Urge

There is a lot to unpack about URGE. First, my play time is heavily inflated, from sitting at menus and leaving the game on. Urge can honestly be beaten in about 4-5 hours with a guide, which you should not under any circumstances do, as it will absolutely ruin a fabulous experience for you. [b]Second, there will be no "Muh muh the piss game" grow up. Artists take inspiration from things that drive them. That does not mean just "Acceptable" things like nature or old and repeated fairytales, it also means gross fascinations, fetishes, and a plethora of other things that normies would pearl clutch over. Most artists just sprinkle their weirdness in measured doses disguised enough no one has any reason to question it. I do not know this game's dev or what drives them, but I can tell you that they did not let general public squeamishness prevent them from really making an incredible game. There is no "Sanitary dose" of weird in Urge, and it's amazing for that.[/b] Urge recently did away with a GPS system and moved to a map with dot system. This was probably a good idea, but it really threw me off because a quest that previously worked off a coordinate now had a map marker, and the size of the map meant I literally missed a key quest and essentially played 20 hours going in the wrong direction. (Which I think actually enhanced the experience for me) Good: -Urge exists under the guise of being an open-world survival game, but it hides a pretty incredible story in it. There is a lot open to fan interpretation, but it had its hooks hard enough in me that at one point, during a moment of hope followed by a moment of shock and agony, I literally yelled "♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ NO PLEASE NO!" -The Urge mechanic is a very interesting way to make something mundane into something really scary. Your bladder essentially fills with gasoline that, if let out carelessly, will make the "Hazardous fog" increase. The world gets yellower, and much more dangerous. -The cars and building mechanics are top notch. I spent the latter half of my experience driving a house-on-a-rig through the map, battling from my mobile fort and gardening/relaxing within. It was fun. -The caves and dungeons are very creepy, the dark areas are done extremely well. There is no "Turn up your brightness" darkness in Urge, Dark is pitch black and you can not see without your flashlight. -All of the insect enemies feel well designed. The spider is legitimately the only spider in gaming that has ever scared me, it is a leaping spider that can latch onto your face and the first time one came flying at my head I legitimately screamed. -At max fog, it really actually feels like an apocalypse, the "♥♥♥♥♥♥ around and found out" meter really hit as I sat with my rig at the end of a forested path trying to build a bomb to reset the fog while be assailed by dozens of insects and hazers, it was actually doomsday. -Tradeoffs like fog ammo or unpurified fuel are very cool ways to increase the fog level in exchange for a benefit, which can lead to cascading effects and panic that fit the game well. -Survival food and water mechanics feel good. Boiling water, making stuff by boiling it, combining herbs, its a good system. Needs Improving -The linear main quest and the dependence on it neuters some other aspects of the game. The questline as a whole feels very fast if taken by itself. -There is way too much potential to miss things, as you read earlier with my completely missing a quest component. Guns are strewn about the map in very missable locations and after getting my rear whipped I finally gave in and used a guide and realized I missed like, 5 of them in the beginning town. I know it's immersion-harming but halos on objects/notes or more environmental pointers would have been grand. -Outside of the first 5 minutes, having to find a place to piss is essentially a non-issue. Your car takes piss to fuel, your compost bin does too, you will actually be AT A LOSS for piss as opposed to freaking out about being unable to find a place to piss. This detracts from a core stressor in the game. I literally cleaned 0 toilets with acid in my playthrough because I simply did not need to. -The biggest, biggest, biggest gripe I have is with the normal enemies. You have 5 enemies that are basically identical. Junkies, Urels, Urghouls, Hazers, and Zeer (Stickmen). These enemy types comprise 70+ percent of the enemies you will fight and they are all essentially identical. They either have melee weapons or ranged ones and slowly walk at you while trying to harm you. It's boring, the guns are just guaranteed health loss since its not really a developed shooter game and enemies can just decide to fire and harm you, even while the gun isn't facing you. They don't drop the guns, there are a LOT of automatic smgs in urlando apparently, etc etc. I would suggest: 1. Junkies are the only ones who use melee weapons and have the "Walk-and-harm" behavior. 2. Zeer need a whole different place. they are intensely creepy to look at and using them as chaff is a disservice, they should be used for a scarier purpose. Maybe cave-and-tunnel only unless it is night, with more emphasis on speed and uncomfortable noises as they try to kill you. 3. Urghouls, being that they are depicted as high-tier enemies, need their own niche. They should be faster, not use weapons, maybe have a bite that causes a status effect? 4. Hazers should be the only ones with guns (Others should still occasionally drop fog ammo) and they need to use their guns way better, with actual tactics and animations that the player can actually read. 5. Chainsaw hazers need to be rarer, higher fog enemies. Right now they are just melee junkies with a different weapon, the chainsaw should be nearly-instant in killing players and they should just leave it extended and ready to cut. If being impossible for melee players is a concern then they can take little breaks on a knee, maybe to refuel? -Combat in general feels pretty awful. Guns as a whole take forever to kill things even with repeated headshots, the game has terrible damage feedback for both you and foes. I suggest: 1. Increase general lethality. Players and foes should die quicker. Pistol headshots to junkies should be lethal. Shotguns need to do real damage from farther (They currently feel like knockdown cannons), and rifles should be lethal to the chest on junkies. 2. Melee weapons need more viscerality, a sledgehammer shouldn't have "A chance" to oneshot someone's head on an overhand swing. -There is no incentive to go out at night and it's easy to skip it with a bed. Nights are scary, the Asylum at night is terrifying, having real reasons to go out at night would have been cool. -The main quest emphasis results in lots of the world feeling underbaked and pointless. 99% of buildings are just there for you to go in, smash 3 suitcases and open 2 cupboards, and walk out with a few crafting items. It's a terrible loop that will drain sanity because, without a guide, you have no idea which of these thousand buildings are important (Guns, lore, special items) and which are just loot spawns. I suggest: 1. Add location specific loot on a broader scale. Not everywhere should have boxes or suitcases only. Let player seek what they want where they'd find it. 2. This is a big one. Some of the trailers depict a cool loop of seeing the fog is increasing on its own, searching out a house or other leaking place, and stopping the spread. This would have been an awesome looping side focus for the player, making houses, tunnels, or caves into dungeons to quell before they bring the end times. Perhaps use the GPS as a way to find where these fog-causing places are? It would also open up reasons to go to otherwise boring places. The closest thing ingame currently are geysers which are easy to silence and forget. Play Urge. It's hauntingly good even with my gripes. It is an extremely unique experience and more people need to enjoy it.