And the population is nearly dead.
Population Zero may be shaping up to be another example of how you really only get one first impression in the gaming industry. I am still playing it, as I am wont to do with games of this nature (see my coverage of H1Z1). There are definitely improvements being made to the game by Enplex. But did Enplex take the game out of the oven too early to put back in?
Let’s check in.
1. It’s Getting Better…Somewhat
I’d like to start off by looking back at my early impressions piece and the best that I can say about Enplex is that they are at least listening. The issues of hunger and thirst have been somewhat addressed with perks and improving the flask system and streamlining recipes. Then you get issues like the main water source at the hub being broken and Enplex taking their sweet-ass time to fix it despite the game population literally disintegrating in front of them.
As I write this piece, Population Zero has dropped to a 24 hour peak of 42 players. At those numbers I’m not confident this game will have the revenue to get to December let alone see a full launch.
2. The Sahrim/Merid Game
I have just one simple question for Enplex: Why does Population Zero come off as being so determined to make me regret booting it up? Let’s look at the third beast you will encounter very early on in the game; the Sahrim. One of the early quests in Population Zero is to get 15 grilled meat and 5 roasted Sahrim meat.
The Sahrim are the big lumbering stinkbug-looking creatures you might have seen in my other coverage. They are a ridiculous nightmare to kill. First of all they have a ton of health, they congregate in densely packed areas guarded by a mother Sahrim who is completely unbeatable and will stomp you in a couple of hits. Assuming you don’t kite the mother, the other Sahrim will come attack you as well and these guys have the ability to spam just the most obnoxious of attacks including one that temporarily slows your movement to a crawl and prevents you from running.
And then to top it off, when you get a Sahrim down to roughly 20% of its health bar, it runs and hides behind its mother making it impossible to approach without dying immediately. And then its HP replenishes pretty freaking quick meaning you get to partially start the process all over again while you try to lure it out.
That isn’t difficulty, it is tedium. Stupid, pointless, time-wasting tedium for one kill that the game expects you to perform over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again, and then? Start it all over next week! Forget Population Zero, Enplex should have called this game Sisyphus Simulator 2020.
And you need to kill Sahrim if you want to advance in the main quest, or the game at all, because Sahrim meat is used for the cooling mixture for heat protection in the desert.
But the Sahrim almost make me appreciate the Merid more which is really saying something because I come out of my desert experience wanting to tear my hair out. The Merid are these little sandcrab things that pop out and launch themselves at you. If they hit, it’s a guaranteed bleeding effect. They also have a charming invulnerability when burrowing into the ground.
They are located in the desert and to better showcase their population density I’ll refer you to this image of a Little Caesars pepperoni pizza. Imagine the pepperoni are the placement density of Merid and the Youtubers are Enplex employees looking on their work appreciating how terrible it is.
You can’t throw a stone without kiting one or two Merid in the desert which brings up two important facts about Population Zero; the hitboxes suck and the servers suck. Nothing says the cards are stacked against you quite like going up against creatures that bug out and don’t actually surface before they attack, or a dodge mechanic that doesn’t work, or hitboxes that let you take a few blows from something six feet to your right. Or the server lags and the Merid magically teleport through you.
The Merid would be so much more tolerable if you weren’t walking into one every fifty feet. They are a consistent, unending burden that makes any trip into the desert the kind of chore that I have to assume is a big part of why the population has tanked. Who would put up with this? Why do I put up with this?
3. Heavy Metal Poisoning
I want to take you through the thought process that I had when I researched metal weapons in Population Zero. I figured hey killing Sahrim should be easier with a metal sword than it is with a bone sword, right? Makes sense. To build the metal sword you need nine metal plates, four straightened spiral stem, four rope, and 35 sand bractus resin. The last two are easy to get.
To make nine metal plates I need to travel deep into the desert to find hull fragments and each metal plate requires three metal fragments and ten coal (also in the desert). So I need 27 hull fragments and 90 coal to make the metal plates. For the straightened spiral stems I need 40 spiral stem and 20 salt. Salt? Where do I get salt? The handy descriptor says it can be found near geysers…in the desert.
Did I do it? Oh yea, I did it. How can I not? I mapped out the desert, got the salt, got the resources, crafted the metal sword after all that freaking time and was it worth it? Yea, I guess. I was able to actually kill the three Sahrim, depleting the population temporarily in that area and getting enough meat to get me to…four roasted Sahrim. Of the five that I needed.
That’s when I shut the game down.
4. Sisyphus Syndrome
I think the worst aspect of this is that it has to be repeated every week. You could write it off as a rite of passage having to get through the grueling starting experience if it actually led to something. But it doesn’t. You get through the crappy experience with the knowledge that you’ll have to do exactly the same thing next week and the week after that and the week after that and the week after that and the week after that.
Population Zero’s population is quickly headed toward zero, and this may be a big shock but I actually want this game to succeed and keep operating. Things like allowing you to better annotate the map, letting you carry that annotation over to your new session, letting you carry something over to the next game instead of nothing, those would go toward improving the experience immensely while you work out other kinks and add in new content. It would actually make me want to log in each week to start anew.
MMO Fallout 