I love this game, but I can't spend more than a couple hours with it. The game crashes for seemingly insignificant button clicks and RAM limitations. The soundtrack is great, but it pauses every time an interaction screen appears, likely because all the interaction screens are children of the 'pause' feature. This game just crashes too much. It COULD just be my drivers, platform, etc, but this is still very lowball, in my opinion. The game needs professional optimization... Gameplay wise, it would probably be easier to have two controllable characters instead of four, or at least give a choice. It can be really tough to issue orders to all four survivors at the same time. An auto-loot feature is sorely missing. From what I can tell the developers are still actively working on the title. Really hope that's the case, because the only way this game could be successful is with more hard work and market exposure.
I've owned this on Steam since the earliest builds. There are SO many zombie games along with other mediums of entertainment.. why chose this game? I think this game gives you a sense of agency that isn't quite available in other zombie games. Yes, the game play can be slow, if you let it. Sure, there are some bugs here and there. Hey, the game may not ever be finished, lol! Look how long Terraria and Starbound were in the works! The game offers the kind of flexibility that I always want from a PC game. You can tweak game play settings down to the audio level of individual sound effects. You can adjust zombies so they behave in a variety of ways. Currently I'm experimenting with 'Black Summer' type settings where the zombies can run. It takes some time to read through all the options for a custom sandbox but this is where the game can really take on a personality of it's own. On the other hand, game play can be very grindy. If you've played The Long Dark, you might have an idea of what kind of inventory management you'll be doing. I think that this is actually a central part of the game, though. Once you get used to keeping a go-bag or two ready, you can start looting areas and making stashes. Regardless of how you tune the zombies, it's best to take them on one-on-one. The modding community is superb. I believe the renewed interest in this game is pretty well founded. The developers are clearly in it for the long haul and if they stave it out for another few years, their vision could very well be realized.
I will start with this... this is not the kind of game for people who can't handle slowing their pace down a bit, or learning by failure. As of now, the tutorial only guides you... it refuses to hold you hand, as it should! I knew this would be an interesting game when on the first night, my entire crew shat their beds because I forgot to build a toilet. The pause button is there, and you should take your time to get some basic nomenclature before you dig in deep. Or don't! Oversight can be very entertaining in games like this. Luckily the autosave was always there if I had a real issue. The more you play, the more you will learn how to handle certain situations. I was annoyed that my crew members would continue defecating all in their space suits while on salvage and mining missions, but I learned how to manage their tasking and give them proper time for breaks. It makes sense to not schedule external walks for more than 3-4 hours at a time. Totally solved that problem. Working this stuff out on your own gives a real feeling of accomplishment! I've dumped a good 20+ hours in to this game, and I haven't opened the wiki or watched any youtube guides at all. I'm currently on my second play through and really looking forward to making my first hyperspace jump. I prefer being dropped in to the action over a long winded tutorial (ex: Prison Architect, which I returned in the first 10 minutes of playing.) People are right to compare this to Rimworld, or even FTL... however, I feel like this is more what I always wanted from those titles. Considering what BugByte has put together for an alpha early access, they've done an excellent job and my hopes are high that everything will be tightened up even more along with added additional content. Maybe even modding implementation further down the road. There is more work to do, and that is very promising. They are actively engaging their player community!
By today's standards this game really isn't much of a simulation. There is bullet drop and wind, but no recoil, no iron sighting, there aren't even reloading animations. The Battlefield and Call of Duty series hadn't even made a peep yet, but this title quickly became honored as one of the original military shooters worth some attention. Perhaps the thing it simulated best was the hectic battles that erupted after going loud in any mission. Even though the game is very linear, it felt dynamic. What it lacked in detail and performance it would make up for in action and pure firepower. I don't think I had ever used a SAW M249 or a Barret .50 cal in a game until I got my hands on them in Delta Force. Depsite all of that, this is really only worth a nostalgia trip through green-tinted NVG now. It doesn't matter how powerful your system is, you won't be running this at anything higher than say 1024x768. It did run fine on my PC. And unbelievably, it looks like you could actually still find people playing this online. The ability to create custom maps or campaigns could extend the playability. But in the end, this is more in the same category as the original Rainbow Six... a true classic, but ultimately obsolete.
Many may not remember the almost sensational Indy Stories and Yoda Stories games from the late nineties, but this game certainly does. Unlike those titles where you're heavily exploring and interacting with items, Pathway players will lead their party through the world as they encounter compartmentalized and randomized events and locations. You won't really actually explore the locations, just engage in combat in some and choose your actions at others. Each "world" map will present longer and more difficult adventures, sometimes across multiple world maps, with a rotating group of surviving adventurers. It can be frustrating to get far along through one of the world maps, only to be wiped or run out of fuel, but it's a challenge that isn't unfair. You can run any adventure as many times as you like, and running the first couple adventures can help you upgrade your adventurers and equipment. Unlocking new adventurers, however, seemed like it was a bit gated behind some grinding, depending on who you'd like to unlock. I feel like a slightly expanded and more accessible roster of adventurers and larger pool of equipment could have helped keep the game fresher longer. This game feels like it would be more fun to play on tablet for short periods. A fun, light game that I would gladly install with other lo-fi classics on a portable (preferably hand-held) system.
I only recommend purchasing this heavily discounted. My opinion of the current state of the game is unfinished. After 5 years of development, the game jumped from the initial phase of press coverage to suddenly 1.0 state in the span of several months. That should have been a red flag for me. This has nothing to do with bugs. The only time the game fully crashed was when my spaceship hull was breached. I want to believe a compelling narrative experience is tucked somewhere within this game. The problem I have is with the user interface. It is inexplicably BAD. It feels like the developers never tested the game with a standard keyboard and mouse setup. For a game where the player spends most of their time focused on screens, the design is unacceptable. I thought arrow keys were not supported in the in-game menus (probably one of the most frustrating parts of the game), but they clearly work on the title screen. Drag and drop is not supported at the Commerce screens, but works fine when repairing the modules. Moving your pointer around to unscrew the panels is fun only one time. After that it is simply a cumbersome chore, like so many other parts of the user experience. I get that the game wasn't designed to be 'artistic,' but even showing us a still image of selected points on the nav screen would go a long way. The most fun in the game is in the nav screen where you control your ship. There could even be some legitimately fun tactics to be had here. Instead the game has only three nearly identical ships that offer no variance in gameplay. Just want to cruise around in something like Boba's Slaver One, with room for transporting two passengers and one cargo pod quickly and stealthily through the systems? No can do. The devs could have even put something of a Papers, Please! in to this title, scanning the freighters as they jump and dock. Fly unarmed cruisers full of passengers from one star to the next for big loot. My hope rests with patches and mods now.
