This Was Going Somewhere, I Swear

In a world where every game is compared to Valheim*…

*The Forest, Subnautica, or Project Zomboid.

Every upcoming game is somehow both “…exactly like Valheim/Forest/PZ” AND “…a fresh unique take on the genre.”

I’ve written about it here and here.
I’ve also yelled at GameRant before, over here!

So let’s dive into “New Survival Game on Steam is Similar to The Forest, But Colder and Deadlier”

The TLDR of the article: the game is Life After End. The first couple of paragraphs basically drone on about how bad ass and punishing the writer thought The Forest was (it was neat, but the survival aspects were definitely a huge joke), then rolls out a list of mechanics and features for this upcoming title – honestly pretty generic, with building/crafting/animal taming/PvP and a sprinkling of impactful health effects.

Then we have this,

I love that “realism” is in quotation marks, as if a survival game asking you to actually survive (not just meter-hump or juggle ‘Video Game Problems’) is some wonky, unreasonable ask. Survival should be a core obstacle in a survival game. I get why writers like this treat mechanical depth and meaningful consequence as some mythical unicorn. Because in the ever-glutted ‘slap a survival tag on it’ market we’re drowning in, a game that actually commits to the genre is a unicorn.

That being said, kinda feels like if we’re looking for someone to blame, they should look in the mirror? When you mega-praise every title that wears the genre tag without earning it, and then turn around and roast the games that actually get friction and consequence right (too hard! too punishing! I’m a busy adult, who has time for consequences!) – it seems like you made this hole we’re in.

After all the excitement about PvP and environmental stakes and realism (still in quotes, apparently???), the last line kills me.

I’m fucking tossing in the towel on this article, haha. I can’t even keep writing this in a serious fashion.

Yanno in movies they have that “breaking the fourth wall” thing, where characters acknowledge the audience? Is there a written equivalent?

After noodling back and forth (and back and forth) on this draft since the end of FEBRUARY, I’ve decided that their article is stupid. Their – I won’t call their stance “bent over” because they’re not really shilling for the game, but there’s definitely a barrage of optimism with no research so I’m going to at least call it “knees bent” – take on the game is the exact type of superficial take on shit that drives me wild.

Did they bother to open the Steam page and actually examine the title, or did they just see the name and blurb show up on, I dunno, a fucking Discovery Queue, and they were like “YES! ARTICLE INCOMING!”

Let’s just take a half-assed look at the Steam page, shall we?

• a ‘jack of all trades’ expansive list of supposed content: multiplayer! multiple maps and modes! animal taming! story campaign!
• The game randomly had a release date that came and went with no word.
• Generic ‘AI made this in ten seconds’ logo
• No social media links, no community presence. A “website” that either collapses into 404 errors or redirects to a publisher that seems completely unaware the game even exists.
• Many (myself included) have clued in to the fact that the “trailer” and overall page/vibe of things is sus. Here, here, this.

SPEAKING OF THE STEAM PAGE.

Has anyone actually read it? Buried in the generic kinda over-the-top, say-what-you-want-to-hear marketing fluff (I’m convinced it’s 100% Mad Libs survival game buzzwords) – WHAT IS THIS?

WAAT? Is that literally part of an AI response in the store text for the game?? Please gtfo with “this is due to doing translations, blah blah” – there’s a billion ways to get that shit done without these issues.

So, yea. This entire thing sat in drafts for a month or two and now I’m posting it because it’s far enough along that it hurts to delete but not exciting enough that I give a damn.

Ain’t life grand?