EKO Software’s original release of How To Survive (H2S) was just over a year ago. I reviewed it at that time and enjoyed it, despite a few issues. I could say the same about this new Storm Warning Edition (SWE) which includes a lot more content, but, leaves room for improvement. That’s not to say the SWE is a missed opportunity, it’s still a welcomed and very enjoyable release, but EKO didn’t quite go all out. The most evident example of this are the graphics, which are absolutely serviceable, and far from awful, but I felt somewhat underwhelmed when I compared the X1 version to the PS3. Also, the volume of the game is strangely low — I had to turn my TV volume up twice as high as I do for other games; weird.
These presentation quirks are unfortunate, but hardly enough to diminish from the gameplay itself, i.e., what really counts. I’ll refer you again to my original review for additional detail, but, the premise is that you find yourself washed ashore on an island that is part of an archipelago (a group of islands). The original game had four islands, SWE contains seven, with the latter three having a different visual theme than the original four (specifically, volcanic activity in the new ones versus dense vegetation in the original — oh, watch out for the lava and toxic clouds, too). The game begins with character selection, from which you choose between one of four characters, including the original three of Kenji, Abby, and Jack, and a new addition (derived from Hello, My Name Is Nina DLC) known as, yep, Nina. Each character obviously looks different (none of them have spoken dialogue by the way), but their stats, which are health, stamina, precision, and strength, differ pretty significantly, too. If you want to be able to run faster and longer, choose Abby over Jack, but if you want to bash some heads and take more of a beating yourself, Jack’s a good way to go. I actually chose Kenji, who’s sort of right in the middle, for this playthrough, and thanks to the integrated Heat Wave DLC I was able to use his alternate costume which is called ‘fireman’ and it makes him impervious to fire damage. In fact, all three original characters can use this alternate, fire-proof mode which comes in handy when you start waving around flaming sticks and tossing Molotov cocktails at zombies who become engulfed in fire and then run around in your vicinity. Nina, while not being able to wear a fireproof costume, has the ability to craft a flamethrower as well as a special chainsaw and she’s really tough in melee combat, too. I haven’t used her character as much as I should have at the time of this writing, but I intend to try her out more in multiplayer modes. Besides base stats, each of the four characters has a special ability too, like Nina’s ability to craft a flamethrower or Abby’s ability to eat certain plants to giver her temporary stats boosts, etc.
Crafting is one of the coolest and most essential parts of the game. Players maintain a pretty large inventory with twenty-five or so unique spaces, some of which you unlock as you level up. You can carry as many of one type of item as you please, but the number of spaces in your inventory, i.e., the amount of unique items, is limited. Sometimes you will need five or six miscellaneous — and otherwise useless — parts to craft something really cool, so you have to really manage your inventory accordingly to be able to hold all of this junk until you have all the parts you need to craft something. Craftable items include boosts, healing, weapons, traps, and armor, and while you can experiment to come up with things (and uncombine them if you want), you can also locate pages of the Survival Guide to learn the exact formula for crafting. Fortunately, you are able to combine some items to save inventory space to create a (still useless) intermediate item before crafting the final item. This might sound like a pain in the ass, but I never thought I had to micro-manage too much. Of note, and this is just one of several numbers I’ll throw out in this review thanks to a handy review guide, the SWE boasts 390 total parts and craftable items, while the original game had just over 100.
Crafting goes pretty much hand in hand with your Skills and Level. For each kill, you get XP, and you get more for finding items and completing quests. The original game had forty quests, by the way, SWE includes over 80. Most of these are basically fetch quests, but due to the gameplay itself, these tend to be plenty thrilling and rewarding. With each Level Up your health meter refills, and many times this happens at just the right time, i.e., just before you’re about to die or have to use a precious healing plant or crafted healing item. With each Level Up, you unlock a new Skill Point that you can use at anytime simply by pressing B and R2 to open the Skills tree — not that access this screen, as well as your inventory, does not pause the action in-game. The first skill is being able to light a campfire with a piece of flint, from there you can learn a variety of other things like reducing your reloading time with your bow and arrow or firearms, improving aiming accuracy, or being able to go twice as long without food, or water, or sleep, to crafting incendiary ammo, etc. There’s no shortage of useful skills to learn, so each Level Up is a great moment.
Crafting, Skills, and finding pages of the book “How To Survive” written by the mysterious Kovac are major gameplay elements. Kovac is an odd but really interesting character. He’s the guy with the welder’s mask seen on the game’s original logo art. You’ll encounter him within a couple of hours of playing and he’ll show you some of the basics. The pages of his book are spread throughout the islands and finding them starts an entertaining, informative, brief, and funny animated cutscene that explains one of the game’s mechanics, such as needing to tend to your body to be able to function. All of these videos can be replayed at anytime in case you need to refer back to something, too. This means paying attention to your hunger, thirst, and fatigue meters, as if you let these get too low, you can forget about hitting with any power, aiming accurately, or sprinting — and let’s face it, without those, you won’t last but a few minutes. To eat, you have to find food, be it by killing non-infected animals on the island and then cooking their meat, fishing (still requires cooking), or finding and eating certain plants or roots. Water holes are available in some locations, and the clean ones are marked on your map. It helps to have some empty bottles in your inventory to fill up when you do find fresh water. As for sleep, well, you have to use a safe house. Of course, even the safe houses are dangerous spots — when you find one, you have to activate it, and doing so puts you in the middle of a zombie swarm. For the next minute or two you will be constantly peppered with zombies of different types and speeds, but if you can just manage to survive you will have found yourself a pretty great spot to rest and get your Fatigue meter back in the green.
Resting is vital and, ideally you would want to sleep at night, but it all depends on where your Fatigue meter is at. If it’s too high, you can’t just sleep, unfortunately. It would be ideal to skip over the night because this is when you face not only the reduced visibility, and the regular gamut of zombies, but also these dark fast, aggressive, attack-in-group melee creatures that love to sneak up on you. They’re easy enough to spot, but to keep them at bay you need light, either from a flashlight with a battery that slowly drains, or fire, such as a torch. Thankfully, if you create a camp fire, torches are unlimited and last quite a while, not to mention they’re really effective against zombies. Torches also provide a decent area of 360 degrees of light while a flashlight has to be aimed in a specific direction that cover about ninety degrees of area.
In some respects, H2S has twin stick shooter mechanics as you aim with the right stick and move with the left, and it’s not at all uncommon to be doing both at the same time, i.e., running away from zombies while shooting back at them. Ranged attacks are a must, as soon enough you encounter brute enemies who have stout defenses and attacks making keeping your distance ideal. This isn’t the type of game whereby you can sustain many hits before having to heal, and unless you obtain certain skills or craft certain consumables, when your health gets low, you move slowly. Sprinting, which you can only do in very short bursts, keeps you honest and adds some additional strategy because you need to always have just enough to make that quick burst out of a dangerous area.
The SWE also includes the Kovac’s Way DLC which adds another, much harder difficulty mode that I do not intend to play unless via local co-op. One Shot Escape mode is here too, which is an ultra hard mode in which you deal with reduced and randomized resources, permadeath, and enemies (yep, all of them) that have increased health and hit points — best played after the campaign probably, and with a friend. Speaking of death, I liked how EKO decided to handle deaths and respawning. As was the case in the original release, when you die, you respawn not far at all from where you were, and with a bit of extra health to (hopefully) see you through to the next checkpoint. You cannot save whenever you want, but the checkpoint saves are regular (and hidden) enough that it doesn’t really matter, plus, load times are practically instant. Some might say this diminishes the ‘survival’ gameplay, but I say it encourages experimentation and just keeps the player going rather than wearing them out with setbacks. Similarly, seeing headstones with other people’s gamertags pop-up in your game is kinda funny and somewhat inspiring in that Demon’s Souls sort of way — it reminds you that, yes, this is a tough game and it’s okay to struggle a bit.
Other things of note include the thunderstorms — I got struck by lightning four times in the span of twenty minutes, which would have been enough to zap all of my health if I didn’t die in between strikes three and four anyway. This was just a string of bad luck as during the next storm I didn’t get hit at all, but yes, lightning strikes are yet another thing working against your survival. Rain and fog effects are cool too, I can’t recall if these weather effects were in the original release or not. Barricade! mode was not in the original, and this has the player, or players if playing co-op, setting up defenses and trying to protect two of the story mode’s NPCs from being eaten by zombies. The flow of Barricade! has you gathering resources during the day, using those to setup traps and turrets and whatever obstacles you can, and then dealing with the onslaught of zombies at night. A running timer shows you how well you’re doing; this is okay single player, but a lot of fun with a buddy.
Challenge mode is back too with the original eight challenges, playable across three difficulty levels. The premise of Challenges is basically a micro-version of the Story — you wake up at some random area on an island, with no inventory and you have to find an airplane. There are themes to each challenge that focus on different types of enemies. Unlike the original game, you can play these, and actually all modes, offline. Other new goodies include three times as many Achievements, and additional twenty pieces of armor to craft, twenty-one new weapons, seven additional Skills, and seven new types of zombies.
And with that, let’s get to the summary…
