Welcome! I recently found out Generation Zero received a performance patch for PS5 allowing it to hit 60FPS and decided it was a good time to revisit it. Last I played this game was over a year ago, but it was pretty fun and scratches a specific shooter game itch.
Generation Zero is an open world "survival" game where the player explores areas of Sweden that have been overtaken by hostile robots. I use quotes around survival as while there is crafting/base building, there's no need for food/water or some of the other systems common in the survival genre. Despite the jank of the some of the gameplay and systems, scavenging for weapons and supplies in the world while blasting robots is really fun. The below may contain some spoilers for the first part of the campaign. With that said, let's start!
The game opens with you returning to Östertörn, Sweden and coming under fire with your boat exploding. When control is given to the player, you're on the shore and given the task of searching a nearby house.
There's a good chunk of "video game logic" here, with regards to what we find in the house. Of note, is a small, low quality pistol. Shortly thereafter, we encounter the first of the robots in the game - a dog-like robot with machine guns. Unfortunately it spotted me before I was ready, resulting in a firefight and having to use an abandoned car as cover.
Thankfully, it wasn't hard to take down - though I much prefer a stealthy approach.
From the information gathered in the house, the checkpoint of a church was added to our map. I stuck to the main road as it seemed to be the fastest route, but there more machines there. Luckily, I was able to sneak up on one and hit the fuel tank - boom!.
While satisfying, this does show the dominant strategy in the game is largely stealh based/long range engagement. For higher level enemies in my previous playthrough I often found myself engaging, taking cover, then popping out somewhere else to get a few more hits in - repeating until they were down.
Upon at the church's waypoint, there was a note mentioning a hunter lived a ways off and another waypoint was added to the map. Seemed logical that I could go there and find a long range hunting rifle - and I could! On the way there, though - video game logic struck:
I had a good laugh at the item placement here - I'd expect to find this much further on in the game, but looting rockets from abandoned civilian cars is pretty funny. After making my way to the hunter's cabin, I found the rifle I was looking for (and a nice view too!).
Weapons and gear in Generation Zero is tiered with a star system - the more stars an item has, the bettter (and rarer) it is. For some games this is strictly stat based, but here there's a practical difference as well. The scope on the rifle was the lowest tier available, and doesn't offer much magnification - but also is broken and impacts how you see through it.
Eventually I made my way back to the waypoint at the church to progress the main mission. I was surprised to find the stash there was shared between characters - I suddenly had access to a lot more interesting weaponry (almost making the game too easy).
As a whole replaying the intro section was fun and I'll probably continue on with this. I may not finish the game again, but I'll probably go back to my old save and try to clean up the missing trophies and blow up some more robots in fun ways. I'm not one to prioritize trophies, but do enjoy when they encourage a different style of gameplay.
Thanks for reading!
