I tried, multiple times I might add, to get into How to Survive. My main complaint is that in co-op, both players — this is true for local and online play — must share a screen. This means you cannot at any time stray more than a screen away from your co-op partner. This may seem like a small complaint, but tethering me to another player at all times came close had enough of an impact on my enjoyment of what was otherwise a solid post-apocalyptic zombie genocide simulator.
For some reason, despite the numerous improvements, content and new features the How to Survive: Storm Warning Edition brings with it, that umbilical cord remains.
Even though my biggest gripe with the original game remained in this latest iteration, I stuck with it to see what else this new edition has to offer. For starters, weather plays a larger role this time around — hence the Storm Warning bit — and you can now even be electrocuted by random lighting strikes. You’re given a warning, but that wasn’t enough for me to get shocked twice during my playthrough.
The thing that makes this edition worth it, even if you’ve already played the original version, is it comes bundled with a generous helping of DLC. The Barricade add-on is one of my favorites, as it brings this game closer to ROAM, a game I’ve been waiting for ages to get my hands on.
The rest of the DLC adds special costumes, a new survivor — a flamethrower-wielding Nina — the volcanic El Diablo island, a more challenging difficulty level and a incredibly tough new mode where you’re tasked with surviving against waves of superpowered baddies.
In terms of content, the Storm Warning Edition is something I have trouble recommending at its full $19.99 price tag, but if that’s a bit too steep for your liking, the game is currently 80% off ($4.00) as a part of Steam’s Halloween Sale.
That’s definitely worth it, so long as you’re willing to overlook its many quirks.
This game would’ve benefitted greatly from a little added variety in the combat animations. They feel stiff, almost comical to look at. The aiming is a bit unreliable, too. There were many occasions where I couldn’t get my bow or gun to lock on an approaching ghoul, even if it was right in front of me. That’s a bit frustrating.
There’s also a matter of the visuals. I wouldn’t call How to Survive ugly, but it in no way takes advantage of either the PS4 or Xbox One. I noticed very few graphical improvements over the original, so that was clearly a missed opportunity for some much-needed improvement.
Also worth mentioning are the monsters themselves. For the most part, every one of these creatures are ones we’ve seen in multiple other games. There are the classic shambling undead, and peppered among them is the odd armored zombies, exploding fat guy, the more agile creatures that come out at night, and a handful of bosses — many of which are actually pretty fun.
The lack of originality here is a bit disappointing, but I’ve talked about that enough already.
How to Survive tries not to take itself too seriously, but in doing so, its silliness gets a bit excessive. Some of the game’s side quests can be unlocked by visiting talking monkeys — yeah, I don’t get it either — the dialogue’s leans a little too heavily on the cheese, and then there’s Kovak. As a character in the game, he’s useful.
My main gripe comes from all of those annoying “Kovak’s Rules” tutorials they’ve crammed into the game. I like monkeys enough to overlook how dumb their inclusion is, but the tutorials were annoying enough to bother me even though they can be skipped. It just felt lazy, like no one could come up with a better way to tell the player how to survive, so they shoehorned some bizarre guide rather than try and come up with something that’s a bit less intrusive.
This is first and foremost a zombie apocalypse game, but it also cleverly borrows from a few other genres. There’s some lite RPG features, including an leveling system that unlocks new abilities the further you get into the story. There’s also a solid crafting system so players can use items scavenged about the environments to make and modify weapons and armor, as well as cook food.
Some of the rarer items you’ll need for crafting can’t be found by scouring every inch of the game world. That’s where the side quests come in, as completing them can net you that critical piece you needed to finish building that anti-zombie Zorg ZF-1.
For those of you who are looking to get this on Steam, this edition comes with full controller support, Leaderboards, Steam Achievements, and Steam Trading Cards. The console versions include achivements/trophies and leaderboards, and all versions of the game support solo, local co-op and online co-op.
At least 505 Games and Eko Software have done an admirable job in supporting How to Survive since its release with a steady stream of updates and new content. Some of it, like the Heat Wave DLC, is hardly worth anyone’s time, but for the most part, the rest is worth checking out.
The How to Survive: Storm Warning Edition doesn’t go as far as I hoped it would in remedying the lingering issues that plagued the original, if you go into this with low-ish expectations, I don’t think it’ll disappoint. There’s plenty to do here, and it can be an especially good time if you have a few friends to play it with, so long as that whole screen-sharing thing doesn’t bother you as much as it did me.
The Final Word: How to Survive isn’t a solid addition to the crowded zombie genre, even though it sometimes feels like an Early Access game and isn’t quite as funny or as quirky as it tries to be.
