of greeting, started the dialogue with threats to shoot the family. The main story is not about the brave firefighters, volunteers and ordinary people who saved all of Europe from the terrible consequences of the accident, but about the hiding of evidence, the forced eviction of people and the closure of the Duga radar station.
Chernobyl Liquidators allows you to make choices that seemingly determine the direction of the story. But in fact, the entire plot is absolutely linear, and all the “moral” dilemmas are just a shell that creates the illusion of a multi-layered story.
There is no immersion effect due to poor technical and design implementation. The introductory video was reportedly created using neural networks. All dialogue was recorded by “professional programmers” in English, which immediately destroyed the atmosphere and realism promised by the authors. When you played “Trouble,” then remember how poorly the comments are taken when read by a “man on the street.”
Not only is it downright unbearable to listen to the terrible voice acting, but the character animations are done at the level of games from the year 2000. Modern indie developers have no problem creating high-quality character models, but the authors of Chernobyl Liquidators have a lower level of graphic development than in the old one “Xenus. Boiling point”.
After a nasty “washing” of Pripyat and hammering pillars with the inscription “Infected” in the forest, the player is sent on a stealth mission to the area of the Duga radar station. And this is in a game about accident settlers! Under the cover of darkness, the protagonist must crouch past military patrols to obtain diaries left behind by the intelligence services. Of course, no one canceled the disinfection of buildings. After a long period of hiding in the grass, you still have to “wash” the offices and wander the corridors in search of keys and passwords for combination locks.
Only at the very end do the developers of Chernobyl Liquidators give you the chance to take part in iconic scenes of clearing the roof of rubble, flying in a helicopter and extinguishing a fire in the interior of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. Of course, the screenwriters still could not do without cranberries. It is Comrade Major who forces you to go on a life-threatening mission, and not the hero’s desire to achieve a feat.
When the game’s creators promised to show an unadorned true story, we hoped to see a more accurate portrayal of events that had long been documented by eyewitnesses. And the result was a spy thriller, in which the main character confronts the heartless apparatus of Soviet repression. The whole point of the story lies not in the heroism of the curators, but in the fight against the oppressors of the KGB, who force them to commit dark deeds at gunpoint. Frankly, we are already tired of this truth.
Unfinished misunderstanding
The graphics of Chernobyl Liquidators are an absolute disaster. The first scene with the destroyed station can still surprise you with its beautiful lighting and details in the scientists’ offices. But for this, the HBO series deserves praise, which clearly showed how to show a scene on an epic scale. Once the chapter on putting out the fire ends, the game starts to show all the ‘beauties’ of early 2000s game development. The apparent lack of ambient occlusion technology makes the game world look flat and lifeless. Global lighting sometimes saves Pripyat and the village from gray gloom, but it does not work indoors. Every office, swimming pool, house or shop is a box of belongings arranged, without even a trace of the play of light and shadow. Even in Earthquake 2 had a more natural image than the Chernobyl liquidators.
There are many examples of the implementation of the exclusion zone in the gaming industry, and in most cases it turned out to be authentic. At least take Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, where they were able to recreate a believable Pripyat. And the game world of Chernobyl Liquidators looks more like a Finnish village My summer car. The atmosphere of horror and fear is created not by radioactive contamination, but by creepy intelligence officers who force you to do everything except eliminate the consequences of the accident.
Despite the graphics being ugly by the standards of modern indie projects, Chernobyl Liquidators is not optimized at all. It lags and slows down even at low settings. At the first location, drawings took place every two minutes. And in large areas, the game maintains the “cinematic” standard of 24 frames.
Chernobyl Liquidators was so raw and unfinished that even Early Access games look more polished. We didn’t even see that many bugs that forced us to restart the game, not even in the mentioned “Issues”. We already mentioned the extra pair of hands and bugs with interactive objects, but that’s just a small part of all the problems.
The character constantly got stuck in textures and in parkour sections, and instead of jumping he teleported to the stairs. Sometimes the hero’s body disappeared completely, but it still remained in the gameplay. Three times we brought documents that were firmly stuck to the screen and disappeared only after restarting the game. The story characters got into a ‘behind-the-texture’ state and did not return even after loading a save.
But besides visual bugs, Chernobyl Liquidators is full of interactivity issues. Menu buttons often didn’t work until the game was restarted. Quest items disappeared from the inventory. I had to constantly click on the syringe to get the pressure recovery animation to work. First aid kits, cigarettes and vodka can take effect immediately after activation, but the usage animation can start after 2-5 minutes. This causes funny situations. For example, a liquidator can start cleaning shelves with a lighter or drinking vodka, while at the same time spraying the walls with water from a spray bottle.
Even with the translation into Russian, the developers messed up: sometimes there are subtitles in Polish. Machine translation appears in some places. Despite the promised realism, the authors completely changed all Russian inscriptions on equipment and other objects. For political reasons, of course.
Would you like to try Chernobyl Liquidators?
Chernobyl Liquidators is a bugged clone of House Flipper that openly mocks the heroism of the curators of the Chernobyl disaster. The most boring gameplay is complemented by disgusting graphics, crooked animations, crappy voice acting and no optimization. On top of that, the developers have come up with another cranberry-infused story that has nothing to do with real events. Absolute hacking.
Source: VG Times