This is my opinion of the game after 14 Hours of exciting / gruelling solo game play. In no way to i feel the developers OWE me ANYTHING. I will be halting my game play in hopes that some major patches come out before i try again.
Side note, I have been playing PC video games as long as i remember, 20+ years, starting first with DOOM on the family PC in the living room while listening to the nightly news in the background. Ive seen a lot but i am simply a fan and have never worked in the gaming industry however i do understand how politics / hype and pressure from communities and publishers can effect how a product gets released.
Here are a few MAJOR fixes i feel the developers NEED to address. I am sure many of them have been brought up here in the past few days since release. I am simply voicing my own concern to add the the severity of the problems with the game in its current FULL RELEASED state. Remember that, this game has been FULLY RELEASED .
Enemy’s phasing through walls . This should have NEVER made it past early beta testing. Honestly this is an alpha issue at best that was never addressed or dealt with, which raises concerns to the tune of, do the developers even care about the game play? Fix the phasing. I don’t know if this is an AI problem or a modelling issue, But it seems to me like the building models are just sort of there, while being restricted to player movement only? another example being that tree leaves still blow through the walls, branches phase through, grass grows through the floor etc. These houses do not feel like real structures.
Enemy’s tracking through walls. Walking silently through a house next to a Runner? chances are it will see you through the wall anyway and come right after you. Run away from (any) Machine and hide in a building? Don’t ever try, cause they saw you, and are tracking you through the wall. Running around a mountain / hill / rock face? Nah they saw you, and are probably actually still trying to shoot at you through the earth too! I get that these are advanced robot killers with some (probably) advanced sensing technology. But they should NEVER be tracking me through a wall / STILL trying to attack me through that wall. The FIRST hunter i ever ran into near the castle NEVER stopped shooting at me through the mountain. Constant lasers being fired in my direction, even though i had been out of sight for many minutes. I understand if ONE machine see’s you, they are most likely connected to each other, so ALL of them will see you, but the above mentioned attacking through walls is ridiculous.
Lack of loot / randomized loot. I get it, we need to search through these small Swedish towns and search for ammo, guns, health etc… But the SAME house and the SAME backpack with the SAME pair of Binoculars OVER and OVER again is not an exciting way to loot. I would rather loot 100 different containers and find a pack of 9mm than loot 3 tool boxes all containing 1 health pack, 1 set of binoculars, a shirt i already have(which has zero stats by the way) and another backwards baseball cap. Just switch it up a bit, add a few more models, make cosmetics a little harder to find, nobody needs 1000 pairs of binoculars. As soon as you find a scope for your hunting rifle they become useless, which could be in the first 30 minutes of game play really.
Secondly, Why have do many buildings we CANT enter. Like that one bar with the green neon sign. Hey THAT building looks new and refreshing, i wonder whats inside? Cant enter because there is no interior. The door is locked, you cant even see through the windows. All those sheds by the water, LOCKED. Why even put them there? This is 2019 having a game like GZ without arguable ALL of the buildings being lootable is a shame, dare i say even lazy on the developers part.
Models. This is a HUGE one. I know tons of games re-use assets from previous versions / titles. I find it hard to understand how a developer can think placing the same model back to back to back OVER and OVER again with a slightly different color is a good way to design a world. Sure small town Sweden’s housing is pretty similar, i get it. One guy builds the houses in that town, the same guy probably build the sheds(which are locked to us anyway). But its impossible for all of these houses to be laid out the same inside, TV in the same place, same dishes on the table, i don’t need to go on. Each town might as well be exactly the same, cause they pretty much are. Again dare i say this i just lazy. There is NO way this games testers didn’t bring this up. Ive seen it said before, there is no reason to even loot these houses anyway. Aside from being BORING there isn’t much in there anyway.
Weapon switching / Input lag. Often you switch from your health pack / throw able back to your gun, or anything really there is a small window in which it seems none of your keys register. Forcing players to have to mash a key a second time. This is extremely frustrating when in a battle where a split second throw of a flare while needing your SMG back out can make all the difference. Obviously there needs
“Questing” I do appreciate having to find my own way in a video game, especially an atmospheric one such as Generation Zero. I would rather not have a quest marker, go here, do this, get paid sort of structure. But GZ has done just that. Go to this house: Find letter, go to (maybe) a second house: Find Radio. MISSION COMPLETE, heres 250xp for your troubles. If i had a REASON to go into these houses ex: a better loot table, there would be no problem. Its almost too tedious to even attempt to care about the story when its the same mission over and over again.
Audio. Most of the sounds in GZ are alright, nothing amazing or anything. Audio is tough in a video game. These days we have far better headsets / speakers then even 5 years ago making audio that much crisper and complex then ever before. The…lack of quality audio samples is a concern for me as it breaks ANY immersion i may have accumulated by running through the forest. The ambient nature sounds are pretty damn good, but the lack of consistent footsteps makes me assume i am floating sometimes. Any time you are switching what is in your hands you do not make any sound, other than some rustling of pulling said item out. The guns sound plain, even the magazine drops and locked into place, rather than being their own entity. Example: reload an AK and try to spin around while the mag drops, It is ALWAYS doing to be falling to your right, again breaking immersion. This is minor but its all in the small details that make a good game a GREAT game.
Last but not least, the Emptiness. This game is not supposed to be packed with action from start to finish. You are meant to take your time and “explore” the towns and villages hoping to find that rare weapon or attachment maybe a little more ammo or a health pack. With the way the looting system works the game really does feel empty and lifeless. Same house, same loot, same cars etc… It gets old quick.
Transparency. With game development becoming easier for indie teams to gather resources and work together, their main tool in fighting back against AAA teams is their ability and willingness to work TOGETHER with their communities to shape their game. We’ve all seen it far to many times when a game gets fully released riddled with bugs and issues and the development team goes silent, even just ditches the game completely. Thanks for your money, this game is shit were done kinda thing. Now i don’t think this is Avalanches mission here, but i HOPE they remain transparent on what they are doing. I understand you cant just pay someone to respond to every message on a form from a passionate and sometimes aggressive communities, but at a bare minimum let us know what you are doing, Have you read these requests? Yes? Are you working on them? Maybe? Do you care enough to admit your failures and promise to fix them? I hope so. I’m not talking about “An Update from the GZ Team” That announcement, while its nice to hear from the developers 48Hrs AFTER a release, its hard to feel this is just a manager doing their best to save some face. Hey guys don’t worry were going work on things ok? just trust us. Heard that before. That is a beta test message at best.
I rarely post anything like this so I apologize for being a tad stand off ish and aggressive at times, and in no way do i mean to be rude to anyone on the development team. Everyone has a job to do and they have done a great job so far with this game. I am only voicing my concerns because this game is a FULL RELEASE . Its almost like nobody tested this thing prior to launch. To be honest if i could refund this game in its current state, i would have and moved on with my day but i cant. So i write this is hopes some of you read it and can agree with me that this game is an almost polished beta experience and i hope the team at Avalanche see’s this and has put a plan in motion to remedy some of these concerns many of us have.
If you’ve read this far thank you. Again i mean no disrespect to any of the staff for this, i am just very passionate about video games and the current state of this industry can be very frustrating at times. You have all done a good job building this game so far, it just seems to be missing a little too much for me to consider it a full release. As i said above the development team owes me nothing and i expect nothing is return. Just using my voice to hopefuly help this game become amazing.
That being said, i look forward into jumping back in and blowing up some jackass Ticks while i run away from Hunters, Runners and Tanks.
Good luck in your travels everyone! Thanks for reading.
. Shops and offices would be nice, maybe a doctors in the town or city, and various other necessities that would be there.
I love the game but it badly needs more house and bunker variety 1000%. When you don’t have people to play with and most people kick you for joining or leave after 5 minutes of joining you, it gets so old seeing the same things by yourself all the time!