DISCLOSURE: This game was reviewed on the following platform: PC – Check out our Review Policy page for more information.
When you see a game in steam and it has the tags Open World, Survival and Zombies a normal person should see this and shudder. When those words went big in steam and started a flood of bad video games being made in that corner of the video game sphere, it ruined the genre. Fast forward to today and luckily we’re past that time, and out of all that mess came some actual good games. Generation Zero is one of them and I’m pretty sure it’s because there wasn’t any zombies in it!
Robot Apocalypse! A Late Generation Zero Review
Generation Zero is a game set in a fictional Swedish island right after the cold war, when Sweden was at the height of it’s scare against the soviets. To prepare for a war every citizen of Sweden was taught how to defend themselves with guns, and had plans on what to do in case war does come to the country.
You play as a young man or woman who was doing something with your friends off the main island and didn’t have any communication till you came back. You went on your boat going back to the island and an explosive destroyed your boat and you now reach the shore quickly noticing that there’s probably some sort of Apocalypse happening.
Story
The story for Generation Zero isn’t dumped on you, you get into the island and notice that there’s no people around. There’s robot dogs with guns and you only have your skill with a gun to fight back, or a bat if you like swinging that way. Later on you meet other survivors and they’re just as confused as you are, you start having missions trying to piece together what happened and what’s going on with your country.
It’s nice tale that sometime is overshadowed by the fact that the game is open world and because of that players tend to just explore and forget about the story. They’ll stumble on it sometimes but some people even don’t finish the story at all and just hunt robots! If you like the idea of uncovering what happened though you’re in for a treat!
Gameplay
You don’t go run in gun in this game unless you know what you’re doing. You go into towns collecting materials and ammunition so that you can engage the enemies that are blocking your way. If you go out and fight as many as you can without caring about your resources then you’ll run out eventually.
Crafting in the game has recently been revamped making it easier for you to learn more crafting recipes but at the same time lowers the amount you get from crafting which a lot of players didn’t like. The recent change had made crafting less viable and more often than not it just left me looting for ammunition instead of crafting it.
Fights in this game, specially the earlier ones will be tough. You need to use all your resources at your disposal and not just your bullets. Use environmental effects like shooting at gas tanks or making cars explode. You can throw EMP grenades to momentarily stun enemies, use flares to trick them in shooting the flares and not you. Aim for the weak spots!
The game also has CO-OP which is rare these days and is a massive win for the game. You can get up to 3 other players to play the game with you and there’s even difficulty scaling so that things don’t get too easy.
Graphics
If there’s one thing this game does right it’s the graphics. The game looks amazing and is really trying its best to assassinate my GPU. You can find beautiful and lush forests to stare at, seas and beaches to enjoy and when it’s dark you get to see all the lights off in the distance and if it’s red you better ready your weapon too! The game has the graphics going for them and often times is one of the best parts of this game.
The Bad Thing About Apocalypses
There are some design elements that get me a tad bit confused. The game is a survival game where you try to sneak around, pick your fights and try to follow the story and know what happened to Sweden. Then there’s the challenges the game throws you, like kill 15 ticks or defeat a base with only a melee weapon. You don’t need to do these challenges but it’s quite odd seeing it in the game and gave me some horrible MMO daily and weekly quests flashbacks.
The weapon variety is only a handful and the DLCs although cheap on sale can be a bit of a trap as well. There’s a DLC weapon that introduces a new ammo type, and it’s quite rare to get these DLC ammunition from normal looting, if you do try to craft them it’s usually not worth it because of how few you can make, making using these weapons you paid for sub-optimal.
Speaking of DLC, the one good DLC out there that’s worth your money is Alpine Unrest DLC, compared to the other ones this DLC gives you a good amount of content for the price. The others are often cosmetics only or doesn’t provide enough varying content for the price. You DON’T NEED DLCs to play the game, base building and motorcycles are there without the DLCs, they just add cosmetic stuff.
A Late Generation Zero Review
Summary
The game has its flaws but even with that it’s still a great game to jump into, even better with friends. The story that you uncover, the gameplay that can be fun and challenging as well and the ever evolving threat of the robots as you go through the regions and fight more of them keeps it fresh despite the lack of weapon and enemy variety.
ALSO READ: Generation Zero: Non-DLC Weapons Tier List
