Generation Zero®

My husband and I play a lot of co-op and the start of this game actually gives a great adrenaline rush, but it goes downhill SO fast. At first, we were so excited when we saw the giant robots wandering around. It really makes you want to explore everything. But the further you go, the more you realize it’s just bugged as hell. At one point, my companion accidentally hit my husband and he just... fell straight through the map. Gone. The companions are all over the place, glitching and suddenly re-appearing right in front of you so you can’t help but get hit by them. It's really annoying. ​The vehicles are a nightmare to control, too. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve been stuck in the woods on a bike and literally couldn't move at all. In some games, bugs can be funny and part of the charm, but in this game, they just feel weird and broken. Also, the looting makes zero sense and just makes you paranoid. My husband only found a weapon box because he accidentally crouched near a drawer and saw it hidden way back between a rack. You couldn’t even see it normally! Now we’re just paranoid, how many houses did we search where we missed stuff because it was hidden behind a random texture? It’s not fun to have to crouch and stare at every corner just to find loot. ​Everything is repetitive. The houses all look the same, the loot is usually the same anyway, and the main missions are just boring. We even finished a DLC by accident without even realizing it! There’s no big reward or sense of achievement. It feels like an abandoned game where the devs just threw assets in and stopped working on it. We’re exhausted and we’re done.

This one is a really tough one for me.... I have know this game since it's early days, played throughout the EA version and I always loved the gameplay look at its core. You start out feeling naked and powerless, shooting beans to things that move better, spot you better and kill you better. It feels challenging and a true guerrilla experience. Thing is, with updates, and a mixture of stuff just jammed into the game and left as is, a lot of aspects of the game got progressively worse and left unattended. This results a crapfest of stuff half baked or half broken in the game, diminishing and ruining parts of the experience. This includes, broken landmarks and places with last updates, broken content like assignments, extremely erratic performance and sub par optimization, half baked contents like base defense just jammed there, unbalanced changes that destroyed existing systems making them not viable for actual playstyle (tied to defense missions and others for resources too hard to grind, with a very low output)... and let's not forget that lovely freeze that sometimes happens randomly when trying to start the game, among other bugs & issues here and there... So to sum it up, while I really enjoy the core gameplay and the game it's at least playable, I cannot in good faith recommend it in the state it has been left (and confirmed that they won't work on the issues or problems anymore)

Despite having a long list of known issues on the developers site, they are not updating this game anymore. As of now, scoped weapons are practically unusable due to a sever jitter in the crosshair. The jitter is present with iron sights and red dot as well, but it is less noticable due to the lower zoom level. The only way to get an accurate shot is to aim near something and hope that the sway carries your crosshair to the correct location. Players have been reporting this issue for at least six years with no fix in sight. I've checked multiple forums and tried every suggested fix, but the issue persists. Some people have stated that it is an engine issue, but it is not. theHunter: Call of the Wild uses the same engine and does not have this issue. On top of that, if you have the Alpine Unrest DLC active, the game will crash within 5 minutes of starting a session regardless of what you are doing. If I enable the DLC and kill a bot, the game will crash. If I join another players game, it will crash. If I spawn a vehicle, it will crash. If I load in to a single player game and just stand completely still for a few minutes, it will crash. If you want to try this game, get it on sale, and do not get the DLC.

Genuinely how can you have a progress-halting bug within the first 30 minutes of starting the game? I can't progress the first aid kit quest in the church, and after looking it up, this has BEEN an issue for OVER 4 YEARS without being fixed. That just screams incompetence.

[h1]Rating: 4/10 -Disappointing[/h1] [h1]TLDR:[/h1] [b]An open world resistance fight against clankers with good ideas but with a weak execution. Wasted potential.[/b] This game looked very interesting and I played it with my friend a couple years ago but we never finished it. Im starting a new playthrough to finish it solo. I really tried to like this game and I did but in the end, it disappointed me. [h1]Positive:[/h1] [b]World:[/b] I like the world. It’s comprised of forests, hills and fields. Walking through a forest while it rains was really calming. That can quickly change when robots start to attack. Cover is very limited. While I do like open worlds with a lot of nature, this game's world was sadly a bit too empty. It has small houses and villages scattered around but they are all comprised of copy paste houses. This game is indie so it didn’t really surprise me. The copies get old after the 3rd house which is bad. Even some locations get copy pasted. The world changes up a bit, depending of the region. Still, everything starts to blend in. There are rarely any unique landmarks. There are no „hook locations“ that you see in the distance that spark your curiosity. To end with a good note, seeing the bots fight each other in the woods is so cool. Sneaking around forests and fields while avoiding bots was really cool. The dark bunkers and some other areas had small horror elements which was nice. [b]Weapons:[/b] Weapons and their attachments have rarities. from one crown to five crowns. One crown guns are dirty and rusty. Attachments like scopes are scratched and their glass is shattered. You can find better guns when doing missions and exploring the world. They do more damage, have better handling and look much cleaner and newer. high tier attachments look factory new. The game has a decent amount of guns. It has pistols, SMG's, shotguns, assault rifles, snipers and explosives. Everything you need to fight off those clankers. The team that was in charge for the weapon animations did a very good job. All reload animations are super smooth and look really nice. Probably one of the best things about this game. [b]Audio:[/b] The audio team did a very good job as well. The game has an awesome 80s vintage sounding main theme. While walking around in the world, you can faintly hear synth melodies and sounds. When a fight breaks out, the music goes action mode. Aggressive synths and drums fill the audio space. The sounds of the guns are powerful. Explosions are bright and loud. Shooting a gun in the forests and on open fields sounds so awesome. You can really hear the sounds travelling over large distances. Picking up loot makes small sounds. You can close your eyes, loot a crate and you can tell just by the sounds what kind of items you just picked up. Ammo, wood, plastic and steel all make unique sounds when looted. The audio design in this game is just top notch and I would like to see this level of audio detail in other games. [h1]Negative:[/h1] [b]Story:[/b] The game's story is not compelling. You start out on a Island like area that is kind of linear. You meet two characters that talk to you over radio. After you leave this island part though, you will never hear from them ever again. Your main objective is to track down the command bunker in each of the six other regions. It's up to you which bunker you wanna go for. this is where the story takes a nosedive. The story is just about trying to find survivors and gear. Each region has a radio tower that gets jammed by the robots that needs to get cleared out. I feel really tired while writing this. There's not a single memorable mission in this game. Most of the narrative content is either voice lines or notes. I never read notes. That might be the main factor why the story felt so boring. I did read a handful of notes and I could make out some kind of narrative in certain quests. The early game was exciting. Mid game and the ending was just lame. [b]Story Gameplay:[/b] You just go to a region, find key cards, gain access to the bunker, activate the power and look at the war board to get two to three main missions. Each of those bunkers send you on missions to destroy or find something. Main missions and side missions don't differ from each other. it's always, "go over there. There might be some supplies!". This whole game was just about finding survivors and gear. [b]Feature Creep:[/b] This seemingly simple game about shooting robots is (over)loaded with gameplay and progression systems. Weapon attachments, ammo types, character skill trees, loot and crafting are valid and add depth. However, there are some elements that are a bit too much. schematics trees, unlockable weapon perks that are tied to challenges, regular challenges that let you earn a title (for some unknown reason) and base building. Yeah. They slapped a bunch of stuff in this game and it took some time to process all this. Once you get it, you can work with it but it feels just like more to do and it doesn’t feel rewarding and it doesn’t add depth. They could have kicked out half of what I just mentioned and it would not hurt the general experience. „Wide as the ocean, deep as a puddle“ is a perfect way to describe the game. There’s a lot of stuff to do here but nothing that goes deep and feels rewarding. [b]Healing:[/b] It's needlessly complicated and inefficient. The game has no healing key. You instead have to put a medkit into your hotbar. If you get shot, you have to switch to a medkit and press left click to heal. Then switch to a gun again but in that time, you may get shot again so you switch back agai- you get the point. Fallout 4 did it better. Just press the button on which the stimpack was bound to in the hotbar and it would heal you and switch back to a gun again in no time. Hell, just look at Helldivers 2. One quick stim and you are good to go. [b]Boss Fight:[/b] There are two optional boss fights you can do. You can fight the Reaper or the Vulture. I chose the Reaper first. The Reaper was one of the worst boss fights I've ever played in a video game. He constantly has a shield up that shields him from any damage. It goes down sometimes which will open an attack window for you. The problem is, he has too much health. I used more than 50 rockets, 300 50 cal armor piercing sniper bullets, 100 health packs and it took me 40 minutes of constant shooting and hiding which was extremely boring. When I finally killed him, I was expecting the most precious end game loot imaginable. I got 1 uranium ore, a smoke grenade, a hat, a night vision/IR scope sensor and a bike skin. Wow. I just wasted so much ammo and time for the worst loot imaginable. I'm not gonna bother fighting the other boss. I'm done with this game. [b]Bugs:[/b] All of those bugs will never get fixed since the devs have stated that they "finished" development: [list]     [*]Leveling up will show you "level gained" above your leveling bar. The issue is that it will show you this every time you get XP. I was confused thinking I was getting levels left and right. Quiting the game and opening it again will fix this but it will happen the next time you level up. Im 30 hours in and this is still broken. It seems to me that they messed up the calculator coding of the XP bar.     [*]Picking up a new gun will show a big image of the gun saying "new weapon!". The only problem is, it shows me this minutes after I picked it up. It's always so weird.     [*]Tabbing out and in again can cause extreme glitching of the world around you. [/list] [h1]Conclusion:[/h1] I would be lying if I said, I didn't have fun. I would also be lying if I said this was a really great game. I was planning to give this game a 6/10. I lowered my score to 4/10 after doing this torturous boss fight. The whole game revolved around looting and collecting better gear and this is the final fight? What a colossal let down from this already weak game.

Generation Zero delivers a really interesting early gameplay in the survival genre. The initial hours are a masterclass in tension; scavenging through a silent, 1980s Sweden feels genuinely perilous. Each new weapon feels like a hard-won upgrade, and encountering new machine enemies felt refreshing. However, the experience quickly dies mid-game. Once you’ve secured high-tier gear, the sense of progression flatlines. You quickly hit a plateau where looting becomes meaningless, and the thrill of discovery vanishes. The variety that carried the early game disappears as you realize you’re simply fighting the same three or four enemy models, just with more health and different color. Without new mechanical hooks or gear incentives, the massive, beautiful world starts to feel like a repetitive chore. It’s a brilliant 10-hour game stretched thin over a 40-hour map. Either reduce the campaign length or add new content that keeps the second half of the game interesting. 5/10 .. meh.

decent gameplay neutered by a non-existent story and missions that bore you to tears

100km long, 2cm deep. This game had so much potential, but unfortunately has fallen short in some ways. Still worth it though, It's very cheap and still very fun, It's just that it could have been so so so much better. If I had to mention some great things this game does, I will definitely mention: [list] [*] [i]Sound design[/i] - This game has wonderful soundfx. From your footsteps, through ambient noise, through the soundtrack (especially the soundtrack), ending on gun sounds, It's absolutely amazing and really immersive. [*] [i]World atmosphere[/i] - together with sound design, this really sold this game to me. This world is dark, very swedish (I may be biased because I love swedish landscapes, but that's besides the point lol), and gives you (or at least it gave me) a very very special feel that no other game was able to recreate. Something about just walking around, all alone, with nothing but a gun to your side. Very cool. [*] [i]Combat[/i] - For a game this cheap and that badly kown, the combat (the gunplay really, I didn't touch much of melee) feels incredible. The guns are loud and powerful, extremely satisfying to shoot. [/list] Please give this game a chance, because for all of it's shortcomings which you will definitely notice, It's got a lot of really good fun in it. I don't really [i]want[/i] to mention the [b]bad[/b] of this game, but let's just say that the deeper you go, the more it strays away from what it was in the beginning. It's falling short more from a storytelling / story integrity point of view, the gameplay is really really good. Try it out.

Story: 8/10 gameplay mechanics/enemy ai: 9/10 worldbuilding: 10/10 map/environment: 8/10 This is a true mystery FPS. The story of the game is so disconnected from the world because you are truly trying to just survive. The story is secondary to survival, however we also don't know who released the machines and the lack of cutscenes/villains just adds to the "not seeing the monster" feeling. we know there are these murderous robots, but not who deployed them or why. The gameplay itself, playing stalk and kill with robots is just lovely. The amount of freedom you have in deciding how to destroy your enemy is vast. You can stalk, you can watch the map and plant explosives on known routes, you can run in and assault with rockets and high rpm weapons, you can play hide and seek with a shotgun, or hit hard from very far away. All together i'd give it an 8.5/10. Also you can play it on a potato if you put it on 720p capped at 30fps with low settings.

I don't even remember when or why I bought this game (prob on Humble), but the moment I launched it it became the Main Game I play. For me it is a great game to unwind and rest, and take a break from other shooters I play. The game is very intuitive, the moment you start you feel like a fish in the water. Of course there are some nuances, but overall you feel the love and craftsmanship of devs which made it. Despite the fact that the game lack real story, AI is clanky and the HUGE world seems sometimes empty - which is fine, climatical. But there's huge lack of content too. The Game takes place in 80's Sweden, you just crashed a boat and start looking for items, life and story.. At first it seems there would be some sneaky moments, but mid-game it starts full Quake III Arena vs mechs mode. You wander HUGE world to discover there's almost no life apart from Clankers, dead bodies and few (below 10) NPC's which give you quests. The locations are clastered with the same buildings, and there's not much of them. See that blue house? you will se exact 50 if not 100 in game. ++ The world you immerse is very climatic and feels real, despite being empty of people. The weather changes from snow to bright sun, landscapes are beautifull and breath taking, ++ Game mechanism is fanstastic, apart from running / cycling (DON'T!). Shooting and fighting mechs is perfectly executed, despite some moments when AI stuck or block from moving. This is the most solid part of the game, ~ Story is meh or "Division" type, you just run and find some automatic secretary phone recordings, plans, newspapers, letters ect. The NPC's are blunt and not interactable, the story is not mesmerizing, sometimes even boring. If you seek a game with great story and characters steer away from this game. ~ Crafting is not intuitive. You have to create items, gain points, then to spend it on new recipes. Also there's no tutorial to guide you at start, so sometimes you might feel lost. There is some to grinding; Phosporus (Your bases with drill) for better defences, or Alco Destiller for Meds and furnace to smelt some ores for even better defences, Rivals or Reapers for the weps. ~ DLC's - there are some interesting story extenders, some cool items (RPG-7, second bazooka), new locations. But nothing that fancy. - the game sometimes seems unfinished, crude and not complete. Some locations, "safehouses" (which, btw are NOT safe) and buildings are pure copy and paste. There are some bugs like huge fps drops, crashes and freezes, but nothing serious. - mid-late (50-80 hrs) game might become recurrent and a little boring. The game is great to play with friends, but managable solo. When you die you'll just spawn at nearest safehouse, no negative penalty added, which is.. probably not finished and skipped (?). Interesting fact - you can have more than 1 world and more than 1 character, and the storehouse is actually shared between characters. So in short.. If you like simple fast-paced shooters or games like Terminator: Resistance where you fight robots and here you won't mind (almost) no story, you're gonna love it. If you like more story-driven games you might not like it at all. Personally, I have never encounter a game like this, which devours your mind, time and dreams.. at the beginning. Unfortunately after 100ish hours there's not much to do besides achiewements. And that's sad, missed potential.