I have always tried to give every game a chance, and about a year ago, I gave 7 Days to Die a chance. After my divorce from DayZ, I wanted a new zombie multiplayer open-world survival, etc, etc. Whatever DayZ was; I wanted another one of those but without the headaches of griefers, server problems, hacks, and lack of updates. I remember trying The Dead Linger, but it felt too unfinished. I tried to get back into Project Zomboid, but the multiplayer kept bugging out my friend’s experience. Rust was an ok replacement for a while, but the older version of Rust was just weird. Player bases needed to be built in particular, illogical ways that detracted from the immersive experience.
My first impression of 7 Days to Die was decisively negative. The graphics were terrible, controls fuzzy, and it ran like ass. There was nothing positive about that experience.
Last Saturday, my normal gaming group wanted to play this mess of a game again. My video-game-zombie-obsessed friend Lou has been trying to convince me for months to give 7 Days to Die another try. Today he was joined by my gaming partner in crime David and I was faced the prospect of playing alone.
Ok, fine.
Guess what I have been playing every single night way too late? Fucking 7 Days to Die. I have no idea. The graphics look better but still like a bad Rust build. The controls are strange and it is janky as all hell. But, the crafting system is a fun combination of Minecraft and one of the better DayZ mods. It is inexplicable, but I have enjoyed trying to develop a farm on top of an apartment skyrise. Today, I sketched out an idea for an underground base of operations.
Perhaps every game should have a second chance.
On Sunday night while watching the latest Downton Abbey episode, I was idly browsing the Steam store. I found myself looking at curator lists and stumbled upon Exanima. It had a standard dark, low fantasy look with dank dungeons lacking any light source. But what attracted me was the idea of a pure physics driven combat system. The game is incredibly hard. There is a warning on the store page and when you first boot up the game, that Exanima is not a normal fantasy game with standard point and click combat. Everything here is slower, more deliberate and takes planning and timing to execute.
The physics heavy combat is a sight to behold. It seems like a small thing but the fights look really real. Well, as real as you would think two fighters with large swords would look. It is hard to put into words exactly what makes the combat remarkable. Think of the awesome fights in Gang Beasts and change the characters to an amalgam of Conan and Diablo II. There is a real momentum and feel of danger with a dash of silly rag doll drunkenness.
It is one of the best features in games this year.
