TLDR: Good game, wait until Steam discount.
I found this game from a Reddit ad, the only reason I looked for it on Steam was because the ad had the comment section open. That was a huge risk in trust from the game's dev/advertisment team, so I was down to give it a shot.
On the whole, I was very impressed by the graphics and how the intuitive gameplay flowed and easily translated almost everything the player needs to accomplish the objectives. In stark contrast to XCOM's "do the thing in 5 turns or die," Dead Season respects the player's desire for caution... especially in a zombie infested game. A good defense can be messed up by a couple mistakes and the game encourages the players to take control of the clock. All timed events were in service to the plot and didn't feel out of place. After my first play-through of the campaign, I was left thinking "Oh, is that it?" For $20, I need more to feel like I got my money's worth. The graphics and character/zombie interactions are great, but the story was just too short. I want to see more of the story before I'd confidently say the game was worth full price.
Pros:
- Great User Interface
- Great Graphics
- Well balanced combat mechanics
- A quality plot
- Time constraints sparingly used effectively (in contrast to XCOM)
- Gear wear and tear is a nice "realism" addition to raise the survive-ability factor
Mixed:
- No ability to save-scum
- Strategic mistakes can quickly snowball
- the change for losing/broken equipment between certain scenarios appears to target specific gear (based on the new scenario's objective) instead of organically random. (in 1 transition I lost all 4 fire-axes, only)
Cons:
- Single-Player Campaign felt too short
- Death of a teammate is punished by a forced restart of the current scenario
- No way to store multiple saved games
- The cost of 1 Action-Point (AP) to pull an item from a character's inventory to equip, and then spend a second AP is too steep. If the player is going to be charged 2 Action-Points to pull out an emergency item, then either (a) only make it cost 1 AP to use, or (b) allow the characters to store more items in their backpack storage. It's single-player, so let us be free to horde... there's always the risk of loss between scenarios as it is.
izigame.me
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