When I first applied to university, it was to study mechanical and nuclear engineering, so you can imagine my delight when I got asked at Gamescom to preview a VR game where I’d personally stop the Chernobyl disaster — one of the worst nuclear catastrophes in history. There’s an intriguing premise behind Chernobyl Again, though the game suffers from a cumbersome inventory system.
You play as the child of gifted nuclear physicists, and your goal involves going back in time to stop the reactor meltdown in Pripyat, Ukraine. It’s a tale of redemption and espionage, and the seeds are sown during the game’s overlong tutorial. Time terrorists - don’t ask, just get on board - are up to no good, and your agency must set things right. Could this mean the disaster was never meant to happen and was always the result of malicious interference?
The tutorial takes place in a staging area in space, on the rim of a black hole you could believe was pulled straight out of Interstellar’s concept art. Chernobyl Again has all the standard tactile controls I’d expect of modern VR, but the inventory system isn’t nearly as fluid as other games. You can't grab tools from around your person, everything is stored in a sci-fi watch. Opening it involves bringing your wrist up to your face and pointing at it with your other hand. Since absolutely everything gets stored here, you’ll need to stop whatever you’re doing and use both hands to grab whatever you need.
It’s cumbersome, slows the game's pacing, and feels leagues behind the times. I don’t use a VR headset to spend time in menus; I want VR games to immerse me in their environments. Numerous puzzles, fortunately, let you interact with the ‘80s nuclear facility, but some of the setting's magic is lost every time I need to stop what I'm doing to lift both my hands and get a different tool.
After the basics get explained, it's off to Chernobyl, or so I thought. The game is incredibly interactive, requiring you to insert the time coordinates yourself, and while this should have been a fun little tactile puzzle, the controls themselves were rather finicky. Turning the various knobs, dials, and switches over to their precise positions can be tricky.
These interactions have been a frequent issue during this preview. Buttons didn’t press as easily as it seems like they should, items I grab don’t stay in my hands as intuitively as I’d hoped, and there's a general air of jank around the design. The setting also doesn’t connect with me as much as other VR games I've experienced.
The black hole outside the space station appears as a static background, and the reactor console inside Chernobyl is similarly lifeless when it seems like it should be the game's centerpiece. It’s disappointing because the promise of preventing time terrorists from pulverizing Pripyat is a phenomenal one, but the game doesn’t feel great to play. The physicality of VR is there; it’s just poorly realized.
Chernobyl Again is out now on the Meta Quest platform, Pico, PSVR 2, and Steam.
