7 Days to Die Review

7 Days to Die

Rating: Nightmare Fuel

Themes/Genre: Survival Horror, Zombies, Nuclear Apocalypse, Open World

Everyone likes zombies and the idea of a zombie apocalypse someday.  I know I do, the idea of life becoming a true test of strength and ability, going back to the basic plan behind evolution where its survival of the fittest, when money, class, and history becomes meaningless and only the most prepared remain.  Unfortunately, the likelihood of that becoming a reality is next to nothing, so instead we turn to the media for our zombie fix.  While movies are a great way to see the many possibilities, I much prefer to experience, rather than watch, and there’s no better way than with video games.

It’s an idea that’s been done and again in almost every way imaginable, some games, like the original Resident Evil, make the zombies the main focus and storyline, while others, such as Minecraft, just make them one of the various enemy types you’ll happen to see.  And others, still, like Call of Duty, just tack it on as an extra mode, separate from the main game.  There’s been plenty of success in the Zombie genre, but there’s an equal amount of flop.  For every Left 4 Dead 2, there’s a The War Z.  There’s no shortage of zombie games, across several platforms, so it stands to reason that people want to make sure they get their money’s worth when it comes to picking one out.

So let me tell you about the one I’ve been playing recently: 7 Days to Die.

The alpha version of this game originally came out on PC back in 2013 for Kickstarter backers and people who pre-ordered.  While the game is still technically in alpha, according to its Steam page and still being funded and backed on Kickstarter, it got a console (PS4 and Xbox One) release in June of this year.  It’s priced at $25 for PC on Steam and $30 at Gamestop for the console version. While the reviews for the Steam version are relatively high, having a 9/10 rating, the more expensive console version is rated far lower at 4.9/10 on IGN, 3/10 on Destructoid, and 2/10 on Gamespot, though these are based off the Xbox One version.  Only Metacritic gave a score of 45/100 on the PS4 version, which still rates higher than the 35/100 on the Xbox One version.

So right off the bat, you can probably guess to avoid the Xbox One version of the game if you’re going to get this one.  So the questions remain: is the PS4 version worth getting at the higher price?  And is the game worth getting at all in the first place?  While I can’t make that decision for you, I can at least offer some insight.

Firstly, is this game worth getting in the first place?

While it’s still in Alpha and a bit buggy, if you like open world, very Minecraft-like zombie games… then yes.  I think it’s worth a look.  Unlike games like Resident Evil or Left for Dead, where it’s very linear or story-focused with a clear goal in mind, an end of the race, 7 Days to Die is entirely open for exploration and playing at your own pace with your own goals.  You have the one goal of “don’t die” and how you go about doing that is entirely up to you.  Build a base, follow the missions, or just explore and try to fend off the zombies you run across, it’s entirely up to you.

But at the same time, you’re still in a zombie apocalypse and they are still trying to kill you, so it’s got the heavy sense of intimidation you’d want from a zombie game.  That comes through strong and vicious when you first start the game, especially depending on where you spawn in and even more so if you’re going in completely blind.  When my boyfriend and I first started the game we immediately got lost, killed, and spent the next several in-game days just trying to find each other again without running into randomly spawned groups of burners.  It was a terrifying fit of chaos.

Luckily, one of my favorite designs of the game is that it’s not completely impossible to spend several days just scavenging and building.  The zombies are ever-present and always there, but as long as you stay away from city-like areas… or the burning grounds… zombies are fairly spread out and most are slow enough to run around.  You can pick the ones that happen to wander near off easily enough and get right back to fortifying your base.

(Bonus: the scenery is gorgeous)

Which you’re going to want to do, because once horde night hits, you want to be as prepared as you can possibly manage.  Weapons, especially long-range ones, thick walls, and traps a-ready because as soon as it starts, you’re immediately hunted and the infected are relentless.  While the threat is always there throughout the rest of the week, it goes from “I can handle this” to “HOLY SHIT REPAIR EVERYTHING/I’M OUT OF ARROWS/HOW DID THEY REACH THAT/DID THEY JUST BREAK -CEMENT-?!”

7 Days to Die is the most accurate title I’ve ever seen for a game.

However, your inevitable demise at the edge of your own spikes is relatively relieved in the fact that you can still retrieve your backpack after you’ve died.  So if you’re lucky enough to die near your bedroll, it’s not difficult to get back up and get started again.  This is further alleviated by the fact that you can change exactly what you drop when you die in the settings.  You can choose to lose everything, just the items in your backpack, just the items on your tool belt, or have everything immediately vanish upon death… if you’re a masochist.  The convenience of that is, if you die and only drop your backpack, you can spawn with all the weapons in your tool belt ready to go, making retrieving the rest of your items just a bit easier.  You don’t have to punch trees with your fists to make a haphazard, temporary form of defense while you go retrieve that steel bat and machete you just dropped.  It also helps, being able to change that, when a supply drop manages to land in the middle of the way-too-deep-to-ever-retrieve-and-live ocean floor.  Change it to ‘keep backpack’, move everything off your tool belt, grab the supply box items, and just wait for the next half a second before you drown and die because there’s no way you’re making it back up to the surface.

Trust me.

The progression of the game is another great feature to it.  Not only do you upgrade yourself, your base, your weapons, and all fairly easy if you’re smart and consistent about it, but the zombies, themselves, also increase in difficulty each week.  Night 7 starts out with your minimal, wooden and stone tools in a basic, campfire-lit base, and your normal zombie types, with maybe a couple dogs and bugs sprinkled in.  It’ll be tough and it’ll test your starting base and preparation, but it’s nothing too crazy… yet.

Each progressing week, the zombies get bigger, scarier, and a lot more intense.  Spitters that can reach a third floor sniper tower, climbers that just say ‘fuck you’ to whatever wall you built, and massive hordes that make quick work of 4 rows of spikes start showing up at Day 21 and only get bigger each week.  If you last until the sun comes up, you’re going to have a lot to repair.  But you’ll have plenty of time to work on those repairs and upgrading and building new items between the hordes.  As long as you don’t run into too many wandering hordes left over from the horde night that feel the need to destroy the spikes you -just- finished repairing.

(Image from Steam page)

Overall, I’m having a lot of fun with this buggy little game.  As I said at the beginning, according to Steam it’s still technically in Alpha so updates abound, even for the console versions, but so far it’s a lot of fun.  That said, on the PS4, playing split-screen multiplayer, there are a number of lag spikes, bugs, and, with a recent update, crashes.  The lag spikes and bugs only cause minor inconveniences, but the crashes are a tad annoying.  Luckily, it seems to auto-save fairly often so even when the game crashes, we haven’t lost any progress.  It did spawn me in some spikes once, though, when I was trying to repair the roof.

(I'll get a screenshot of our base next time we play)

But, cycling back to the original questions, firstly which version is better?  In all honesty, probably PC, especially if you’ve got a decent computer.  While I haven’t played the PC version, I only have the PS4, I’ve seen a lot of gameplay for the PC version and it’s a lot less laggy than the console version, though I’m sure that’s entirely dependent on the computer you have.  But beyond the processing power of a good gaming computer compared to consoles, the $25 price tag on Steam is more reasonable than the $30 price tag for the console version.  The game is good and it’s a lot fun, especially for something still in Alpha/Early Access, but it is still technically incomplete and requires consistent updates, which are usually easier to manage on a PC than a console.

However, if the PC version isn’t an option for you for whatever reason, I can still recommend the console version.  I would just avoid the Xbox One version.  It’s still fun to play and sometimes the lag spikes are convenient to let you know when hordes and zombies spawn and to be on your guard, but the lower price for the digital version is probably the better deal.

All in all, though, it’s a fun game.  If you’re a fan of the more realistic “zombies are just there and you can often avoid them when you need to, but holy shit avoid large groups” situation like in the Walking Dead or the heavy reliance on crafting like Minecraft and the freedom of an open world… this is going to be a great game for you.  I’m excited to see how much more this game is going to develop and what the story is once that’s implemented, but even in its current state it’s definitely worth a look.  It’s one of the few consoles games that still have a split-screen multiplayer option instead of everything being online co-op only, so if nothing else, that’s a damn good reason to pick it up.