Urge

So underrated

ERROR ERROR BUG Cant Place flooring tiles on cars if snapped to posts or items attached to car Still love u tho

The game I want to enjoy, but just can't. It does a lot of things right, but just as many things wrong. Game provides minimal to no explanations for most of the content. There's a loose narrative that gets you going, but doesn't provide any tutorials or anything after the initial cutscene/confusion. It's essentially open world, however key items seem to only appear in very specific spots and don't really change unless another update is released and it's changed to another fixed location.. This ruins the open world aspect as you'll struggle without certain items, such as decent firearms and tools - You'll need to hunt certain items down before the mist/fog becomes too intense and the difficulty ramps up dramatically. It's easy to find yourself trapped in a death-loop as you'll still be getting to grips with the Urge/Urine mechanics. The trailers show dramatic compound showdowns and shootouts, but if you've gotten to that point then your game is essentially bricked unless you already have a staggering amount of supplies on-hand to craft an incredibly explosive solution.. Even then there are enemies that continuously produce the game ending urine mist and without many cues to hear/see them (I frequently had to roam the woods randomly as even though the worst culprits fly, they do so low enough to make it harder to see in certain areas). You can reduce the mist and the enemies, however it's a slippery slope of supply and time management. Killing enemies generally doesn't provide anything other than (occasional) meat, encouraging players to be careful and resourceful in their encounters.. It's just a shame the enemies seem to be incredibly persistent if not slow. There are a LOT of factors to consider when performing any action, as even shooting enemies in certain limbs can increase the fog/mist (this is one of the better features, forcing you to adopt different strategies for different enemies). The issue with enemies in general is that they're inhumanly strong.. An enemy that is emaciated and literally a stick figure can take an unreasonable amount of blows to just bring down, not including any attempts to harvest meat (and this game has survival mechanics, making this essential just to balance out your stamina/health drain). Would getting into a fight with a weapon be tiresome in real life? Definitely. Would it take 20+ hits just to break a limb? I doubt it. Your character appears to be incredibly asthmatic as most actions seem to drain your stamina rapidly. The crafting is basic yet not immediately obvious; you'll be experimenting for a bit just to figure out what items go with what.. It isn't awful, but leaves the crafting feeling a little too simple at times due to linear combinations, e.g. your main harvesting tool is essentially combined with one item to make it into another better item, rinse and repeat. You'll find yourself fiddling with inventories and storage a LOT. The creation and building aspects are incredible if not basic. You have a lot of freedom to create whatever base you want, even being able to attach building/trap elements to working vehicles. You can create flooring and walls exactly how you want them, with the game letting you draw the layout precisely before placing them. Even doors and windows let you have a lot of creative freedom. Settling down and trying to barricade off a decent location was the most fun I had in this game, but it was short lived as supply runs were meager and, as previously mentioned, key items are in static locations generally miles away from each other. Defending your compound can be fun, but ammunition bogs it down to a point where it isn't viable for more than a few minutes.. Not even mentioning that most ammo creates fog/mist upon use. Despite the yellow filter the atmosphere is great. Nights are dark and tense, really adding to the safety you feel when you finally settle down, and increasing your eagerness to get to cover when the sun starts to set - it works well to create a natural flow of scavenging when you can and defending when you can't. The game has decent physics when it comes to handling the mist/fog, even allowing you to create tarps and coverings to help prevent its increase.. It's just a shame that the risk/reward ratio is heavily skewed towards risk, as even the cars have been converted in a way to where you'll increase the mist heavily by using them. Walking isn't exactly viable in the long term due to aforementioned difficulty spikes and rush to get things done - you will not have the room for supplies without a car and will find yourself out after dark frequently if you try to make it on foot. The development team seems small and the game is still in early access, yet it runs rather well. I have no complaints about the optimizations and my setup is rather pathetic - I feel like most modern computers could run this comfortably. Overall this is a fun game, but it's bogged down by odd choices. Keeping a lot of the survival elements, yet fine-tuning damage/health for enemies as well as providing more means to reduce/prevent the difficulty from snowballing so quickly would make a huge difference. I'm hoping the game receives a LOT of polish before its final release as there is a TON of potential to it. The developer generally updates the game frequently and seems to truly care about their product. Unfortunately I cannot recommend it to the average player in its current state due to a steep learning curve and high difficulty.