I gave this game two chances. The first was when it was released day one and I dove into it with excitement for a new survival game as survival games are almost my most played type, sitting at a tie only with tycoon games and RPG games. But my first experience was plagued with issues ranging from game breaking bugs and just so many things that I couldn't understand how they weren't caughtI gave this game two chances. The first was when it was released day one and I dove into it with excitement for a new survival game as survival games are almost my most played type, sitting at a tie only with tycoon games and RPG games. But my first experience was plagued with issues ranging from game breaking bugs and just so many things that I couldn't understand how they weren't caught before release.
So I went away for a while. I didn't want to write this without playing Impact Winter again to give it another chance. I was happy to see many of the issues from before that I found have gone, such as ghosts walking about in the snow (literally you'd see a trail of footprints being made in the snow be seemingly nothing. Just one footprint after another appearing from thin air. Was really weird.) Some text bugs I saw are gone, and some audio bugs too. But other issues have arisen. One of them is the notorious "sticking" bug. Where you'll randomly get stuck to a collision and not be able to move, resulting in reloading from your last save or auto-save. This bug is in the game as of the time of writing this review. I've experienced it only once, but it was there. So far, it's the only major one I've seen with a couple of others, like the characters in the church phasing through solids once or twice, or not being able to be interacted with. These only lasted a few moments each and haven't been game breaking.
Now, onto the main game itself. There are no changes from what it was the last time I played Impact Winter about two years before.
The game is a smooth experience with a unique set up of being survivors after an apocalyptic event leading to what is essentially the second ice age.
There is fun to be found in the game, the prime hook of it being you never know what you're going to find where you go, and whatever you do find can likely be used in some fashion.
It's a simplistic level of mechanics. Food is food, you eat it to fill yourself. Drink is drink, you drink it to sate your thirst. Heat is heat. Cold is bad. Warmth is good. Simple.
The game throws a bit of a curve ball at you as the guy you play as (who I swear isn't wearing any pants) is the only one fit enough or experienced enough to go out into the world to find things. To me, this is a bit of a bad reason to throw all the weight on the players shoulders of having to find food and drink and even then manage it between yourself and four other survivors.
The game gets very tedious and repetitive quite quickly. Even faster if you're someone who gets irritated at fetch and retrieve quests easily. That is essentially what the whole game is. Run outside, find something, come back, do something, sleep. Rinse and repeat.
The whole upgrading your base camp in the church is likely the funnest part of the whole game. It was what kept me wanting to find more materials for making stuff with. I wanted to see the changes that happened in the church as you upgraded it. Sadly, this was a very limited thing in the game.
The four other survivors are interesting and each has their own story to tell which you unravel and learn about the more you do for them, but like I said. Fetch and return quests. The whole game.
In game trading system with the Nomads as they're called is one of the most frustrating parts of the game for me as they just have such over priced things and they only trade in seeds which can be hard to come by if you don't know where to look or have run out of places to look. This is extremely enraging especially when you have to buy something from them for a story quest.
There is some gritty darkness to the story. Such as if you're low on food and one of the survivors dies, leaving four of five left alive, I'm sure you can put two and two together and get cannibalism.
The little robot is an interesting touch, but just implemented in a really annoying way. There are so many things you need to use him for, but at the start of the game, he's useless for everything save for scanning and being used as a light.
The wildlife in the game (mainly wolves) can be really annoying if they start trying to hunt you down, because they will chase you relentlessly and will kill you.
Overall, Impact Winter is a game that had so much potential and still does, but it's been buried beneath a thick layer of cold screw ups. I still can't give this game a positive review. I want to, since I usually love these survival crafting games, but it's just all the tedious stuff. The amount of time you have to play for to complete one play through. The slowness of it all, the repetitive nature of it. How the game will offer you barely anything new AND exciting once you've learned the ropes. Impact Winter could be easily enjoyed by people who have patience or don't really care what game they play. It's certainly not the worst game ever, but it's got a lot of problems that won't really be fixed at this stage.
It's a 4/10, below average.… Expand
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