Welcome to FUN. I enjoyed this game so much, this review is going to be a bit rambling...lol. This game is basically a nicely structured open-world FPS with gnarly single-player and/or co-op/multiplayer. This is a game for gamers. The open world: it's not GTA or some huge open world. It's basically an island created with the Unity engine. The game is comparable to a "really well-made B-movie". The graphics are actually pretty nice considering it's Unity and it pushes the engine but feels optimized to the point it's smooth, and able to handle all the singleplayer/multiplayer action. The developers clearly knew what they were doing! What a relief! It's like a "poor man's" Just Cause. The island seems big at first but you realize as you progress how small it is. And it leaves you begging for more. Still, there's a lot to explore here and it was cool to progress into new areas. What an incredibly fun and challenging game. Everything works well. You're basically plopped onto an island with the goal of taking out it's dictator. The island has various ruins and sights to see. Small villages are spread throught and respawning at them is unlocked as to progress/level up. Your goal is to infiltrate the bunkers owned by the dictator. They're quite small but you must go into them to see if he's in there and kill him. Doing so, causes the stores in the game to lose their 800% tax rate imposed by the dictator, resulting in a huge drop in prices for weapons, pets, vehicles, you name it. How does one actually play the game? The game is played in 3rd person. The village you start in is like your hub. If you die in the game, you respawn. There is no 'game over'. Inside each village, is an ATM or vendor where you can buy weapons, armor, pets/companions (basically, NPCs who will fight alongside you), food (to regen health), vehicles (cars, jeeps,bus, there's even a gyrocopter, and speedboat), "gift boxes" (think "loot boxes" but you don't use real money but money earned in the game...isn't that relief!), and various other items. You can also spend money to boost your weapons skills (mostly affects dmg they do). The village also features a job board with missions you can do. They vary from "Kill 10 chickens" (I'm serious) to "Destroy 10 drones" and offers money AND other rewards (maybe it will reward 10 vehicles or 5 mercenaries). Your inventory items "stack". So you can buy 10 of one type of car, and 20 of another. Ammunition is handled by buying stacks of the weapon. A rifle, for example, will contains X number or round. If you "buy 10 rifles" you will have "X" number of rounds times 10. So it's different from what most players will be used to and can be confusing at first. Armor and melee weapons work the same way. When you select an object like a vehicle or mercenary or pet, from your inventory, it will appear in a ghostly "where to place down" mode. You simply move it to wherever you want to place it and press the button to plop it down. Similar to the Fallout 4 settlement method. It works very well. From this point, you head toward one of the bunker areas where you need to kill enough creatures to unlock access to it's hatch. The game is very informative and will show you your progress. Once you unlock a hatch itself, you can proceed to try and find the dictator "The Prince". Or...you can do one of the missions. Maybe you take a job to kill 5 goats. Or 10 Mutants. Or just go farm the mobs for XP and money from leveling up. Or go exploring. It's up to the player. Killing enemies results in XP. The XP goes towards leveling up your character. You need to level up to unlock better weapons, armor, food, vehicles, etc. There's a large variety of weapons and they each have different characteristics. For example, I like the Tommy Gun if I need to do "spray" damage at a fast rate. For more precision attacks, I might use the Assault Rifle. I liked alot of the weapons varied from each other but not too drastically to be gimmicky. I found myself comfortable with the Hunting Rifle and Tommy Gun. Others may prefer other weapons and invest their skills into them instead. Similar to MMOs, there are enemies around the island by themselves or in "mobs". You can wipe them out and they will respawn. This is a good thing because you need to kill them for XP. They also will drop various loot which will save you money when you have to reequip at a store. The game has difficulty settings. The higher the setting, the more challenge but greater rewards. The enemies vary from zombies, robotic drones, mutants, high tech soldiers, etc. They all have their own strategies to attack you. Mutant wolves are typically in packs and zerg you. Soldiers stay back and try to blast you. Drones move slow but can do massive damage in a short-range firefight. Having mercenaries is a nice addition. You can play multiplayer, which is primarily co-op, and each player can have their own mercs with them. I don't like to call them "mercenaries" because some can be zombies or other creatures too. You can spawn a max of 10. I noticed in co-op if each has 10, it seems the AI becomes drastically dumbed down and sometimes unresponsive to hostiles. If playing with friends you shouldn't need them. It's possible to solo the game anyways. The game is challenging and you might die a lot at first but I recommend being patient with it. It offers a lot of freedom of movement and can be addicting working on unlocking items (including character wardrobe outfits and achievements) and new respawn locations. I dislike most games on Unity because I think it's a crummy engine that is overrated. However, the developers really did an outstanding job with it here. The graphics are really nice, the physics are extremely good (on some occasions, they can be a bit glitchy like Goat Simulator but hilarious at the same time), explosions can send enemies (or yourself) flying. The vehicle controls vary based on vehicle, most are sluggish which actually makes for some gut-wrenching comedy moments. Like, you all pack into a giant oversized cadillac-style car to head to your mission goal and the driver starts swerving, only to overcorrect too much and you all go tumbling off a cliff twirling into the ocean. LMAO. The game is stable, I had NO crashes, neither did anyone I played with. Setting up multiplayer and doing co-op worked very smoothly and well. (For multiplayer, you can do co-op with PVP or joint-PVE). There's just so many things they got RIGHT with this game and the way it looks, feels and unfolds. This is a cool game and with many strong points, that the gameplay itself receives attention needed to make it fun is also a relief. Additionally, the gameplay vids and screens ARE exactly how the game is. It looks, plays, and feels great. The game also has a quirky sense of humor which helps although I found the music a bit too weird for my tastes, although I hear people say they thought it was entertaining. Utterly fun game. Addicting. I would like to see more content, more areas, more secret or unique areas. Maybe a whole new island. The cool thing is the developers are always working to add improvements and new things, so developer-support IS THERE. The game is on sale from time to time for lik $5 give or take. Even at $10 it's an absolute steal because of how enjoyable I found it. Again, it's like a well-made "B-movie" but done so well, it takes giant dump on all the AAA-plus titles that can't even deliver great gameplay and features. I'm sick of games that force players into pay-to-win systems or pay-for-singleplayer/features. This game is a total relief. So a huge 11/10, double-thumbs up, all that jazz. If I was stuck on an island and someone was like, "The only game you will have with you is Welcome to Princeland." I'd be like, "PERFECT, now you go get a copy and let's go frag the dictator together!" The developers are geniuses. What a hidden gem. Needs to be unhidden.
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