Death of the Machines

I so wanted to like this game, when I saw the initial launch trailer it went straight onto my wishlist. An open-world survival romp with machines that have a striking resemblance to those found in Horizon Zero Dawn, made by the people behind some other great games like the Just Cause series and Mad Max. What could possibly go wrong? Set in an alternate reality in Sweden around 1980, I began my story by trying to find out what was going on, so I just headed to the nearest building and my quest began. The landscape is totally devoid of humans and the only things lurking around are these mechanical machines. Machines that just want to kill anything around them that has a pulse. This is where the problems began for me, the scenery, while quite pretty at times is generally fairly bland and repetitive. The machines are actually quite dumb and going inside a building pretty much put you out of harm's way. Finding items is just looking in the back of cars or searching the odd building and the gunplay is just dull. I really wished this was going to be that perfect marriage of DayZ, Horizon Zero Dawn and Rust, but it just wasn't! The ultimate disappointment for me was when I had just had enough and, after 20 or so hours, turned it off, where it has remained to this day... Dormant ——— Original ratings: • Visual Design: 7/10 • Sound Design: 6/10 • Gameplay: 4/10 • Longevity: 3/10 • Fun: 3/10