There are more zombie games on Steam than there are zombies in any single one of those games. I’m barely kidding. The zombie survival genre is… well, basically a zombie by this point, coming back to life every once in a while through cheap knockoffs that can barely be called games. Those are the titles that enrage the Jim Sterlings of this world in how TOO identical they are, having been built from the same resources.
Unturned has the most basic concept of them all: Your place has been struck by "something" that turned everyone else into zombies. You’ve been unaffected by the virus. You have to survive by gathering
resources, building a fort, learning skills and fending off zombies. Also, you
start the game entirely nekkid, with very limited inventory space. Not that
nudity matters much considering your character is blocky like a Minecraft protagonist.
Nelson Sexton, of Smartly Dressed Games, published the
first version of Unturned in 2014, and the title was in Early Access until July
7th, 2017, where its full version was made available. Have I
mentioned that Sexton was only 16 when he released the first version? This
guy’s going to go far in life. Unturned is already hailed as one of the better
zombie survival games out there… which sadly also means that it single-handedly
spawned a whole wave of cheap imitators. But let’s be fair and criticize this game on its own merits, not on what
it’s led to, shall we?
Two words come to me when I start playing Unturned:
Complete freedom. You’re given the choice to play alone or make a server with
friends. If you’re a team guy, you can get yourself into a multiplayer game. The gameplay hardly changes between the two, it’s always the same
concept: Survive. You’re dropped, naked, in the map you’ve selected, and you
must get clothes, weapons, and so on. The concept is very simple and you’re
free to explore the map to your liking. There are large areas of nature, small
inhabited areas, and lots of water.
You have to keep track of many elements:
That white bar at the bottom is oxygen. So much to remember, so much to keep track of. All of a sudden, I'm feeling kinda thirsty. |
-Food and water bars, for which you must scavenge food
and drinks in the inhabited areas to feed yourself and stay hydrated. A lack of
nourishment or hydration will eventually spell your doom.
-A sickness meter. Getting attacked by zombies will
decrease that meter, and so will stepping into irradiated zones. Seek hospitals
and medicine if this meter goes down.
-A stamina counter. Running or jumping uses up
stamina. Depleting that bar doesn’t cause many issues, although a player will
need some time to refill it afterwards. It does, however, deplete the food and
water bars a little faster.
-Last but not least, oxygen. Only really needed when
your survivor is going underwater.
So many things that are seemingly useless in the inventory... I should do some cleanup. Impressive, however, how much stuff this guy can carry around at once. |
And if that’s not an option, you could just tour the
nearby farms in search of a chainsaw. It kills messily and bloodily, but it keeps
hitting the target and will make quick work of most zombies in the way. Bonus,
no need to refill it with gasoline and you can chop down all the trees in
sight. This actually brings me to my next points.
Fishing is one quick way to get food... ...provided you have a campfire to cook it on and some cooking skills. Man, why is it s complicated? |
There are many maps available, and most of them are pretty large, although some are solely used for multiplayer. Germany, Prince Edward Island, Russia, Washington and Yukon are available, and so are Hawaii for the main solo maps – although there’s a few more ranked as Misc, being more like Player-versus-Player maps not built for single-player.
Full moon zombies are so much more fun to kill. Their eyes are like flashing lights revealing evil in the darkness. Plus the EXP bonus, that helps. |
This one is, quite literally, a zombie on fire. And it's freaking gigantic. |
Ah. it's good to see other unturned survivors! |
There are technically no downsides to becoming a
bandit, as the community has gotten to calling them. Bandits can be single
players or groups, but they all have something in common: Their goal is to have
fun… by attacking, killing and looting other players who have teamed up to survive. Maps go from zombie survival to actual
player-versus-player when bandits come out to play. Yes, put all the gear lying
around in the hands of a guy who treats this like a game where players can kill
each other, and you basically get the horror movie characters who go crazy from the constant horror, turn on the
good guys and kill some of them. "Screw the rules, everyone else is a zombie and
we’re doomed anyway!" In fact, there are Steam achievements for killing other
players! Sure, there is a karma meter of sorts, but it doesn’t impact the
gameplay in any way aside from telling other players whether you’ve been naughty
or not. Bandits are still free to snipe at others from afar, or plan hits on
clans of survivors…
Plenty of stuff you can craft! You can basically craft yourself a house if you want to. |
It’s a surprisingly complex and complete game, with a
lot of options that may not have normally been in survival titles. Your first
day cycles will be spent scavenging food and medicine, building weapons and
killing zombies, although the idea is to try to avoid doing this once you’ve
set up your base and started harvesting your own resources. You can spend the
whole single-player mode visiting places, killing zombies in the name of a
self-imposed challenge, or you can try to play safe and build your base and
live happily away from dangers. Or do a bit of both, then chase the boss
zombies and try to defeat them!
Of course, it suffers from the same issues as most
other survival games – the meters empty too quickly, and you’re often left with
very few options. The harder the game setting (you can choose between Easy,
Medium and Hard), the quicker the meters become a problem. It’s not that these
meters don’t have a reason to exist, they do; it’s the whole point of survival.
But it’s a question of balance whether or not they empty out too quickly. I
felt the meters were fine in the Easy difficulty, but would empty a little too
quickly on higher difficulties. You’re also left to trust the Random Number
God, as the game is programmed in such a way that items will appear at random
in important places, and if you don’t find what you need, there isn’t much you
can do about it. Thankfully, you can usually find what you need to build stuff
by yourself, and you can probably go far in the game without dying if you learn
to use everything to your advantage.
I don’t know if there’s much else to say about this
one, really; Nelson Sexton and Smartly Dressed Games are frequently adding
updates to it, constantly including more content, and it’s good to know that
the developers are still trying to improve their product.
Now, yes… the sad part about all this. Unturned is a
good game. So good, in fact, that game development software Unity made a pack
of resources, called UnitZ, based on the game (not usable in Unturned; merely
based on it), so that other people could make their own blocky zombie survival
title. Steam was then flooded by uninspired zombie survival titles that all
looked the same, played the same, and did everything the same way. Is Unturned
to blame? No. Is Unity to blame? Not quite, as they only made the resources
available. Is Steam to blame? Partly, since they made it so easy to publish a
game on Steam (and this was in the days of Steam Greenlight, where almost
anything could go). The blame mostly lies in uninspired rookie game creators
who thought they could just use the resource pack, slap a new name on it, make
very basic changes and just sell the result for a quick buck. Unturned is a
passion project. These copycats are not. Get the real deal, it’s better than
all of those combined – alas, maybe all of these poor copies have turned you
away from all zombie survival games… Which is a shame, because Unturned is
worth trying. On top of that, it’s free, so you won’t waste money if you turn
out not to enjoy it.
So yeah, that covers it all. See you next week for a
different game.
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