![]() Stocking up on resources out in The Dust or playing salvage missions in multiplayer for rare materials and gear can be fun when you’re working toward a goal. “Survive is heavy on the grind, but once you have something compelling to grind for - a new weapon you’re eager to craft, more ammo, more energy so you can level up and get a handy new skill - it isn’t entirely a chore. One particularly fun late-game mission had me defending a point solo for 15 minutes straight, and it made the two hours of grinding for supplies in preparation feel worth it. Individual Wanderers may not pose any kind of interesting challenge, but fending them off as a horde can get the blood flowing. Even though the combat amounts to little more than repetitive hacky-slash brawls, like something out of Dynasty Warriors, it was fun to learn and develop small tricks for dealing with enemies. I found it more viable to save up barriers for cutting off lanes of enemies closer to their spawns rather than waiting for them to come to base, choking the smaller hordes early on to make later waves more manageable. It’s in those hectic moments where you’re struggling to manage the onslaught of Wanderers from every direction, bouncing between several entry points at once and fortifying your defenses between waves. But the fun doesn’t come from poking or shooting the same zombie in the face over and over again. “In both modes, Survive’s melee-heavy combat feels good from a mechanical standpoint, even before you’re resource-rich enough to afford ammo. Multiplayer is a good way to get a break from the trudge of single-player and stock up on gear to make story missions easier. Even with an uncoordinated team, it’s extremely simple to S-rank the Easy missions you’re forced to play at first because Normal and Hard don’t unlock until you hit a certain level, but that isn’t a bad thing. Between and even during waves, you can run simple side-missions that give you access to more defensive methods for protecting your wormhole digger as it mines for energy. In multiplayer, you get a chance to craft and choose your loadout in the lobby, but you also have access to a shared pool of resources gathered in-game once the match starts if you want to craft anything further. In single-player, you need to come prepared for each mission beforehand, which means crafting barriers, healing items, and other gear back at base - if you run out, tough luck. “Where Survive’s action thrives is in its wave-based defense missions, which are also the format of its four-player co-op salvage missions in multiplayer with some minor differences. With an initially limited toolset of weapons and abilities, a lack of diverse situations to adapt to, and few compelling reasons to bother, Survive seems to fundamentally misunderstand the circumstances that have made fun, stealthy escapades possible in previous Metal Gear games. The one reason you benefit from a stealthier approach is because an enemy taken down with a sneaky backstab will contain more Kubon energy to harvest, but the currency is hardly in short supply. They also don’t chase you for very long, so attracting their attention has few consequences. Overall, Survive’s enemies are mindless and predictable - they don’t interact with each other in any dynamic way and they don’t exhibit any challenging behaviors to overcome. The standard crystal-headed zombies dominate the vast majority of the combat, and it isn’t until more than halfway through the campaign that their slightly more interesting variants start to show up in greater frequency. “Encounters with the Wanderers, Survive’s base enemy type, are similarly bland. I’ve grown attached to my base and feel compelled to flesh it out with more survivors, found in rescue missions around the map, and resources for building and maintaining new structures. ![]() Nearby are my food and medicine repositories for keeping my crew healthy, and opposite my farms, several advanced gear, weapon, and gadget workshops for crafting new equipment.īeing able to manually rearrange each station to my liking and actually see my small group of NPC survivors working on their assigned tasks brought a welcome human element to Survive’s otherwise technical, menu-heavy micromanagement. My current base has small huts and tents set up near the campfire where I can sleep and cook. Each task is done at a different station that you can drag and drop to a location of your choosing, effectively letting you create your own little survival camp. After returning from a mission, I’d repair my gear at my workbench, restock on ammo, cook whatever food I’d been able to scavenge for, boil some clean water for drinking, and check my farms and water purifiers for output. “While things take a while to pick up, I fell into a pretty comfortable base-building routine once they did.
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