Kaden Ramsey

To preface, I adore every single thing about this game; the lore, the survival, the exploration, everything seems to be caringly crafted and in turn, provides such a refreshing experience for the survival genre. It's a little bit of project zomboid, a little bit of valheim, a little bit of half life, and a whole lot of fun. However, this game falls short in terms of actual playability and it pains me to say that. Firstly, I have logged roughly 50 hours thus far and through my time, it has been riddled with world cache errors (I play on PS5) where the game refuses to save unless i upload my save to the cloud, delete the console save, and reload my save back to the game. Not only is this entirely inconvenient, but lost progress is a constant factor plaguing the game unfortunately. When doing the aforementioned "fix" though, it only works for about a good five hours and then the next round of "world cache errors" pops up. Frustrating at the very least, mind-numbing at best. Furthermore, as much as I do love the game for what it is, I do have some gripes about the gameplay and audio in general. The audio in this game can be borderline ear-ringing. For example, my scientist character sometimes yells "STOP!" when hit at an astoundingly loud, eardrum-shattering level. The gunshots as well from the Order members can be excruciatingly loud especially when you least expect it. The music also sometimes glitches on different sectors which is unfortunate, and the replaying of the same ambient song in each sector and portal world can get mind-numbing after a while. Since also playing in the single player mode, some enemies and challenges can get borderline confusing and difficult. For example, the Tarrasque fight in the garage of the containment sector, if alone, entails that you go around in circles trying to shoot its weak point over and over until you finally weaken it to fall where you can melee its back for about thirty minutes. Bullet spongey, time-consuming, and utterly unintuitive considering you only need a part of him for once recipe to progress. The actual progressions in this game feels unsatisfactory towards the later game. Maybe the magic has worn off from the earlier sections but opening up more anteverses, discovering larger sectors, having to craft the same gear, just for a different purpose (suits like the scuba, thermal, or radiation) can get very tiresome quickly and unfortunately, makes the game lose its intriguing steam in that latter half. Having to upgrade your keypad hacker so many times too offers a fun challenge at first, but gets frustrating when you don't have a sense of direction and you need to find a new recipe to actually upgrade it (especially in the hydroplant sector). I do not recommend in its current state, however, it is such a fun and unique game that is sure to be a blast with friends until closer to the end game.