This is a review of a game Generation Zero. The game is available for the Xbox One, PS4, and Microsoft Windows. Generation Zero is a first-person shooter game developed by Avalanche Studios. The game takes place in Sweden in the year 1989 where hordes of killer robots have taken over the land. You play as a survivor and the adventure starts on an island where the locals have vanished. So, you have to explore, loot, and survive the Swedish wilderness and try to figure out what's going on.
Well, you start by creating your character from a variety of presets, then you find yourself in an abandoned house and are free to explore your surroundings at your leisure. At the start, it's quite challenging as you don't have any weapons or health items and the first few encounters with the robots are genuinely tense. The more robots you kill the more you level up and you can specialize your skills in the menu.
But aside from killing robots, you'll be exploring the vast and beautiful map looting structures and cars and just taking in the peaceful tranquility of the Swedish countryside. The island is beautiful to look at but it is very sparse and it really reminded me of something but at first, I couldn't quite place it. Then it hit me it really felt like a battle royale map incredibly vast but empty for the most part.
So, expect long walks in the forest peaceful exploration in between robot fights but exploration does get boring quite quickly. The robots however are the most impressive part of the game with a wide variety ranging from small drones dog-like hunters and some epic ones that are kitted out with heavy explosives. The weapons are pretty cool and later on, you'll get your hands on some special gear but in the beginning, it's handguns hunting rifles, and shotguns.
You can also find new outfit pieces to wear and character customization is one of the most fun parts of the game. Honestly, there are some shocking outfits here but it's kind of cool going back to the 80s it's like a sort of surreal cheese-fest of a fashion show with some robots. Finally, it is solo or online co-op now I started in solo and I quite enjoyed that it's very tense on your own and you'll be sneaking around looting and covertly taking down robots or just running for your life.
Online However, is a mixed experience firstly if you join another player's game who's completed it you can unlock all of the hideouts without actually having to play through it. Secondly, you can't turn off voice chat at all which was really annoying and most of the online matches were just chaotic nonsense with people all spread out through the map talking to themselves so I'd recommend it as a solo experience over the co-op unless you have friends who own the game then I think that would be more enjoyable but with randoms possibly not a good experience to go for.
Graphically, it's a very nice game to explore a beautiful island. The robots are well designed and the lighting effects are very good. The game also has a photo mode but it's fairly limited saying that you can create some bizarre and weird images using the outfits and the environment. You can also reuse it to record still videos because you can't actually pause the game. The music is very atmospheric and synth 80s inspired and it's the stand out on the audio front. The combat sound effects and robot sounds are good too and overall the audio is probably the best and most consistent part of the game.
What's good: It's a tense and enjoyable game in the beginning. The game world looks great, the robots are cool and well designed, and the controls are well optimized.
What's Bad: After a while, the experience starts to feel quite hollow. The lack of NPCs on the island makes for a very lonely solo experience. The online co-op has a lot of technical issues and the map although pretty feels like an empty battle royale map.
Generation Zero has a nicely-created map, good robot enemies, and a simple game loop but it feels like a half-finished game. The game world is as empty as any I've played the lack of npcs or anything else out there other than robots is very disappointing. And it just feels like a game that is unfinished or half baked it needed a lot more content and variety as the game loop of exploration looting and killing robots is fine for a few days but quickly gets tiresome. Even online play doesn't help prolong the sense of enjoyment.
Don't get me wrong it's not a terrible game I quite enjoyed the first 10 hours playing solo but once that got tiring I dived into online and that really did nothing to improve the experience. So overall, it's a solid game that feels quite hollow once you scratch the surface but if you like the idea of exploring the Swedish wilderness, riding a pushbike, wearing terrible 80s clothing, looting, and killing robots then you just might enjoy it. But for everyone else, I would say this is only worth picking up from the bargain bucket ten dollars I'd say is fine anything more than that is not reccomended.
