"Cool" game, vibe-wise, but I'm not a fan of its unforgiving gameplay.
All your abilities are rather quirky. Even civilian behavior is unpredictable at times; you'd think they'd run away from zeds -- both "run" and "away" being operative terms here -- but ... not always. Surprise!
The campaign map (i.e. the strategic aspect of the game) has a "snowballing" nature to it. Once you [i]start[/i] to lose, you've all but lost. May as well quit and retry.
There are a lot of upgrades, promotions, and other misc. mechanics etc., to make your road easier, but there's a long learning curve, and the abuse you'll take in the meantime just may encourage you to simply do something else with your life which isn't as unpleasant. :P
[b]At the very least, a "restart mission" button would go incredibly far toward making this experience suck less.[/b] Is there so much difference between scumming it -- ALT+F4, restart the game, and being put right back in the same mission -- vs. simply being able to click said absent button? No, other than the former wastes a few extra seconds of your life. Or are you just supposed to accept your loss, go back to snowball-town, and lick your wounds? Try to "press onward", until you ultimately lose anyway?
Not my idea of fun. Are you going to just stand there and let someone slap you in the face? (Cuz eventually it will end, and that will be the "fun" part!) Well, again: not my idea of fun.
To explain a bit further.. first of all, the way the "infection" mechanic is presented, is merciless. Zeds touch humans, they become zeds instantly. A big group of humans just becomes a big group of zeds, basically instantly. There's no "wow, 2 ppl escaped while the zombies were busy eating the other 18", like TWD etc.
So, that said, each individual mission can go from "looking good", to "hrm maybe... idk...", to "sorry; there were no survivors" within literally 5 seconds. (And that's being generous. Sometimes it's faster!)
What stops that from happening? The way you deploy and use your misc. combat resources, of course! Strategy and tactics, [i]of course![/i]
But here's where the problem lies, and the quirky/unpredictable/etc. hits a little too hard: there is a significant amount of "butterfly effect", such that "choice A" of where to deploy a squad etc., may be just one grid-square away from "choice B", but one will result in "great job, team! when we get back to base, drinks are on me!" and the other will result in "*bzzt* *crackle* GAME OVER MAN, GAME OVER!!! *sounds of zombies eating everyone, then dead air*" ...... if u get my depiction.
[b]So overall it's just not clear enough, from how the abilities are described -- and even from how they've worked for you in past missions, [i]exactly[/i] how things are going to play out, this time.[/b] (BTW the game also has lovely RNG where u don't have access to the same types of combat units all the time + combinated with different environmental passives for that particular mission e.g. zeds move faster, mission timer is shorter, etc.)
BTW I don't recall selecting a difficulty level, so we can assume this one is called "normal".
I can handle "harsh" and "winning but with serious casualties", and, heck, even straight-up [i]losing[/i], if it was a hard-fought, "well-played" battle. (And btw, even when you win in this game, you basically get your butt kicked in terms of "feels"; it's a bloody mess.)
But the overall problem is the strategic map snowball-factor; the game basically plays out like a roguelike. Literally one minor wrong move in a mission, with no ability to second-guess, retry, etc., and your campaign is over.
So, you scum it for a bit, and once you're bored of that u shut it down and just write a snippy steam review instead. Fun, right?
