"Chernobylite," like "The Farm 51's" predecessor "Get Even," is a curious work that packs a variety of ideas into a rather staid first-person shooter. But whereas "Get Even" failed to organize its ideas and seemed aloof in its attempt to tell a poignant story, "Chernobylite" succeeds in welcoming us into its worldview.

Its melancholy permeates like plutonium, with big decisions to be made at every turn, and a well-written (if sometimes badly voiced) core of gray-haired stalkers who need to get close while chasing visions of their long-lost wives in the Chernobyl exclusion zone and surrounds you. As Igor, a physicist and former Chernobyl power plant employee, this is what brought you back to the haunted area.

The game is a first-person shooter, but it is quite possible to sneak through most of the game without firing a single bullet. It's also a survival game in which you gather resources to improve your base, such as craft stations, bedding, and even a mushroom garden (mushrooms have proven to be essential for building everything from wooden walls to portable nuclear weapons). There is also a throwaway horror element, as it seems to be essential for media based on Chernobyl.

However, Chernobylite is a game about choices, and you are constantly forced to make decisions that (may) have an important impact on the story.

For example, early in the game I killed a sketchy stalker who refused to reveal information. Previously, I had taken the humane option and ended up trapped in a room that was rapidly filling up with poison gas. So this time I didn't risk it. I killed my cold-blooded, mildly irradiated opponent, looted his corpse, and returned to base. I then met a sketchy stalker and a very close character who gave me the choice of lying or coming clean about my murder and whether or not to invite them to join me. Obviously, I chose the drama-enhancing combo of lying and inviting them to join my ragtag crew.

Interestingly, I need not stick to my choice. Chernobylite is a substance that can open wormholes in time and space. It can teleport you from one place to another, or awaken old memories in dreams of floating rocks and non-Euclidean geometry. Each time you die, you can wake up in this dreamscape and see how the important decisions you made there are connected.

It takes a lot of nerve for a game to lay bare the mechanics of its choice system in this way, but given the wide range of choices and possible outcomes in Chernobylite, it's no wonder the developers want to show it off. For example, the infamous Duga radar could be destroyed at the behest of a man who believes he is in a conflict of good versus evil with the Rat King.

Strange in a good way.

In between missions, you can hang out at the base, where you can cook, make improvements, probe other people's memories based on clues you find, or go straight to the heist mission at the end of the game (almost certain death if you don't have the crew and equipment, but it's there if you want) You can do this. When you are ready, choose one of the six regions around the zone and pick a mission to advance the main storyline or search for clues. At the same time, they can send their companions to scout out future missions and gather resources.

These maps are not large, but they look great. Farm 51 actually went to the no-go zones and used 3D scanning to recreate the terrain, textures, and buildings. Grass and shrubs regenerate blocks of Soviet apartment buildings, stained-glass windows depicting a doomed communist utopia are broken, and smog-covered sunlight oozes from a morbid canopy. As someone with a mild obsession with the remnants of the crumbling Soviet empire, these environments are fascinating to me.

These areas are beautiful and inspiring, but a bit lacking. All you can discover are resources and story-related clues, there is no wildlife (although restricted areas are notorious for their abundance), and the enemy AI just sticks to patrol routes or stands in one place, sitting at a desk or fighting radioactive monsters, They don't sit at their desks, fight radioactive monsters, or use their waza. The friendly trader stalkers, on the other hand, just stand there waiting for you to come to them. The developers must have learned from "Stalker: Shadow of Chernobyl" and its sequel the trick to making the zone feel more dynamic.

Combat is a bit of a tangle between realistic shooter, stealth, and RPG. Besides a rather pathetic sideways dash, there are no mechanics like sliding or covering fire. Thankfully it is easy for enemies to blend into the dense foliage, but the large health bar that appears above the enemy's head spoils that.

Thankfully, stealth is a viable approach, so I focused on upgrading my silenced revolver and becoming a master of quiet takedowns. However, this also feels a bit tedious, since you can't hide corpses (not that the enemy AI is particularly miffed when it comes across the corpses of its comrades). All of this speaks to the fact that the combat system is stretched between several styles and does not particularly excel at any of them.

What gives the "chernobylites" souls are the friends they recruit to their base. There are five of them in all, each with their own traumas, missions, and strange stories. They range from the stoic types in Chekhov's stories to psychopaths of varying degrees, but if you spend time with them between missions, you will find that all of these misfits will miss you.

I particularly liked Mikhail, who blurts out everything from his father's drunken sins to tarot readings to anecdotes about radioactive sausages being distributed throughout the Soviet Union like a drill sergeant.

The writing is solid and engaging, but unless you want Igor to push out the over-enthusiastic voice of a half-century-old Oxford scholar, I recommend using the Russian audio with subtitles.

You need to keep the crew's morale up, make sure they are well fed and well slept, and manage their disagreements when they disagree about important story decisions. You shoot down a helicopter with no idea who is on board. When destroying an enemy encampment, is an ally's stalker fair collateral?" or "When finishing off an important villain, who do we give the gun to (if indeed we are going to execute him)? All of these are genuine hesitations, and sometimes we are swept up in having to keep one character or another on our side so that they will be on our side in the final mission.

There are some oddities in Chernobylite that seem to exist to fulfill certain conditions. Although it is called a "survival horror" game, the monster encounters are few and far between, and the occasional jump scares, creepy dolls, and hallucinations of jumpy men in gas masks do not justify the label. Similarly, the Black Stalker, who beams onto the map on a timer in a later mission, is more of a nuisance than a threat once you realize he's rooted to the spot and can be blown away. Mr. X is definitely not.

Perhaps the reason "Chernobyl Light" fits into such an obvious mold is that its greatest strengths are hard to convey in a trailer or genre tag. The cast of characters and selection system are genuinely gripping, and the depiction of the zone is at times breathtakingly beautiful (if a bit retrofitted and non-interactive). Like a motley crew of eccentric companions, Chernobylite is a nonconformist with flaws, but I can't help but like it. The sometimes scattershot system, ambition, and silly sci-fi storyline could even join Eurojank's masterpiece.