TL:DR
$45 ‘stable’ release, comes with same unfulfilled promises from 8+ years ago.
I really enjoyed this game, I have over 1000 hours on steam and have no idea how much I played on ps4. Hell, the reason I built my pc was to play this game (and custom cod zombies). That being said, I would not pay $45 for the current ‘stable’ release, probably worth it under $10.
My main beef is $45. Thats how much you charge for a finished game, but this is far from finished. Their own roadmap includes crossplay, weather upgrades, a wardrobe, NPC’s, and bandits. This roadmap is 18 months long, if they can deliver all of their promises the game will be 12 years old then. (They will not)
NPC’s and bandits are especially interesting to me, because I bought this game for pc in 2017, not too long after reading this blog post
https://joelhuenink.tumblr.com/post/144526427828/bandits-weve-got-the-heavy-bandit-armor-done-and
This is just about how every alpha has gone since then, big youtube and twich promotions, lots of promises, and then, a small, incrimental update.
Last, but not least, the current game kind of sucks. The hitboxes are better than when they first updated the UNITY engine after a16, but still shit. There is a spot in the zombie’s shoulder that if you hit them with an arrow, the game chokes for a couple of frames then they do a cool spin. Each and every poi has invisible barriers (and has since a16) which cause agro, so walk in room, back out, slowly hit with (object). Skill progression is tied behind xp based points, reading rng magazines, and there is a perk that increases your loot, but there are other perks to increase the specific magazine loot.
Really didn’t play much since a17, but I’ve played a few hours of each alpha since. This 1.0 is no different, but I cannot get over that price.
I had tons of hours in it. In either a19 or a20, they added these dumb triggers that just spawn an entire world of zombies or open a set of doors with the zombies aggro’d to the player already effectively killing stealth. Worse, there’s no way to know about any of this until you’re in the POI and getting obliterated. I haven’t touched the game since them and was quite angry.
When it glitched a bunch (19 or 20) there was a visible barrier that I could not see through, walking through it will agro the zombies beyond the barrier. You can sit just outside and shoot a shotgun, you can start a campfire, as far as I can tell the only way to agro is crossing the barrier.
One was a military base and entering one part of a big open yard would open several doors with zombies aggro’d to the player. Another was the tier 5 prison that had several spawn triggers. However, before the trigger, no zombies were spawned in so they couldn’t just be picked off. I never saw a visible trigger anywhere in my playthroughs.