I’m not sure if it was the horrible diarrhea and stomach pains that did me in, or the repeated exposure to black mold. Or the eagerness to devour myriad unidentified berries and mushrooms. Or the fact that I slurped gleefully from every stream I came across without boiling the water first. Or the wounds I incurred trying to kill a feral dog with a crowbar. Whatever the case, my first outing into the post-apocalypse of point-and-click RPG survival with NEO Scavenger left me very, very dead. But I’ll be damned if the exciting mysteries I’d started to uncover didn’t have me anxious to roll a new character with some more botanical knowledge.
To call the cartoonishly bleak, sprite-decked hex grid that stands in for the ruined Michigan countryside “unforgiving” would be a fatal understatement. Flung from a cryo-stasis pod with only a hospital gown and a roster of pre-selected skills like Tough, Medical Knowledge, and Tracking, I was forced to satisfy my avatar’s persistent needs for food, water, warmth, and sleep. Every skill I chose mattered, both in opening up new story paths and easing my day-to-day struggle against the forces of nature, which added welcome weightiness to my initial build choices. But unlike the “Hardcore” modes of similarly themed games like Metro: Last Light and Fallout: New Vegas, sheer survival was nearly always my primary concern, as opposed to combat or questing.
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