 Originally Posted by Neil
So can you tell me why I should get this on the PC then?
Haha - that's the big question!
I'll start by linking the the roadmap so you can see what they've planned/done/working on. It's a pretty bold mission statement, but even if they only get half of what's on it in to the final game then it'll slaughter every other zombie survival game out there:
http://www.thedeadlinger.com/roadmap
From my point of view what I like about it:
The focus on traditional zombies. Their starting point is Romero/Kirkman/Brooks. I was worried that shamblers in an open world wouldn't really work – wide open space, slow enemy, you just run past them no problem. And you sort of do, you give it legs and run back to your base or whatever and carry on as usual. About ten minutes later when you're merrily barricading your doors and windows, you turn round just in time to see that group of zombies you thought you'd given the slip, about to tear you to shreds. This only has to happen a few times before it starts to make you really paranoid... The thing we talk a lot about on here is that sense of dread of the shambler rather than to boo scare of the runner – it's all true! Searching a house is one thing doing it while you can hear them banging on doors, and the windows smashing downstairs is quite another. And they do climb through broken windows to get you, it's unnerving to say the least. Complacency is the other big thing - it's easy to think you'll be fine then, before you know it, you find yourself surrounded and having to take emergency measures to escape. Oh, and head shot only kills.
The free-form Barricading system. Being able to barricade however you like is just amazing – you can do, (even at this early stage) pretty much whatever you want, from simply piling a ton of furniture behind a door and hoping for the best, to a full on Woodbury style safe haven – there's even a prison if you'd rather take the Rick Grimes approach. Also, the Barricades strength is determined by how well you build them so quick and dirty won't last as long as something you heavily fortified. They also plan to extend the free-form barricading to vehicles (free-form welding!), so you can cobble together your very own Dead Reckoning style battle bus.
It has some fantastic music – has that nice haunting quality you get from the opening titles on Night. Eerie as hell.
The size of the world is also pretty impressive, the fact that you can just take off in any direction and keep going almost indefinitely is quite a liberating feeling – really does make it seem like a proper epic apocalypse.
Perhaps, most importantly, the dev team are very open with the community, they address the concerns of the players and keep everyone pretty well informed about what's going on with the development process – what works, what's not working, what they're doing to fix it (sometimes with diagrams!), and what they plan on working on next. As I said in my previous post they're rolling out hotfixes at warp speeds, if something gets broke they're all over it pretty quick. We're all ready up to build 10g with a H and an I on the way.
I suppose with buying into an alpha you're buying into the promise of what it could be come. Right now it's going through a 'bumpy phase' but that's mostly down to switching the game engine which has created a few side effects. The main one right now is the frame rate, which varies quite wildly. At the moment I get everything from 110+ all the way down to 3 or 4. Sometimes it resolves itself other times it crashes. When it fires on all cylinders (or as many as an alpha can!), it does hit that sweet spot and it feels like there is nothing better.
If you can handle the ups and downs of an alpha build it's well worth a punt.
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