FatalZone

Decided to add more then 250 achievements for the 'full release' where diffuclty doesn't stack. Multiple people adressed this to the developers and they even replied to it, then decided to ignore all the feedback by not doing anything about it before 'abandoning' the game, leaving all achievement hunters including me with a bad taste in their mouth.

Alright. [i]FatalZone[/i] is done and dusted. As much as I care for it to be anyway. I've spent a decent amount of time leveling up mercenaries, building up my town, have completed like twenty raids; and honestly, that's really all the game offers, so yeah. As far as bullet heaven/auto battlers go, this is one of the better ones from a gameplay perspective IMO. It does however have a couple issues that keep it from attaining greatness in the genre. First off, you do build up your town via resources collected during runs. It's a pretty simple mechanic that works pretty well. Each building has one or two specific functions. For example, the clinic can be used to heal zombie infections and also serves as the 911 operator for when you need helo evac. Each level of the Clinic gives you more evacuation opportunities and a couple evac zone buffs to go along with it. The Weapons trader (I don't recall its actual name) can upgrade your gear and also swap out loadouts. That sort of thing. The Gate (building) is what keeps the zombie world out of your town but also gives you access to it. Each Gate level unlocks a new area that can be accessed for runs. There is also an actual trader to swap resources for other resources, a Gym to buff your mercs as they level up, and a Tent to hire new mercs as yours die (and die they will). There is also a HQ, and whatever level that is at is the max level the other buildings can be at. It also serves to show you what cheevos are unlocked, while in-game. When you're ready, you will select one of the unlocked areas to adventure in, and off you go with whichever merc you select from your roster of active mercs. There is something like eight character classes for the mercs, each with its own special ability that is either persistent or happens on a timer. Each merc will be armed with one base weapon and a suit of armor. And off you go to gather as many resources as possible before you either die, evac, or thirty minutes has elapsed (at which point you have officially beaten the run). Regardless of which happens, you keep all resources you gathered, even if your merc died. While bullet heavening your way around the map, you will earn and find weapon and gear unlocks, level ups for said gear, the aforementioned resources, and a lot of coins used in leveling up your merc while on a run (which is separate from your mercs level progression in town). Along with temporary abilities/buffs/coin magnets/medkits. Enemies will scale up as the timer progresses, and towards the end of a run, the screen can and likely will be filled with some pretty imposing zombies. However, the gear level up in-run are actually very impressive as well and balances that out nicely. At least in the Great Forest map. The game definitely favors certain items and buffs over everything else though. And so, as much as possible, you will tend to work towards certain gearsets as a priority. Anything AoE around your character, skills that pushback enemies, and such are going to be the clear favorites for most players. The baseball bat is actually completely OP when leveled up fully as well. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3780571761 On top of all that, as you spend more time in a level, your character will start developing mutations which will take effect and be persistent from that point forward. After each run, you will be shown the injuries you sustained and mutations gained. Some mutations are harmful but most are beneficial. The clinic can remove any of these and heal your character between run, but you'll be hanging onto the green mutations, and your mercs become less and less human as they get more and more powerful, lol. The graphics are decent until the screen starts to fill up with enemies and ability effects. Then it goes from decent to super cool. Very good use of color and overlapping effects create a pretty stunning experience at times. The music wasn't particularly noteworthy to me, but the sounds of combat worked well. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3778331993 So, all of that works mostly as intended I would say. What then are the issues this game has. For one, it freezes a lot. This game will stress your CPU, likely due to how much is happening on-screen at any given moment. The gearset meta is also something of an issue. There's no point using about half of the weapons available for loadouts, and in mission, there's no point in selecting a lot of the other weapons and skills. They just won't help you that much. And so, your realistic gear options are somewhat limited due to the game's meta, both during runs and while planning for them. There is also an imbalance in which resources are given relative to the costs for upgrading your town, something designed to push you to use the trader, but then the exchange rates at the trader are pretty poor even when fully upgraded, making gathering a couple of the truly needed resources a true slog. Also, the difficulty scaling outside the first map is inappropriate at best. And the achievement percentages bear this out. Most people don't even finish a run in the first area. Almost none finish runs in the other maps. Now, I'd say you find a definite sweet spot for finishing the first map as many times as you like, but as mentioned, you're going to gravitate towards a somewhat limited gearset that gets used between every character class. But the difficulty scaling in the other maps is quite prohibitive, to where you don't really even have a good chance of getting to the point where your gear can handle what's on screen. As a result, you're going to find yourself really just grinding the first map to level up your town and your mercs, and by the point that's done, the game has gone from a lot of fun to somewhat boring, and since you are probably going to lose your best mercs on the other maps, it creates a bit of a gameplay bottleneck IMO. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3778922530 Did I have fun with FatalZone? Absolutely. It's got a pretty addictive gameplay loop. But did I get bored of it relatively quickly. Also a yes. I bought this game as part of a bundle, and that's really the only way I'd recommend picking up this game. Well, that or if you see it come up for under two bucks during s sale. Is it worth playing? Yes. But is it worth spending seven bucks on? Not in my opinion. [code]If you found this review helpful and would be interested in supporting my Curator group, [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/32549618/]Robilar's Reviews[/url], it would be appreciated. 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