by There’s a lot of unneeded negativity surrounding this game, which I’d like to avoid. Instead of pointing fingers and saying “it’s the devs fault” or “it’s the player’s fault” I’d like to instead express my experience with the game at face value.
As it stands, there’s not really anything *wrong* with Project Zomboid. It’s a game with plenty of little pieces for you to dive into, explore and master. If you’re Jonesin’ for an inventory management base-building survival zombie game that plods along at a bit of a slow pace, then this game’s definitely for you. For me though, most of the game feels hollow.
There’s all these pieces, but not a lot to work towards. A large bulk of the items in the game are just “stuff” to cause clutter; either possessing little actual use or in some cases no use at all. There are some basic gameplay mechanics that are really solid–zombies can break through walls, doors and windows, things can catch on fire, you can cover up entrances with sheets to reduce zombie visibility into your home etc. I only have compliments for the handful of realistic survival mechanics that actually exist within the game. The problem is, they feel as if they only form the shell of a game; long-term success or failure sort of just depends on manipulating the other somewhat awkward and unintuitive mechanics. For instance, fighting off the hordes (and I do mean hordes) of zombies is rather futile early on… until you realize that you just have to draw them away from an area by making noise somewhere else (and possibly dragging them through a campfire or two while you’re at it). This turns the “zombie survival” aspect into more of a “herd the dumb AI” aspect from one place to another, which is neither terribly exciting nor a quick process. Perhaps there’s a sense of realism to it, but because there are an infinite number of zed and a large amount of your time is spent becoming the Zombie Whisperer, I felt I wasn’t able to really enjoy myself. Other awkward mechanics involve mundane tasks that simply involve waiting for a little green loading bar to fill up. It certainly makes the process feel much more like simulation than immersion.
Long-term fans of the series are not so much affected by these “problems” as over time they’ve internalized all of the rules so that they no longer need to jump to the wiki every 3 minutes, and have even gotten to see the game improve over time. As it stands though, with a combat system that involves more “madly click until the zed is dead” and less actual strategy, a survival system that relies more on prior knowledge and complicated mechanics than intuitive strategy, and a world with little to work towards, leaves me having come back multiple times to try out the game, but in the end just feeling unfulfilled.
There are technically skills and levels, if you’re looking for long-term achievement, but again, progress in these areas feels more manipulative than actually progressive. Gaining EXP in a particular field can range from mindless to obnoxious, leaving you to attack trees or tiredly hop over fences over and over to gain EXP in your chosen skill. If you wish to speed up this process you can by finding and reading books–but even that is a rather dull process that involves sitting around, watching another green bar fill up. Yes, I know you can fast-forward time in single-player, but altogether it just feels uninspired.
What cities and areas to explore that exist are great–houses are stocked with goodies, and placed in such a way that paints a realistic cityscape. Woe to those who travel off the beaten path however, as leagues of empty half-built forests and fields will reveal nothing of interest while wasting hours of travel time if on foot. The physical game world is also not randomly generated… but honestly, it’s got enough different places (and the items in those places are random) that I didn’t notice too much.
While this one is a more of a personal opinion, I’m not a big fan of the graphics, and not because they might be considered simplistic or low-end. I’ve entertained myself with games that used nothing but circles and squares for hours, so the so-called “quality” of graphics has never really been an issue with me. My real problem (and perhaps this is because the game is built in Java) is the style of the graphics. They just remind me of the thousand of crappy online dating sim/Facebook/girl’s social dollhouse type games that I saw a lot in the late 90’s and early 2000’s. This complaint isn’t entirely fair, because I’m associating the graphics with something completely unrelated to PZ — honestly, PZ uses their graphics to great and clear effect.
At the end of it all, in spite of the negative review, I get the feeling this is a game that I’ll be coming back to during times when I want that hardcore survival aspect, but maybe want something very low key that isn’t terribly intense or fast-paced. That being said, I don’t think I’ll be binge-playing this since the core gameplay loops is far too unrewarding to me to feel my time is well spent.
PS: As an aside, I spent no small amount of time studying the history of the forums to see what other people’s opinions on the game were, and how far the game has progressed over the years. I must say that another non-plus that leaves a somewhat uncertain taste in my mouth is the somewhat hostile manner in which one of the staff associated with the game, “Enigma Gray” constantly responds to forum posts. While I tend to agree with most of the points he brings up, he seems to take it upon himself to repel even the smallest attacks against PZ in a manner that is not terribly polite or nor what I would consider overly professional. I wouldn’t necessarily describe it as openly hostile, but I would say that he could approach the community with a bit more of a helpful attitude and a lot less defensiveness. Of course, if I was pouring my life into a small indie game with an over-expectant community, I might also lose my patience as well from time-to-time.
T2