What this game does/doesn't do well

[GeddyBear]

So I had my share of time with the demo, did all the quests and such and I'm impressed. As somebody who loved How To Survive and HTS2, it hit right in the nostalgia without feeling like a copy which is nice.

The first thing it does right is the world, the wacky characters and the comedy sprinkles in the fun to zombie games that isn't seen all too often nowadays so kudos for that.
The melee combat is simple yet satisfying although I do wish a few more finishing animations were present, it seems to be a maximum of 3 it cycles through which never got boring to me but considering the demo is quite short in terms of quests and such, i imagine it will get repetitive fast in the full release.

The zombie system is great in my opinion, I have no complaints regarding the feature and hopefully the full release provides even more things to do regarding them. The demo gives quite a lot of choice in this regard, from skill upgrades, weapon choices, armour choices and even making them a mount I was seriously impressed and I love this feature of the game which has to hit the nail on the head and with my short time, thankfully it did.

The demo runs buttery smooth, no crashes, no hiccups, no frame drops. It's not a very demanding game sure but it was nice to just start something up and play without any problems performance wise.
Even when I went to the busiest areas with roughly 30-40 zombies on screen and effects going off etc I never once had any issue.

Visually the game is appealing, it's bright and colourful in a lot of areas and retains a light personality although I did enjoy the darker aesthetics when they show up such as the mass graveyard. I'm all for the light-hearted nature of the game but sprinkling in burnt corpses and the dark landscape and things of the same nature was really well done and I welcome more of it.

Settings wise visually there isn't much customisation which leaves me a little skeptical, HTS also had limited settings and I suppose it has to do with the easy requirements of the game being met that an expansive graphical options menu wasn't needed, but for the love of everything please make FSR2 a toggle.

Forcing upscaling in a title should be a sin, especially in a game that performs so well already. It just makes no sense and causes the visuals to look blurry and muddy instead of sharp and clean. My friend still plays on a 1080p display and couldn't even make out the weapon in hand simply because the FSR2 implementation is so aggressive. This is my biggest concern for the title that needs to be changed immediately.

My run through of the demo was relatively bug free apart from a single incident of going into a pit and then not being able to go back up the slope to leave. It weirdly disappeared after around a minute and I was allowed to progress, I'm assuming it was maybe a zombie body hitbox on the slope? As this is where a large group is and they littered the slope where I'd mowed them down.

Audio wise it's acceptable, I wouldn't say anything really stands out other than the voice overs which are intentionally cheesy and it works in the grand scheme of things.

It actually has a dynamic day/night and weather system which surprised me. It rains, thunder and lightning strikes, sunny, foggy. This was a nice addition as although it doesn't effect gameplay for the most part, it did indeed appeal as eye candy and made the torch feel necessary and useful so kudos there.

The building system is okay at best I think, like HTS it has prefabs that you throw down and can interact with. My problem is the controls for rotating are never highlighted in any way (Q and E btw) so others might just think "well I can't rotate this so I'll just throw it down" which can cause space limitations. This could prove to be extremely annoying especially considering a lot of the buildings seem to need more space than their appearance would suggest, along with what seems to be another issue of objects blocking placements such as a small rock not allowing you to place a building forcing you to put it further away and at a weird orientation. It's serviceable but it's not anything to write home about.

The zombie AI seems quite good on both fronts from enemies and friends, I had zero issues commanding my zombie AI companion and he acted exactly how he should in regard to commands and passive behaviours that I set up. Same with my pylons for making worker zombies gather resources, it all just worked how it should and for that I'm grateful.

Enemy zombies are also pretty varied and interesting which surprised me, from different behaviours of walking, running, jumping at you, stumbling at you for the regular zombies to other zombies which seem to exist to enhance your own zombies gear.
These range from zombies that have spikes shooting out of them hauling ass towards you, zombies that ride a lawnmower propeller into you (this is hilarious) others that blow loudly on a trumpet to attract a horse and more.

The ranged combat feels good but also maybe a little powerful, I'm assuming this is to do with it being the very start of the game and as things progress guns become more of an option rather than necessity.
If you played HTS or even Project Zomboid you know what to expect, hold your reticle over the enemy and it highlights when ready to fire. It does feel much better than the HTS implementation though, far more responsive in terms of the aiming reticule not jumping from zombies to zombie when there is a group.

Ammo is not scarce in the beginning of the game, it's crafted with scrap and the guns seem to be obtainable really fast which is a cause for concern as it may make the progression of gear feel way too fast and not as rewarding as it should be but I can't say this is the case until I play the full title. I will say I never ever struggled for ammo and the majority of zombies after I got the air rifle were a one shot, you can also give ranged weapons to your AI zombie companion which is hilarious to watch him shoot a shotgun and fall over because of its recoil so nice details.

Overall I'm thoroughly impressed with the title and will be purchasing it day one, it's a nice arcade feeling zombie game that doesn't take itself serious and I'm all for it. I've been looking for something to scratch the HTS itch for a looooong time and nothing ever really came close, this on the other hand has me excited to play and the demo was a brilliant albeit brief introduction to the game.