Test - nuclear case: Test: A survival shooter with a low half -life

The new game of the Sniper-Elite maker Rebellion has had to put up with the allegations since the announcement that it is nothing more than a nice Fallout clone that only plays in the UK. We can invalidate these allegations. Nuclear case finds its very own niche in the genre of the apocalypse surfing shooters and is as British as Fish and Chips, Rugby or Red Double-decker buses. Unfortunately, story and gameplay are just as unbearable as an English fried steak: it looks good from the outside, but inside it is still bloody and not fried.

At the end of the 1950s there was one of the first serious accidents in the still young history of nuclear energy. A fire breaks out in the reactor of the British nuclear power plant in Windscale. This releases a cloud with a considerable amount of radioactive material, which is distributed over the entire Great Britain and parts of the European mainland.

The story behind nuclear case is based on this catastrophe, but from here throws a lot of pulp fiction (the genre, not the film by Tarantino), folk horror, sci-fi and conspiracy theories in the story mix. For example, the godfather stood works such as Day of the Triffids and Wickerman and also a little Doctor Who. So only a suitable hero is missing.

Quarantine with friends

At the beginning, however, your character certainly does not feel particularly heroic, because he wakes up in a bunker in the middle of the quarantine zone around the power plant and has no idea who he is or what he does there. Since an contaminated area does not necessarily represent a suitable holiday location, it (and with it) is now doing everything possible to escape from the area. But that is easier said than done.

The beautiful, green hills of the region are an extremely dangerous place. Bang gangs roam the area and are just waiting to make you easier to make your last belongings easier. Not to mention all sorts of mutated flora and humanoids that are targeting you. So bravely grabbed ax, stick or pistol and made on the way home!

Apart from you, the quarantine zone is still inhabited by all sorts of other strange figures. The military holds the only larger village in the area and tries to maintain order in the zone with a strict hand. Of course, by using weapons, seizures and executions. Here you should definitely be careful what you say to whom.

If this is a little too martial for you, then look for the druids. The members of this sect hide their faces behind masks from natural products and constantly flee something of a voice that speaks from the earth to them and calls them to themselves. At the beginning the druids start to you, but theoretically you can ally with them and with the military and follow their way, wherever it may lead you.

Trust anyone ... or just everyone!

An impact that the disaster had on the population of the zone must have been a galloping stupidity. And that on several levels. The AI ​​is ridiculously bad. In combat, opponents just like to stay in the open field or march in the Gänsemarsch well towards your rifle run. Once you have taken over, you simply break the line of sight between you and your enemy and, in most cases, they almost immediately forget that you have ever been there. Rarely someone starts looking for you.

But even then they joyfully run into your melee weapons. Right from the start you will receive a cricket racket for defense. I have no idea how cricket works or what you usually do exactly where, but I didn't use any other melee weapon until the final. Even entire groups of opponents were not a problem as long as they stood close together (what they always did) and even only melee weapons (which was mostly the case), everything was simply baked away.

Even outside the fight, the judgment of important NPCs is to be classified as questionable. We come out of a bunker as an absolutely unknown guy and everyone closes into their heart on the spot. Almost everyone who speaks to you is accommodating and willing to help you after a short time (or from the beginning).

However, my absolute highlight was the collaboration with the commander of the military unit, which holds parts of the area. The change from "I keep an eye on you!" To “I will name all of my children after you!” After I only talked to the local baker (and blackened her with him). He then gave me (without being asked) unrestricted access to the military base and the affiliated high-security prison.

As a good guest, of course, I was immediately walked in there, killed half the workforce and freed all prisoners, including the woman, whom he thinks is pretty much the most dangerous person on the planet. Actually, I had expected that he would then greet me directly with three balls towards my head if we see each other again. But I saved from curiosity and still went to him.

I was not shot directly, but at least he went into the striking timing between my access to the warehouse and the prison uprising. So I denied half -heartedly that I had something to do with it. Of course everything was just a big coincidence.

And as was to be expected, of course he believed everything, shaken his hand, said what a great guy I am, and was about to imagine his still unmarried sister. I stood in front of him with a knocked -out jaw and asked myself what you have to do here so that someone once shoots your face.

But woe, woe, woe! When I look at the ends!

For the fact that it should be so difficult to escape from the quarantine zone, offers almost every NPC with which you can talk to help you to escape against a few smaller favor. These British are really friendly! Even in the face of a nuclear disaster. There is no real villain and theoretically you can even get well with everyone at the same time.

So as long as you don't just mow everything and everyone in the zone, you always have more than enough allies. But even that is possible: if you kill every NPC, even before he can even tell you what he wants from you, that's also fine. In theory, you are not dependent on a single NPC to complete the story.

Depending on who you have followed (or not yet killed), the biggest difference in the final section of the game is in a slightly different puzzle in the last room. In the entire game there is only one decision that one of the six possible ends excludes in favor of another, and it is very obvious. In any case, you will be rewarded in the form of a slide show with voiceover, which summarizes some of your decisions in the game again. Depending on the end, the first slide is different. Somehow quite disappointing.

The characters are actually really well and interesting, with their peculiarities and confused views of the situation. Only much does not make you much of them. Important people never meet, and since nuclear case does without cutscenes or the like, the whole presentation looks a bit flat and drows.

When I found out about the great plot twist at the end, he was so weak that I was actually not sure whether that should have been really new to me or whether this info was already generally known. After all, there was just a piece of paper that told me the resolution. Sounds something unspectacular and that actually has a method in nuclear case.

The price of freedom

Because nuclear cases praised not to take you like most other games. Here you do not turn into the current quest at the top left and then mark yourself nicely on the map with a thick symbol where you have to go. Instead, you will find information all over the world in the form of tapes, conversations or notes. Diary entries, research reports, flyers, everything that lies in such a quarantine zone.

From these references you have to do it yourselfQuestSubmit task. So finally a game that forces you to read and think! Once you have decided which hint you want to follow, click it in a menu and you will be shown to you in a short form at the top left and if there is a description of the place, this place marked with a fat symbol on the map. But instead of "go to the old mine!" Then there is “according to an old flyer there should be an interesting person at the old mine!”. So something completely different!

Admittedly, I have now shown this a little exaggerated, but in fact the differences to a classic quest system are minimal as soon as you have found a hint. After all, the schnitzel hunt stimulates information to explore the area. Because it doesn't matter which direction you set off. There is something to find everywhere. The landscape is littered with small secrets, testimonies of past events and a lot of bunkers.

Imagine the narrative structure of nuclear case like a huge spider web. With every hint you find, you continue to work towards the center. Sometimes several clues lead to the same strand, but in the end everything goes out to the same point. At least that's how it should be.

This procedure makes it incredibly difficult for the authors to tell a reasonable story. Unfortunately, the developers do not know when you stumble about which hint or whether you find it at all. To make sure, there are some dozens of information that tell you all the same thing, just pack it differently. The information “instead of XY is an important bunker!” So is distributed everywhere so that you can tell them and go to XY so that the main story can go on.

As a result, the storytelling of nuclear case offers a very interesting approach, but it only works in the actual game if you find the clues accidentally in a meaningful order and quantity. This feeling of “actually a brilliant idea, but not implemented well” is unfortunately symptomatic for the entire game.

Systemically irrelevant

As an example, let's take the system for upgrading weapons. You use the parts of two firearms of the same model in the same quality level (Rusty, normal, Prestine) and build up a single weapon of the next higher level.

In itself a solid system. Since there are only three different quality levels, it is not particularly extensive, but there are more than enough different firearms that could be upgraded. However, melee weapons and arches are excluded. It is only available in the flavor “normal”.

However, you only unlock the ability to upgrade weapons after you have found a specific book in the world. You only get this after a quest as a reward (if you choose the right path) or in an optional space in the second half of the game. So you only get access to the system if you happen to stumble. Since it must also be possible to play through the game without having found the book, it shouldn't make a big difference and that's why it doesn't. In this way, nuclear case devalues ​​all of its systems themselves.

It feels cool when you really feel like Batman in a Batman game. But what if the batarang is only optional, you happen to find the gripping hook somewhere (or not) and the black cape only gets if you give the correct answers in conversation with Alfred? Then a bruce normal consumer must also be able to do it, to defeat the joker in the final fight in swimming trunks and only armed with a ballpoint pen. It's just a little more difficult.

Nuclear case doesn't really go wrong (apart from the thing with the AI. It is really crap!), But stays far behind his possibilities. If you can do everything you want, everything you want and should always come to the same end, then there is nothing really important. (You can hang the sentence over the sofa as a wall sticker.)