Have you ever wondered how you might fare in a Terminator-style robot apocalypse?
Wonder no more, as Avalanche Studios’ title Generation Zero lets you experience exactly that. So don your brightest polyester tracksuit and team up with a gang of cool kids from the ’80s to survive, outrun or overthrow Sweden’s new robot overlords.
Choose your combat methods from subterfuge, engineering, or all-out warfare to take apart a robotic horde that has claimed the Scandinavian landscape for their own. The beautiful backdrop of the Swedish countryside stands in stark contrast to the mechanical tide that has swept the country.
All the while, you and your friends stand out in your bright pink and purple outfits. If you’ve got an 80’s style in mind, this game will cater to varsity footballers, cheerleaders, geeks and nerds, hipsters, punks, and more. Explore to collect more variety for your expansive wardrobe, finding new weapons, ammunition, tools, and toys along the way.
Story & concept
Set in a twisted history of the 1980s, Sweden has responded to the end of World War II by building a secret robot army. Buried deep in military compounds around the countryside, it came as a surprise to no one when the machines turned on their masters and set about their programming to capture and prepare conventional warfare territory. The machines have won the mainland effortlessly and are determined to turn Sweden into productive farms and military strongholds.
Following a general evacuation, you and your friends return from an unrelated camping trip to find empty homes, a robot army, and very little in the way of explanation.
Fortunately, the Swedes were armed to the teeth. Almost every household boasts a weapon or ammunition of some sort, if not the bits and pieces required to make deadly robot traps. With no recourse, you must make your way across the countryside, learning how to fight and survive the robotic horde as you go.
Graphics
Avalanche Studios have several titles under their belt, set in the expansive countryside, from hunting games to the Just Cause series. As such, they have become adept at producing unique and fantastic landscapes for players to explore. Generation Zero is no exception. Created with meticulous detail, many of Sweden’s iconic landscapes can be seen, from mountain ranges to dense woods, towns, and farms.
The high definition of texture and attention to detail bring the countryside to life, from the wet mud where Harvesters have torn the land asunder to the crisp plant life growing up on mountain ranges where Hunters and Seeker bots have set up strongholds. It is easy to get lost in the rolling hills of Sweden, between run-ins with your electronic antagonists, who are a treat of their own.
The Machine army aesthetically contrasts the countryside’s plain-color palette by being either bright orange for the more docile machines or gun-metal grey and green for militarily inclined ones. The machines are designed with a great deal of thought, taking inspiration from real-world Boston Robotics, and most feel eerily real. Smartly designed, they are recognizable from a distance to being fantastic models to examine up close.
Behind all of this detail is a consistency in the satisfaction of explosives and weapons visual feedback. They give you the feeling that you have genuinely struck a blow against a metal beast.
Players themselves have a broad scope of clothing and character customization to choose from, which appears to be the main point of the 1980’s setting. Letting you indulge in teenage punk, rockabilly, squares, or hipsters, in a wide variety of colors and styles, allows the player to flesh out the otherwise mute characters in a personal way,
Sound & atmosphere
The sound design is utilized to significant effect and is a real treat. In moments of peace, while you take in the sounds of rustling leaves and birds chirping in the distance, nothing is more jarring than the loud buzzes and whistles of a Seeker catching sight of you in the distance. The rumbling steps of Harvesters and Tanks can be felt and heard from afar. Not to be taken lightly, these sounds enable players to know when they’re approaching a more significant fight or stealthy challenge.
The sound also brings to life the era by allowing you to use a boombox to distract robots, with only the finest, license-free ’80s-like rock music. The robots themselves make a lot of noise and are relatively unique noise type-to-type. When bunkered inside a building, the careful listener can remain informed about what’s lurking outside.
Gameplay
For a first-person shooter, there is a fair amount of diversity in the gameplay style. Provided a set of talent trees, players must choose which talents to mix and match. Combat, Support, Survival, and Tech each represent different abilities and tools for taking down machines.
- The Combat role is for the trigger happy, who wants to stand in the open, drawing the machines’ fire while inflicting massive damage.
- The Support role is everybody’s best bud, which gives benefits for flanking, extra healing, and stamina bonuses.
- The Survivalist role is the stealth role, allowing a player to move faster, quieter, and with more deadly precision when they plan to strike.
- The Tech-heads role receives bonus experience for taking down bots and can use their components to create EMP weapons, hacking tools, and explosives.
The game permits any mix and match of abilities amongst a group of players. Two Combatists will be just as effective as a Support and Tech main.
A player’s chosen role only affects how a combat encounter will play out. Distracting a machine or baiting them to an explosive trap is highly effective. Drawing machines into tight spaces, like small hallways, is equally effective as it forces them to catch the brunt of your gunfire.
Stealth options are limited but grant the Survivalist the ability to hit the weak spot, bringing larger machines down much faster. The machine horde succeeds in feeling relentless as if your mission is a hopeless one. But as you progress and develop experience fighting each machine, they begin to feel as if surviving in this world is possible, giving a strong feeling of “this is life now,” as if coping with deadly machines starts to be part of the day-to-day.
The game has received criticism for cookie-cutter towns and building structures, which is a persisting issue. However, throughout our playthrough, I often found myself combing through these structures for ammo and health packs when I didn’t need to be. One or two houses were searched per town, and I was okay.
Some people cannot resist searching for every loot piece, but in this case, it’s entirely unnecessary. If you can fight the loot-hoarding itch, then the issue feels a lot less present.
Replay value
We imagine, for many, the replay value for this title is minimal. Clearing all compounds and towns, completing the multitude of quests, and simply exploring the setting’s vast countryside takes hundreds of hours of play.
Fortunately, the game has a synced save file system, in which you can seamlessly enter a friend’s playthrough and help them with their missions until they catch up to your playthrough, at which point progress will count for both players.
The multi-player system is an excellent system for a world of such scope and complexity. So while you might not play the game again from start to finish, you might come back to help a friend with some quests you’ve completed before.
The Final Word for Generation Zero
Generation Zero’s gunplay is satisfying, and outsmarting the machines is a rewarding feeling. Often the fights will devolve into cover and fire gunplay, but that is the punishment for less than tactical planning. Some of the bots are more interesting to fight than others. Often the smaller Runners and Ticks make for a terrifying enemy compared to the bipedal Hunter, which are rough head-to-head fights no matter how well you plan.
The timeline, setting, and story are all strong; however, the total lack of NPCs, other than the bots, can make the world feel lifeless. More signs of conflict between humans and bots would have perhaps fleshed out this side of the world better. But, preserving a lower ESRB rating has kept the game open to younger players.
So dress up in your finest 80’s party wear and take a run at Swedish Skynet, see how far you get.
