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7 days to die review pc7/23/2023 There's a line between indie and amateur, and on current evidence 7 Days to Die lands on the wrong side of it. ![]() "There's a line between indie and amateur, and on current evidence 7 Days to Die lands on the wrong side of it" Unsolved mysteries of the zombie apocalypse: why are there always so many cheerleaders and nurses? It looks, quite frankly, like a first-year student project, not a commercial product headed for a final retail release. It's not that the game looks unpolished - that's to be expected in an alpha build - but that it feels thrown together, made up of generic models and textures slapped into place to fill up the acres of map. The numerous cardboard boxes have an Escher quality, and seem to distort the objects and surfaces they touch. Mind you, all the 3D objects have a weird warped appearance too, as if being viewed in a funhouse mirror. The landscape is made up of Minecraft-esque voxel blocks which sit awkwardly alongside the supposedly more realistic buildings and cars. Shadows jerk across the landscape in chunks, while objects and scenery pop in and out of view constantly. Floor textures overlap as jagged square tiles. ![]() This is a game that looks unfinished even by the standards of other unfinished games currently offering paid early access. Unfortunately, that's basically the game that most of its rivals already are, and some seriously creaky production values don't do much to suggest 7 Days will be joining their ranks. It's during the frantic, terrifying hours of darkness that you catch a glimpse of the game 7 Days to Die is hoping to become. Objects fall into two basic categories: things that can be looted and things that be picked up and moved. A room with a door is an obvious start, but the undead can break through those - and can even cause ceilings to collapse if enough of them get above you. It's around this point that you'll wish you'd made more of an effort to find a safe spot. In darkness, they switch from shuffling drones to speedy predators, and will begin to purposefully hunt you down. These tactics will keep you alive during the daytime, but it's at night that the zombies become a lethal threat rather than a minor nuisance. The right mouse button switches you to iron sight aiming, and from there headshots are a doddle, regardless of difficulty. ![]() You can punch zombies to death if you don't have a weapon - it takes about three hits to the face on the easiest difficulty, considerably more if you crank it up - or you can take aim with the game's rudimentary first-person shooter mechanics. You can, at least, tweak the settings before creating a new game, so once you've found your feet you'll want to do this in order to get the right level of challenge.Ĭombat is basic but efficient. The odds are more likely that you'll find yourself spoiled for choice, with at least two of every weapon type fighting for inventory space, plus food to spare. That's not terribly likely, however, as 7 Days to Die currently seems to be a very generous game. The people of Gravetown were kind of asking for trouble with a name like that. These, however, are randomised, so while one new game might start you in an area rich with guns and ammo, just waiting to be liberated from their mouldering sports bags and conveniently unlocked safes, the next new game might find you scrambling to find even a decent pistol before night falls. Unlike similar apocalyptic sandbox games, the map is a fixed thing - not procedurally generated - so you're able to get your bearings over time and work out the best places to head to for supplies. You spawn at random on a reasonably sized map. While a relatively new formula, the clichés are already well established, and 7 Days to Die's early-access alpha seems to be walking right into all of them. Tins of meat! Clean water! Bits of old wood! These are the currencies of the new gaming age, not the shiny gold coins of yore.ħ Days to Die joins DayZ, Rust, Project Zomboid and others as another post-apocalyptic survival game in which you must endure a zombie plague by scavenging ammo and food, while fortifying safe havens against nocturnal onslaughts. That's the buzzword of 2014, the year when seemingly every other new game - on the PC in particular - requires you to dig around in cupboards, bin bags and broken fridges like a crazed old lady at a Mad Max jumble sale. Have you heard about the hot new trend that's sweeping gaming? It's not shooting, or punching, or even jumping.
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