Generation Zero: Avalanche Studios, Fighting Robots in 1980s Sweden

Eh…

I tried this when it was on sale some time ago. It was kind of interesting for a bit, but the extremely lackluster crafting and the repetitiveness of the robot enemies made it hard to appreciate the nicely modeled Scandinavian landscape and stuff.

My kid and I play this for a few hours every few months. Really enjoy the idea of it and we have fun just messing around but it’s not a must play game.

Hard to believe this is still getting updates 4 years later. Has anyone revisited it recently?

I played it a couple of years ago, that was the last time I think. The concept was…interesting? The execution, well, it was lacking in a lot of ways.

A friend of mine and I played it co-op last fall. It’s still a bit rough around the edges, but a very cool idea and a very fun co-op shooter for a few tens of hours.

I’m still annoyed that the robots shoot at you. I think it would have made a lot more sense if the robots were melee only. Or at least the first few robots you encounter in the game at least. At least make them melee only to give the player a better chance.

If there ever was a game that needed AI companion bots, this is it.

I recall playing solo and with no cannon fodder to help me, the enemy all focuses on the player.

Yeah I’ve played it co-op and solo, and my god solo is a waste of time.

Yeah I lasted 6 hours before uninstalling it, way too empty and devoid of interesting stuff happening.

Exactly. I’d get all excited about exploring a house or something…and find some wire or tape or crap like that. Tons of effort and time to sneak around robots for very little payoff.

Too bad, because the quirky premise and unique setting (no one does stuff set in Sweden, really, not modern-era Sweden at least) should be kind of cool. But it’s just dull.

Well, I bought the game because I watched some game play videos and it looked fun, the DLC’s look to have added a lot, and it was on deep discount on Steam. But my problem is that I just can’t get the game to run:

I can’t play 5 minutes without a crash. Played up to the first house, then went outside to loot some vehicles, game crashed. Reloaded, started in the house, same thing happens. Reloaded again, couldn’t leave the house, game crashed/froze going down the stairs. That happened 3 times. Started up the game twice more, froze/crashed in the main menu. I was actually moving backwards. Tried starting new game, maybe save file was corrupted, got off the dock, crashed in first shed to left twice. This was all in less than 30 minutes. Gave up.

Tried many of the suggestions stickied in the Forums here but no luck. Checked integrity of game files in Steam all is well. Check Win installation with DISM and SFC but no problems there. Tried running in window, still crashes. Turn off anti-virus but no luck.

Gonna have to ask Steam for a refund.

That sucks. I mean, the game itself is “ok,” but at least for me it ran. I haven’t tried it in ages though, so maybe something changed. You are not really missing out on the next great thing at least.

Well, in looking at what’s going on with my PC, I don’t think it is this games fault. I just started getting a lot - and I mean a lot of other crashes, and all different sorts of error codes, nothing consistent when looking at crash reports. It was just this game and sometimes Fallout 4/NV but now I am getting random crashes when not even playing a game. Worse than this game not working, I think I need to reinstall Windows :(

You aren’t overclocking your CPU or graphics card are you? Could be overheating. Hard crashes in windows nowadays are normally hardware related. Have a look at the fans too and see if they need cleaning.

Another thing that I’ve found causes an inordinate amount of crashing and instability is audio issues. There are so many damn audio devices now that sometimes Windows and applications get all mixed up with what they are using and things go south fast. We had an issue with Diablo IV on my wife’s machine that was caused by Windows somehow setting the (unused) monitor speakers as the default output device…

No, no overclocking.

Here’s my complaint, something that I have never understood. Why can’t a PC tell you exactly why it crashed? Why can’t you get a crash report in plain English that says, “PC crashed due to out of date video card driver”? Or “PC crashed because of bad memory” or “PC crashed due to issues (detail) with Windows installation”. The fact is, from doing some research on my own, if you d/l MS Debugger and then use it to look at your minidump files, some (not all) of this information is there, such as driver files that cause crashes. Or sometime Event Logger can help you also.

So why hide it under all this opaqueness? Why should I have to spend a couple of hours on research, download the debugger app, then open a minidump file and look at it? Why can’t this powerful amazing machine do that for me and give me a simple, plain English explanation or an outline of what the possible issues might be.

I’ve never understood why PC’s are so user unfriendly when it comes to diagnosing system problems, when oftentimes the answers - or at least the direction of the problem - are available right there in the machine…

I do not know, though I’ve sometimes wondered the same thing. I suspect, just as a layman musing about it, that one factor may be that Microsoft in this case does not want to deal with people screwing up their system trying to “fix” specific problems that a verbose error message might highlight.

Yeah, but can that be any worse than someone’s computer constantly crashing with no solution? And then having to snuff out the answer which may or may not be right because the info is user unfriendly? And then screwing your system up because of that? I can’t see how giving people more info can be worse than the situation now. Given all the forums I’ve gone to trying to research crashes through the years, it’s not all that uncommon. Hard to believe that the info is so hidden and opaque.

Oh, I agree with you. I’m just trying to think like a suit :).