How To Survive

How To Survive
Platform: PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, Wii U
Genre: Action-RPG-Survival-Horror

Kovac's Rules: If you find yourself here on this island, then you had better prepare to fight, to survive.

Basically, this is a really bloody good game, with an awful lot going for it. It's a top-down, isometric view game, whereby you play as a survivor who crashed his/her boat onto a strange island after receiving duff info about how safe the seas were. Upon waking, you find that the island you have landed on is chocked full of zombies, junk, strange plants and parts of a survival guide called "Kovac's Rules", written by...well...Kovac.

You will eventually get to meet this Kovac (and other random survivors) who will start to train you how to survive by eating the right plants, crafting awesome weapons and tools (over 100 combinations to be made) and giving you tips and hints on how to survive, hence the name!

The gameplay is very easy with either a gamepad or keyboard and mouse, and you can play multiplayer either locally on the same machine or over the interweb. It's a good idea for noobies to start off with the Story Mode which will ease you into the game, progressively getting harder as you go on, but then there are other game modes such as Iron Man or Barricade to test your skills when you choose to go for them. The inventories and skills menus are intuitive and well thought out, and for a game that has the potential to be overly complex, it's pretty easy to pick up and play from scratch.

This isn't just a run and gun type game though, you need to eat, sleep and drink to survive, using Kovac's special armoured huts to sleep or filling up water bottles from the various wells to drink and of course hunt the variety of wild animals to get more food if you don't want to just eat the exotic flora. Running low on these things will mess you up, from slowing you down to putting your aim off and also killing you, so you need to keep up your strength because the biggest enemies are those 3 ramma-jammas right there!

The sounds are pretty much spot on, the sound effects of the zombies and monsters being spot on, what music there is being again - spot on, the only thing that quibbled to knock it down a bit was some of the annoying sounds like the background animals - but it's a minor quibble, nothing that's game breaking or owt!

The visuals are brilliant, just what you'd want from a game such as this - nothing earth shattering, but exactly what you want and would expect from a game like this, the fire and water looks good in the game (something I always look for is good water and fire...just a thing of mine), the zombies are good and gruesome and the environments are really great. Even the menus look good, God bless you sir.

All in all, a very good game one that is very much worthy of it's scores below...

Gameplay: 9 - Easy and intuitive gameplay, smooth controls with either gamepad or keyboard & mouse. 
Sound: 8 - Brilliant sounds all round from the menus to the music to the zombies growls.
Visuals: 9 - Absolutely on point for a game like this, a great example of games like this showing substance over style....with a lot of style!
Replayability: 8 - Very much an awesomely replayable game, but maybe needs a bit of time in between play throughs.
Fun Factor: 9 - Awesome good fun, killing zombies in weird and wonderful ways with the help of Kovac's Rules!

Overall Percentage Score: 86% - A must buy really, with fun gameplay easy to grasp controls, lacing humour and horror into this brilliant weave of a game that doesn't disappoint and tapers the difficulty in a great way that doesn't leave you bored and doesn't push too far, too soon. Just remember to pay attention to Kovac's Rules!

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