The Forever Winter

It's broken. It's janky. It's unfair. Almost nothing works the way it should. Helicopters clip into the earth and vanish forever. Enemies get stuck and teleport. Everyone stops fighting each other and bands together to shoot you when you appear even though you're a scavenger amid factions that are mortal enemies. The quests are banal and you have no idea which quests actually matter versus which can be repeated over and over. Once you've played enough, you know all of the potential spawns in all of the locations. Etc, etc. But damnit, I LOVE it. I love the playable characters (mostly), I love the environments, I love the atmosphere, I love looting TONS of post-apoc sci-fi materials, I love taking and repairing enemies' weapons, I love the music, I love mastering the weaponry... I know it's a work in progress. It's a bad game that needs a LOT of work, and I think the devs are working to put that labor in. But Steam reviews aren't about whether a game is good or bad. It's whether you recommend the game to others... and I do. Just know that you've been fairly warned.

Don't get me wrong, I love this game. But would I recommend this game to anyone in its current state? Absolutely not. Why I wouldn't recommend it yet is how the Devs are handling things. The game released in a horrible state, the hot fixes and new updates have definitely made the game a lot more enjoyable and playable overall but they are treating the game like it was fully released instead of still being in early access. They've released a handful of DLCs, new questlines, guns etc. Instead of having the main focus being on the actual gameplay feel. The gameplay feel in question should be pretty clear from the store page. You aren't a super soldier entering a warzone to kill everything that moves, you are a malnourished scavenger trying to skirt around the gunfire and find anything you can to live another day, only killing when you have to. The actual gameplay is the complete opposite. You might as well be the Master Chief in this game because it isnt hard AT ALL to go guns blazing full rambo and extract without taking barely any damage. At least after 10 or so hours in the game. Even the A.I. treats you like an avengers level threat half the time. It makes no sense that an entire army will open fire on a random scavenger because i looted too many things in one map. "Oh, you killed too many soldiers who shot at you first even though they have a whole battlefield with 50 million robots suicide charging them?" "Lets send a literal unkillable nightmare after you that ALWAYS knows where you are and will walk you down if its the last thing they do." I love the design they are going for, but jesus they cant pull it off. Also, the game takes place in LA, so how come Europan (American basically) soldiers are gunning me down on sight. It makes zero sense. What the game gets right is the atmosphere 100%, i can tell they spent a lot of time thinking about how an entire country devastated by war should look like. The lore is also impeccable, the characters and their stories are also great. But thats about the only things the game has going for it at the moment. Am I going to keep playing it? Yeah, but not because the game is a must play. Purely because i want to see how the lore and characters evolve over time. This game actually reminds me a lot of morrowind the way the combat is atrocious but the interactions and lore is great.

While the idea of the game is great and innovative, especially paired with art direction, the main issue is that gameplay-wise it's very, very raw. It is okay for Early Access, but the thing is that, judging by what I saw in the game (keep in mind that it was published in 2024, plus its potential "longevity" is somewhat dependent on the player base since it has an online component), most likely, it won't be able to get "fixed" enough to become significantly better after leaving EA. At least if the team won't seriously double down on the aspects of the game that I will talk about below. I will list Pros and Cons so you can, hopefully, see what I mean. [b]Pros:[/b] - Great art direction - The atmosphere and the world - Lore and the message that the game tries to convey - Anti-power fantasy perspective, which is a very bold idea to try and convey in an (online) game - The game evokes the desire for exploration [b]Cons:[/b] - Bad enemy AI, which is supposed to be as believable as possible since you're trying to replicate the feeling that "the Player is not the hero of the story". But when you see them dum-dums, this feeling dissolves completely. You still are the hero. It's just that NPCs can stunlock you in the corner or shoot you with laser precision in the head. - Questionable animations and rigs. Just look at how hands bend when your character aims. - Bad quest design. Spawn on the map, use 2 consumables to run to the exit in 90 seconds or less. Come on, guys. - Economy balance. I wish I could expand on that more, but as a balancer myself, I'm pretty bad, so I'll just leave it as a "player feeling". Sorry for that :< I will only say that quest rewards probably should be reviewed, and items pricing in soft currency demands too much grinding at the moment. - Weapons balance. For example, there's no incentive to buy any weapons, because the "default" ones are good enough, unless you're trying to down a boss. The shotgun is overpowered. The way I see it is that you can make the default weapons (and ammo) crazy cheap while making the weapons weak through severely limiting their maximum ammo or shooting speed, while simultaneously making other weapons incrementally (!) more expensive+useful. I can see that the devs tried to balance the starting weapons (only 10 shots for the rifle, only 5 for the shotgun), but it doesn't seem to work. It needs to be weakened more. You can "support" this change by slightly boosting the melee attack or improving stealth. The latter will require the rework of the AI, which will cost more. And yes, this can completely break the current player/world power balance, but oh well, game as a system is a fickle interconnected thing, nothing you can do about it :) Maybe you can introduce a hidden "armor penetration" parameter for enemies and weapons and take it from here. I must say that I haven't played that much (10+ hours), so maybe there is armor penetration somewhere down the road. As I mentioned before, I never felt the need to use anything other than the starting weapons. - Weird game design decisions. For example, your base "spends" your water supply every day (-1). Some functions of the base operate only on a certain water supply threshold (below it, you lose access to the function until you get to the threshold again). Plus, if your water supply reaches 0, other players can raid your base and steal all your loot from the cache. Sure, you have a hidden stash, but only with 10 slots. While I understand that this system was made to raise retention (it is supposed to form a habit of playing the game regularly by using fear), in my opinion, it can only frustrate people, especially new players. The game should already be interesting and polished enough so mechanics of this kind could work as intended. Otherwise, most people will just go play something else. As I see it, the water supply is basically an account level. Instead of punishing the Player by downgrading their hard-earned base functions (you do spend time to get them, after all), I'd rather make it so that when you unlock a new base function for the first time, you won't lose it if your water supply gets low. Split every unlockable base function into two parts. The first one, for casual players: it never locks away, even if you lose water. The second one, for hardcore players: bonuses that are accessible only if a certain water threshold is being kept. That being said, both parts should be planned according to long-term meta and in-game economy. Especially the second part. - UI is not good. For example, the Rig's UI. The items are tiny, and the lists are a pain to use. Or, have you tried to use the skin for a character? Not only the UI for this feature is bad, but it is also buggy. Needs QAs. Or...where can you see your character's stats? How can I see what stat boost I get from the Prestige? No info on the UI. The UI "sins" list goes on and on... - Lots of weird collision boxes on levels. For example, on the Scorched Enclave, there is a weird place if you hug the level wall while moving from the pipe extraction point towards the tank spawns. - Art direction. Let me explain. While I think the world looks great, including the enemies, I can also see that the functionality was sacrificed for the style. For example, it's sometimes hard to discern the enemies (which faction is which), since the only way to tell them apart is the silhouette (which does not work all the time, at least for me) or manual tagging. It would be better to have more visual distinction between the two. Colors, sound, UI - there are lots of options that can be not that destructive in terms of art direction. The balance between style and practicality is achievable. The last paragraph touches on the feeling that I get from this game. This feeling, or rather, an assumption, is that the game was directed by the art department, who, mostly, did their job well. But in the process, the other departments (or parts of them) were left on the outskirts of the pipeline. I am talking about GD, UX, QA, and Animations. [h3]Overall, I still think that this game is a great achievement, if only for the boldness of its core concept.[/h3] I just feel sad that, at the moment, it looks like a lost opportunity to prove that risk and innovation can and should be as rewarding, both for the devs and the players, as your average-industry-standard "safe" game.

to understand what's up with the game, don't look at the negative reviews, look at the positive ones. notice that everyone who gives it a thumbs up isn't reviewing the game they played but an imaginary version of the game that might exist in the future.

Extremely good...HOWEVER. - The xp lock on the prestige system sucks big time. Please remove it or rework the whole thing. - Selling things is a pain, it should be a single click or single keystroke - Open stash should be tab in the innards - Every menu should be closed with 'R' like the bags in game - Stunlock shouldn't be a thing - Craft/upgrade wait times shouldn't be a thing - No ledge grab when falling, even from a small height - Recruits aren't spawning in, so I'm softlocked on a quest - My shotgun has a levitating shell off to my right - A few times now my killcount was certainly not accurate - When an enemy is too close your gun can pass through him so your bullet exits the gun behind his back - Enemies will spawn next to you if you're chillin in their spawn point Jank aside, this game is amazing it should be on the front page.

I want to love this game so badly. But the devs hate its players. Every single design decision is to punish you, in a not fun way. Before you say skill issue: I've kappa'd in Tarkov, I love souls-likes, I actively seek difficult games. Progression? No, the devs hate you. Work hard to get an upgrade to slowly gain more water. Cool. Unlocking that makes your inventory randomly disappear cuz of "raiders". Why? Is that fun? No, instead I'll skip that upgrade. Wishlist items so you can keep track of what you're looking for? No, cuz the devs hate you. Remember all the items you need or write it down. Because "thats realistic" or something. I never give negative reviews but this game has frustrated me beyond any level I've felt before. All of this and this game is so buggy. The game will randomly 180 you during a gunfight. Sometimes aiming down sights doesn't work. The enemy AI is completely random. And its not to make fights interesting, its because of jank. I so badly want to love this game. Single player extraction sounds amazing. The world building and art is incredible. I just wish someone else made it.

Nah. Controls feel clunky and nonintuitive, camera movement is janky, combat is either so easy you could play blindfolded first try or absurdly hard . . . I could go on. The theme and atmosphere are really cool, but not enough to prop the game up. Too much of a headache for me.

i am trying to hard to give it a fair shot, but of all deaths i had less than a third of them were because i bit more than i could chew and paid the price the rest is equal share terrain glitching, enemies stun locking me to death because we cant even walk or crawl once we take damage, and enemies just being lasers aiming to my head and dying in 5 shots AAAAAAAALL i ask is for the stunlock to be at least lessen because the animation cycle is to long, or at least allow us to walk without being able to shoot, i just died because a cultist was stun locking me in the arm and that allowed his mate to slowly walk up and mag dump me in the dome please thats all i ask

Very poor optimization. What a shame, it looks interesting.

the game is just way too early access and i don't think that it will ever get finished. everything feels stiff and the ai is horrible... they run in circles and have a very basic detection mechanic...