Lifeless brings an Early Access post-apocalyptic world to life with high quality textures, scavenge-ready towns, and an attack system currently lacking, but brimming with potential. All of this under the web of a open, multiplayer sandbox world.
When it comes to online zombie games, HZ1 and DayZ are probably the games that you’ve heard bandied around, and it’s no lie they are quite good. Whereas DayZ focuses on realism, HZ1 focuses on a more arcade playing style. However, when you talk about MMO’s, games such as, Warcraft, Diablo, Guild Wars, ESO: Online, are mentioned, and the majority of the time it’s a fantasy game with swords, horses, and mages. Lifeless is here to try it’s hand at bringing a zombie genre to the MMO community and earn it’s place at the podium by creating an immersive world for the player to feel unsafe within.
Firstly, upon boot up, you have a character selection screen, which currently doesn’t enable you to edit your avatar, or even view your avatar for that matter; there’s an empty space in the centre of the screen where it looks as if there should be an avatar stood there flaunting their stuff. The main thing you can do however is change what faction you wish to join. These factions are,
The Spartan Phalanx – This faction are led by, “August Leon Huxton”, and is a group of ex-military men and women who are embracing the new world order. They are religious and believe the zombie outbreak is to punish those who have sinned, and as a result, aim to rid the world of sinners and bring peace once more.
The Nova Guard – This faction move around, they’re civilians who are trying to find more survivors, the long term goal, finding a place to settle down with all the survivors and work together to find a cure for the virus by finding clues to how to do so.
During the boot up area, there isn’t even an option to go to your settings. This is all controlled whilst in game which is kind of annoying if you have a low end PC and would rather knock the graphics down to minimise loading times, raising the FPS before jumping in.
“there’s also an issue that myself and other players were experiencing, where we were all getting jittery FPS, even graphic reduction wasn’t helping, so whether this was server connection based or not we don’t know. All issues I’m confident the devs know about and will be working on it.”
Upon joining the world, first time players will spawn in the middle of a hillside. Trees, bushes, grass surrounding them with structures off in the distance. Your first instinct -most likely- will be to head towards the structures that look loot heavy., somewhere with rations, somewhere with weapons.
The looting system is pretty nifty, although it does seem quite precise in terms of selection, as in, sometimes you’ll find yourself hovering around the area the actual trigger point is. It requires a loading wheel to complete a full circle before an item can be picked up, while drawers and doors are instantly interactive upon first click. Currently, the type of items are limited, with potatoes, 9mm ammo, and tuna being the most frequent resources found. It’s also far more loot heavy than DayZ is. DayZ was always a struggle to find any decent supplies, but Lifeless has something of use in at least every building. Even the zombies can drop items and clothing…and occasionally a sledgehammer.
With the MMO element, whatever is in your characters hotkey area, you won’t lose upon death. If you die, your character does drop their backpack however, whic contains anything that was inside. So basically, tip: Put your important stuff in your hotkeys. Death comes from the usual, damage being inflicted, hunger, and thirst. I don’t believe there’s any form of infection yet that can be caught by the player, but to be honest, even if there was, it wouldn’t matter because if you were going to get into a battle with a zombie you’d probably die anyway. They lunge themselves towards you, and at the moment, the attack system isn’t fantastic; especially the melee. The attacks are slow, the blocking is delayed and currently can sometimes trigger the zombie to fall through you and appear behind you, and it doesn’t seem to matter if you hit the zombie first, they’ll still land a blow on you before reacting. At least the zombies heads explode when you get a headshot though – so you can stop them proper before it comes to melee.
The graphics for Lifeless surprised me, they look like they’re supposed to be graphics for a single-player game, and they really do look stunning. The bloom from the sun is wonderful, the puddles on the ground are stunning, and the grass…well that looks pretty average to be honest. The character skins look well thought out, the blood effects seem quite cartoonish, and rather than a huge action film’esque style muzzle flash coming from the end of your gun, you get heat distortion. The world seems to be fairly big and divided into areas, with the “Wilderness” in between points of interest and faction strongholds.
There are bugs obviously, it’s in Early Access. I’ve experienced issues with loading times, booting times, and, weirdly, there’s no shallow water in the game. There’s also an issue that myself and other players were experiencing, where we were all getting jittery FPS, even graphic reduction wasn’t helping, so whether this was server connection based or not we don’t know. All issues I’m confident the devs know about and will be working on it.
Another MMO element is the chat box, although currently bare seems to be functioning fine, and I’d imagine a private chat system, and chat box commands, such as, “/Yell” will be introduced when players begin to swarm in. Currently the chat box seems to be for the entire world, so no changing between areas, and it is open for both factions to chat on.
“The graphics for Lifeless surprised me, they look like they’re supposed to be graphics for a single-player game, and they really do look stunning. The bloom from the sun is wonderful, the puddles on the ground are stunning…”
At the moment the game currently lacks in the player control department – from the fact you cannot change you avatar, you can’t change your settings until in a lobby and… strangely, there’s no options for rebinding the keys – meaning you are stuck with the default layout until such a thing gets implemented at a later date. Not that those three actually affect the gameplay directly in any way.
So, it’s just looting, killing, and surviving – all whilst running around with a dramatic, swelling soundtrack. The soundtrack is great, it keeps you on edge, and the amplified ambience noise keeps you alert, always expecting a growl or echoing footsteps, hastening. There is a VOIP system in place too, which works on a push-to-talk basis, annoyingly it doesn’t show you if your microphone is working, so you’ll just have to assume people can hear you.
This could be a game that takes after DayZ and remains in Early Access for years, or it could shine and bring a whole new genre to life in the MMO theme. I’m going to be keeping my eye on it, that’s for sure, and with news that the game is planned to be in Early Access for only 12 months, development withstanding.
Awеsome aгtіcle.