With Bethesda holding the reins of the series, Walton Goggins smashing into ghoul makeup and smashing it down for his fascinating turn on the adapted TV show, Fallout was an isometric action RPG seen from a bird’s eye perspective. Wandering through that classic wasteland that at least, if it’s something I get to get the first few hours of the game I’ve got, it seems like survival in the upcoming fall is being used as a reference point. This fatal apocalyptic survival story is based on the original Fallout template – literally, in the case of its robust camp development system – and its squad-based combat and cleaning can help create a fresh experience even if it can’t prevent a somewhat static story presentation from fully shining.
Unlike many other post-apocalypses, the ruined world of autumn survives, not caused by human nuclear negligence. Instead, it appears that they got the kind of disaster that killed a dinosaur when the comet collided with Earth and wiped out a significant slice of the world’s population. It also leaves behind a smoldering crater called stasis, which survivors avoid or accept it like an interplanetary plague, absorbing the powers of that otherworldly and transforming it into a stronger form at the expense of their humanity. While surviving the fall, your growing scavenger squads must build connections with different factions scattered around three biomes to survive and thrive.
When I took on a new task from the survivors of countless quest givers in the fall, I instantly took my preference for that team-based setup. Maneuvering a party of up to three survivors around the vast national park area that serves as the setting for the story’s beginning, you can manually search for abandoned breasts for compound compounds, or manually search for wood for material, or tap Grantwork to delegate to one of the cohorts to distract attention elsewhere. Rather than forcing your AI companion to practice everything yourself while standing like a bored child, it feels more natural to split each task, which speeds up the process of looting each settlement they encounter. The only drawback is that my views got a little messy with button prompts whenever there were many interactive elements that were too closely bundled in the environment, but thankfully those opportunities were rare.
The battle is also team-based. Rifle and shotgun ammunition tended to approach each encounter with various looters and ghouls who had stealth as my priorities, given that, at least in this early part of surviving the fall story, rifle and shotgun ammunition seemed so scarce. Therefore, unlike the careful stems that pass the recent command, I dealt with each penetration of enemy camp: origin – hiding in long grass, throwing stones to distract me, stirring my crouch around the cone of the clearly prominent enemy vision, and finally ordering one of my post office companions to hide for me. There are also some satisfying environmental hazards, from mandatory explosive barrels to hanging cargo pallets that can be dropped on the patrol guard with a timing rifle shot.
I felt it was good to carefully clean up each cluster of cultists, but if my cover was blown away after the firearms were drawn, my cover was blown away. It seems that a bit more precision was provided with the mouse and keyboard, but using the controller to get beads on enemy Bonsés using the laser sight was often over-noisy, and often hammering close-related attacks and avoiding chips at nearby health bars. Thankfully, I have at least not been able to fully utilize my ability to pause the action and direct my squadmate to focus on a particular target – reminiscent of a similar system in the wilderness or mutant years – resort to wearing a flamethrower leader.
After a fierce day of mutant murder and booty harvest in its deadly badlands, Autumn Shift Gear survives your camp base building management sim. Documents collected around the world can be investigated to earn knowledge points. You can earn this point and invest in a substantial technology tree to unlock the ability to create everything from bunk beds and kitchen areas to water filtration systems and even armorys. Wood-like resources can be assembled into frames of new structures such as plant boxes and gates to block night raiders, but can be prepared for meals and packed into the backpacks of groups of adventurers who will be sent on their next expedition. It appears to be quite a bit deeper here, but I can definitely see myself spending quite a bit of time turning my settlement from rusty tile ble to cozy bubbles in the finished game.
Outside of my base there were several fascinating areas to explore. From crashed passenger seat converted to enemy forts to farms raw with stasis-infected ghouls, the fall seemed to reward me in clear areas in every direction I point to the compass. Some impressive levels of these regions were at a disadvantage, like the Mykalf people, like the Mykalf people, like the Mykals. Frame rates are more volatile than toxic substances oozing out from the earth. I was also plagued by an occasional game-breaking bug, forcing me to stop saving and reload on several occasions during my play session after being locked up in the inventory screen or building menu. Thankfully, it’s about a month before developer Angry Bulls Studio survives the fall release for optimizing performance.
But that probably isn’t enough time to record the dialogue lines to the actor. However, it’s a slight shame, as interacting with your team and the various NPCs you meet along the way feels a little flattered when done exclusively via on-screen text. I got some laughs from the strange characters here and there, especially from the quirky character Blooper who called Stasis Smog the “Farting Wind” – much of my conversation helped me clue the next fetch quest, rather than giving a lasting impression of each faction I encountered.
Perhaps the bond will deepen in the course of a full journey, and we don’t have to wait long to find it. Survival is expected to be released on PC this May, and is full of apocalyptic possibilities. Assuming that the existing rough edges seen in its control and performance could be refined by then, this could be a survival-based action RPG worthy of your hard-earned bottle cap.
Tristan Ogilvie is a senior video editor based in Passthecontroller’s Sydney office. He can sometimes find himself wandering through the wastelands of social media here.
