Generation Zero

This game pisses me off so much. Not because it's bad, but because it could be so much better than it is.
The devs seem to just have upped and left, leaving all bugs, flaws and quirks behind, no more expansion of the game world, leaving a bunch of areas completely void of anything more than base vegetation. This game has so much more potential. I don't feel like I want to buy any other games from this developer (unless gifted) until they come back and polish this turd up to the sheen it deserves to have.

Being Swedish myself I really appreciate the setting of this game, there are so many details that make me nostalgic and make me long for the 80's, sans the hordes of murderous robots.
I like the plot, the combat and everything else. The voice actors sound like they come straight out of a B-grade p***-movie, which doesn't really faze me. It sort of adds to the whole Swedishness of it all.
With the first addition of bicycles in the game my first instinctive thought was: Flakmoped!
This staple of Sweden of yore, the 3-wheeled miracle transportation device. I was giddy as a ninny when they added it to the game.
I just keep thinking to myself; Generation Zero MMO. That would be quite something wouldn't it,
or Generation Zero the movie? I'd watch the hell out of that.
Anyway, this game is bittersweet. If you like crazy murderous robots and fighting for mankind's survival and at the same time touristing the Swedish coastal areas of ye olden times, this is for you. :-)
If you don't like unfinished games, strange bugs with Robot bosses spawning deep within the earth (perhaps never to emerge again), through-wall shooting, homing missiles that never detonate, glitchy inventory management, vanishing ammo (almost never happens anymore), and other funny business, think twice.
My clock says 677 hours played, at the time of writing this review, so make of that what you will.
I'm enjoying the hek out of the game (especially MP with a friend), warts and all, but it still pisses me off that it's left in this sorry state.
I'm not formatting this. Pfft. :-P

Good graphics, nice bicycle riding and cool robot concept but a bit repetitive, bad inventory management and nothing that grips you to the story, you get bored easily ... It's fun only for a bit.

It's a pretty cool game, but supremely buggy, and has some questionable DLC. I played the entire thing in coop and we experienced a lot of bugs, including progression stopping ones. Sometimes restarting the game helps, sometimes it doesn't,
The game is fairly cheap on sales though, but buy at your own risk. Read on to find out why.
The game
It's kinda like Fallout but with robots, and without loading screens when entering interiors.
There's a lot of looting you can do here, even if not a lot of it is meaningful, especially late game, the hoarder type players can get lost in this game.
The environment graphics and detail are very good, but the character models are not, they are quite ugly, and they really didn't bother with the facial animations/lipsync. The interior detail level is kind of a surprise to be honest, because you can enter almost any house, and they are all quite detailed inside, and again, there are no loading screens.
The game mostly runs well, with a few exceptions, at least in COOP, when there are many effects there are FPS drops,
The story/lore could be interesting, but I found it really hard to care about, partially due to all the bugs with quests and NPCs, and partially because the story is presented in completely unstructured, unhinged way.
The BS
And now for the BS - the "create account for daily missions" and "pay to win DLC" BS. Because of course this has to be in the game, its 2020s after all.
The silliest part is that you can accept and complete the daily missions in coop without an account, which means that this requirement for singleplayer is completely arbitrary and useless. It's just evil and greedy. I have no other explanation.
Then there's the DLC. A bunch of game features are separate DLCs (like bikes, and clothes crafting), but I also think that they are already included in the game anyway, so why is there separate DLC listings? Who knows. Then there's the pay to win DLC. A paid-only moped variant with crafting stations & storage. Powerful unique weapons, including things such as aimbot rocket turret that you can deploy anywhere, and paid weapon skins in a paid game.
Base game weapon variety is quite limited.
The bugs
As I said, we experienced many bugs in COOP, for both the client and the host player. The bugginess of this game rivals that of Warframe. I don't know if the same bugginess happens in singleplayer.
Many quests would not progress because enemies that you need to kill simply do not spawn unless you restart the game. This happened in 2023, and it happens in 2024.
None of the DLC main mission progress saved on my save. One DLC side mission permanently bugged for me after we did it in coop, making it incompletable in my save.
Every single location I visited/unlocked as client doesn't save for non host players.
Certain locations do not track completed objectives correctly, for both players. This mostly affected Missions in locations not tracking correctly for both "Location Objectives" and for the "Challenges" system. These are permanent to your save. You cannot fix them. Other similar things are Relay Beacons not counting, and with Alpine DLCs - Collectibles and Weapons are not counting sometimes.
In many cases quest NPCs were invisible for both players in COOP. Player characters would become invisible in menus after some time playing back in 2023, but this may have been fixed. In many cases NPC dialogue would not play in COOP, including subtitles.
Many desync issues - things like players not being on the bike for one player, placeable fast travel beacons not appearing at all for the other player, etc.
Sometimes enemies just don't die on one player's game, making them unable to be looted
Sometimes shooting sounds don't play or particle effects don't display at all.
You can bypass weapon draw animations by switching weapons while the un-ADS-ing animation plays.
Other things I didn't like
Limited player stash. They actually increased it since 2023, but only for the weapons, not for materials, which is still quite limiting. Back in 2023 the amount of micromanaging of the inventory that was required is insane,
My friend bought all the small DLCs near the end of the game and got substantial boost to drop rates for some reason.
Movement feels very floaty and imprecise. Trying to make precise jumps is a nightmare.
Switching weapons is very slow. This includes switching to healing items and throwables/deployables, making the latter really inefficient.
The map is kinda too big, and there's not a lot going on between points of interest. The sheer size of it feels kinda pointless, especially given how bad the transport you get is.
Most of the missions feel like MMORPG filler. No voice acting, 1-2 objectives, just grind basically. With how bloated the game is already, expecting the player to read every note is a bit too far.
Enemies get spongy, especially later game.
Looting is kind of a chore due to carry weight limits and strange item weights (small and large fuel cells weigh the same for no reason, etc), as well as and clunky UI. Throughout most of the game more than half of the inventory space is taken up by weapons, ammo and healing items.
Certain items can only be dismantled 10 at a time. This includes the heaviest objects like propane and fuel tanks
Certain items, such as wood and gas canisters are not shared loot like everything else is
You do not get any skill points after level 30. Lame.
The base building part is just a wave-defense chore. Attacking enemy bases is cool, but having to defending them every few hours is not, if not more often.

I recommend this game, but barely. Probably buy on heavy discount. It's fun for a bit.

First, the good things. The world is big. Guns and combat feel good. Progression seems appropriate. Story is OK, I haven't gotten really far in the story. I am not TOO far into the game but the machines are pretty enjoyable to fight but I wish there were more varieties. Probably are I haven't seen yet.

On the bad side, the size of the world makes it feel empty. It seems like the devs spent too much time fleshing out a world that they didn't have a purpose for, and thus much of it is empty.
After a while the machines become huge bullet soaks, and can take hundreds of rounds to kill which are heavy. Assaulting a base can spend literally thousands of rounds as it produces tons of machines and is guarded by giant turrets that wreck you. It is difficult to carry the weight of just the guns and ammo sometimes. Every gun also has its own ammo, even to the point that 9mm is differentiated into handgun and smg... so you have to carry separate rounds for each if you want to use both even though they use the same caliber. Same problem with the scopes, they are gun specific as if they wouldn't all attach to the same rail. This applies to everything from magazines to silencers too. Instead of simplifying the real world for the game, they complicated it more than the real world making inventory bloat horrible.
You can deconstruct useless things into base materials, but in almost 80 hours I still haven't found some of the materials I need to make what I want, or in some cases found the schematics for them. Like ammo. I have 0 schematics. No idea what I'm doing wrong or how to get some of these things. Other things, like mods for armor and such require rare materials so I can't build those either. I need command points I don't have to capture bases I cleared. Game doesn't explain much of this very well, it just kinda throws you into the fray and you get to figure it out. I think because the game was released alpha and development took a very long time. Players that played through development probably know all of this stuff. Me jumping in years after the fact, nothing is explained. Also some of the mods/upgrades have a drawback making them more useless than no mod IMO. It gives me less incentive to get them, less to build them, and less to even go look up how to do those things.
Because of the weight problems, and the constant trips back to town to offload the junk you collect, I quit picking up most of what drops. I collected tons of steel, lead, aluminum I can't use. Also, the weights don't make sense, like they were just lazy. Every gun weighs 2 lb. Doesn't matter if it's a handgun or a .50 BMG. 2 lb. Every attachment weighs .250 lbs. However a large metal gas tank weighs 1 lb, as does a "large car battery EMP". Makes no sense, and even at those stupid unrealistic numbers makes carrying stuff like that around basically impossible. I carried ammo and just left the rest on the ground because it's too heavy to carry around 1 lb items for long. With carry perks I could only carry about 90 lbs and guns, ammo, and healing packs are about 40-50, sometimes more when you are leaving base. I can fill an inventory after one combat if I pick up everything sometimes.
Story seemed pretty lackluster. Some machines somehow invade while you are on a boating trip and you come back and don't know what happened after a few days away everything is gone. Takes place is sweden, and something about the russians, maybe allies. That's as far as I got. After the first few quests tell you where to go, you are left with the game loop of looking for bunkers they don't tell you where they are, to find missions that don't help flesh out the story and seem more like side quests or constant dead ends. I got bored and uninterested in short order. I continued for a few of them to see if they got better, they really didn't.
Last complaint is the AI. Sometimes it detects you right off the bat at huge distances somehow, others the machines do weird things and don't seem to see you. Or stand there dumbfounded while you blast away. The compensation for this poor AI seems to be that they spam machines. Sometimes you will be facing a dozen machines at once, or what feels like a constant stream of them.

Overall a mediocre experience. It's an OK game with a lot of problems. I had fun with it for a while but am going to uninstall without completing.

Probably the most underrated game I've ever played, yea there are some bugs but nothing really major or game breaking. This game is a real enjoyment to play either with friends or alone, good graphics and in an interesting setting. Also as a bonus It works real well on ultrawide monitors.

I am an older player that mainly plays single player. I prefer stealth than guns a blazing however this gae gives you both if you want. I have finished the game but still like to play now and again.

I have a powerful addiction to this game truly, between the 50hrs on steam and the literal hundreds of hours on console. I loved playing this game from its infancy to its abandonment. From running for your life and sneaking by in the early game fearing every engagement, To deliberately hunting down every rival, tank, harvester, lynx, and firebird you can find in the late game. But tragically for how much I love this game it certainly has some flaws.
1. Ammo used to be semi difficult to really scrounge up a lot of at least enough to take down hordes of machines. Now it's in such an over abundance I find myself constantly overweight from just ammo alone.
2. Once you play for awhile the difficultly even on guerrilla just feels too easy, you learn fairly quick how to cheese every single enemy and not even by trying the majority of the time. Which brings me to my next point
3. The enemy a.i. is breaking constantly, (mostly with the larger enemies like tanks and harvesters) they get stuck in some area's or just lose all motor functions in an open field and don't move. Best part is when the a.i. breaks and the bug that has them shoot whatever weapon they have infinitely happen at the same time.
4. In the games' earlier development it had an amazing sense of being totally alone. Finding clues as to what happened to the entire islands' population through both the main story and environmental story telling was a great feeling. There was a point where I thought about the lack of npc's in the world but once they added the main story overhaul the npc's felt so lifeless and under done, there's only a small group of them in a single safe zone that you vist once the entire game. The way they added it just really killed that feeling of being totally alone in a robot war torn world where you are the only one left. And omg please tell Theresia to sthu she talks way too much in the early game.
5. DLC's are quite fairly priced for the amount of content they add imo, but the story add on's feel semi empty of feeling. The FINX Rising DLC just ends so abruptly with really not much more world building behind it, sure you get to actually interact with a sentient killing machine but the random power stations you find around the map have no lore behind them and sometimes are just in area's that they're have no significant reason to be there besides taking up space. The weapon DLC's are noticeably more powerful than all of the vanilla weapons which I guess I sort of understand seeing as you do pay for these weapons, but to the degree that they are stronger is quite overkill.
6. While we're talking about weapons I'll mention the changes they made to looting, finding a new weapon that was in good condition was an amazing find it was new and better and exciting, and had you using different weapons everytime you found one. And this goes along with the over abundance of ammo that you used to run out of ammo for your guns so you had to either find more via looting POI's or change to a different or old weapon you had to keep yourself from getting caught lacking. But back to looting guns, the first time I play years ago on console I went a decent time without finding either an SMG or assault rifle making early game combat harder and riskier. Now it feel's like every 3-4 loot containers I open has a 2-3 star quality automatic weapon in it really losing the sense of early game struggle and fear of getting in a big fight.
7. The base building gimmick was exactly that, a gimmick they added towards the start of the games' death. Gathering resources for building takes forever and isn't fun. Thankfully you aren't required to partake in that part more than once (for a story mission). The a.i. during the base assaults more often than not, just ignores you in favor of breaking down your base walls. As well as coming in ridiculously sized waves on the hard defense missions. Not to mention how long they last omg they take forever for no reason and the rewards dont feel all that worthwhile.
8. WHY DID THEY MAKE THE STASH BOX CARRY BETWEEN CHARACTERS IT COMPLETELY RUINS NEW PLAY THROUGHS WHY AVALANCHE STUDIOS WHYYY
Finally the good:
1. Guns feel great to use and blow up bots with
2. Game supports multiple ways of taking fights, sneaking, and escaping combat via lootable and craftable equipment
3. Skill tree is balanced and offers fun special unlockable abilities like hacking smaller machines to fight with you, improved emp affects, and a free self revive once per fight. just to name a few. (Later level exp requirements are a little ludicrous)
4. The experimental weapons and rivals updates were the best thing to happen to this game
5. DLC weapons are fun to use (despite being op) and unique
6. Ignoring the story and just pounding out sidequests or just messing around killing hordes of bots just for fun and to waste time is one of the funest ways to play the game
7. Enemies have variants and different way to interact with said variants. Using runners (or dogs as I call them) as an example, protoype runners rely heavily on their mid to short range smg making pistols and smg's effective against them, while military class runner either have a shotgun or high caliber rifle. Shotgun dogs also very often run at you to jump on you and ragdoll you making shotguns and pistols the go to. While the military dogs with rifles sit back at mid to long ranges making assault rifles and sniper rifles the best way to deal with them. There's even more variants with different fighting styles but I dont wanna spoil everything.
8. A lot of houses are copy paste but very few feel like they dont belong or feel empty
9. Added bikes to get around the map faster at the cost of being loud and drawing attention and needing fuel (aka more shit to make you overweight faster)
10. The soviet bots invading the northern parts of the island and fighting the original machines in a turf war style was an amazing add to the liveliness of the world, and a great natural progression seeing as you slowly make your way from south to north via the story and side missions
11. Runs great for all that's happening on screen at one time even for lower end hardware like mine
TL:DR Game has flaws, world isn't as great as it once was, was abandoned in a buggy state, and has under gone some questionable changes. But I still suggest picking it up if you have the cash and are looking for a game to just plug into and mess around in for a few hours. You likely wont regret it and will see the greatness though the flaws.