Taking Over The City: Consequences in Survival Crisis Z
There’s just something that draws me in about Survival Crisis Z. I can’t quite place what it is, because there’s so many amazing aspects behind the game. I guess the biggest thing that compels me to play it would have to be the persistence of my character’s progress, even if the random generation removes the emotional attachment I have to the characters and the persistence isn’t really true persistence. The only person I really care for is myself, since eventually my party comes back and just leaving and reentering buildings respawns the characters. It’s a sort of let down, but I can understand why.
Basically, as you play Survival Crisis Z, you begin to take over the city block by block. You learn skills by buying them, and you get money through doing jobs or trading commodities. It has a sort of elite-like feel to it, which is sort of nice. When you take over a stronghold, everything costs half at that stronghold, you get paid a commission for killing zombies, and the leader pays you protection money. Naturally, you’re going to want to take over strongholds as soon as you can, since they provide you with the best bonuses. Naturally, strongholds are also difficult to take over.
The best way to take over a stronghold, I’ve found, is to buy a sentry skill. Once you have Sentry Gun or Tesla Coil, taking over strongholds becomes a piece of cake. You can do it without even taking a single hit. You’ll probably also want to get the extra carrying capacity to allow you to make more guns with the materials you have. Molotovs are also great for doing these defense missions. Of course, since skills are always $1000, you really need to pick and choose. Sentry Gun is usually the first you’ll want.
The biggest problem with the stronghold system is that nobody is persistent in the strongholds besides the leader. If you walk out of the room and back in, you’ll immediately be greeted by a brand new set of faces. It removes the human element of the game and turns it into mostly a sandbox zombie action game. While this isn’t necessarily bad, it’s disappointing. Things such as barricades also change each time, and any damage (such as that done to windows) is never fixed and never seems to become a liability. No strongholds become overwhelmed. There’s a dire lack of true persistence in the game and it bugs the crap out of me.
The other thing that bugs me is that you can’t take over abandoned buildings. It would be especially cool if, for example, you could save citizens being chased by zombies, lead them to a building, and set up a stronghold by fighting off all zombies until the day arrives. The game makes me want to do something with all those empty buildings, but there’s nothing except run through briefly, grasp any corpses, and leave. No reason to loiter. Disappointing.
I do like that I can do a myriad of different activities to earn money. Hunt zombies, trade commodities between strongholds, or do jobs. When I referred to it as an elite-like earlier, I wasn’t really all that far off. It has the stereotypical elite-like ways of getting money (murder, trading, missions) with the sort of pseudo-persistence a lot of them have. There’s a lot worse you can aspire to be than a zombie sandbox game.
The thing that sticks out in my mind the most is a battle to take over a high-level stronghold. I had to fight off a horde of zombies, and it was incredibly brutal. Through attrition, they wore through my defenses, my barricades, and even my partners. In the end I was firing wildly into the crowd and throwing molotovs left and right, and I only won the fight by a narrow margin. It was an incredibly intense fight. As soon as it was over, the stronghold was fine again, the leader conceded to my power, and three brand new partners (with better weapons) took the place of my fallen comrades. While it was incredibly pulse-pounding and elating, I couldn’t help but feel like the game didn’t have true consequences. I could murder, sacrifice compatriots, and torture with no real fear of repercussion, since everything would be righted upon leaving and reentering. That bugged me. I do have high hopes for the remake, though.
Tags: arcade, company-skastudios, dragonmaw, freeware, PC, sandbox, single player, survival horror, windows
July 27th, 2008 at 5:02 pm
[…] since I happen to be a HUGE independent game junkie. James Silva (who did Survival Crisis Z, which I happen to like so much) is gradually getting closer to the completion of his next project, an XNA game called The […]