Z.I.O.N. Reviews

ZION is what happens when you have NO IDEA how to make a video game. If you couldn't tell already, ZION is asset flip garbage with some of the worst visuals that I have ever seen in a game. The fact that this game is even up on the storepage, being marketed for sale baffles me, because there is absolutely NOTHING good about this game. Gameplay is awful consisting of you running around a poorly rendered map with your asset flip gun shooting asset flip robots. Visuals are disgusting, everything looks way too washed out, the textures are horrendous the game runs horribly. The reason I thought that this was a scam was because the game was locked at 12 FPS on and RTX 3060, but this doesn't seem to be an issue with me because a bunch of other people seem to have this problem.

I decided to redo my game review of Z.I.O.N. after I received a comment on my steam profile about how this game is good and how my opinion is garbage, yeah it's probably ironic, but it got me thinking, what could people possibly like about this game? I have played so little so I am not in the best position to do a proper game analysis, but yet after a few minutes of playing I already noticed a ton of stuff that's just bad about this game. First of all the loading screen. When I first booted the game, I could already move, shoot and jump during the loading screen. You might think that's normal, more games feature this. Well in this game it's not supposed to be possible, since you can only see the loading screen and nothing else. So I would be watching a loading screen while I could hear shooting and jumping sounds. My second section in my review is about how poorly the map is constructed. You can clearly see that the buildings are pre-designed assets from other games. Also, the walls are not placed properly next to each other, at the military base there are literally empty spaces inbetween the brick walls, I could almost slip through it out of the map. Third section would be about objectives. When playing the game for a second time I resumed my campaign. Last time I played I had quit playing at the military base. At first I was walking around anddestroyed 2 flying robots with the worst explosion effect I've seen in my entire life. after that I had no clue what to do, so I saw that my objective was to 'take down the military base'. I honestly had no clue what to do, luckily I guessed on shooting a random building, and it gave me 'objective complete'. My next objection was 'take down the military base', like if I didn't accomplish anything. I tried shooting random buildings and vehicles but I just gave up since it's just too confusing. I'm given so little information about the game, and the information that I'm given is very vague. I don't know if this is done on purpose by the game developers or not. I hope they're just being ironic and making this game as a meme. then I walked out of the military base, heading towards the city, I jumped in some water and died of falling damage. then I just closed the game and I don't think I'm ever going to play it again.

I play these 50 cent games to laugh at, this had me rolling. I managed to find several flaws within the first 5 minutes of playing. The exposition text allows you to edit it all, No idea how that even works from the player side. As soon as I walk out of the initial tunnel you see various chunks of garbage spawn in the sky and fall to the ground. This includes every bit of trash, debris, car, everything thats not nailed to the ground essentiall falls at the same time. Even when these items fall, theyre still not nailed down as I was able to push cars on the ground and have them fly through the air, the same thing happens with brick walls. After laughing at everything falling at once, I climb ontop of the first hill visable and jump out of the playable zone to walk around in areas I'm not supposed to before falling through the world and having to restart. Venturing back into the world I quickly noticed that the models the developer used for the interior and exterior of the buildings are completly different. Youll walk into a narrow but tall apartment complex, but end up in a massive hospital thats far too big to fit inside the exterior model. There are times where collision detection is non existant as my arms go through certain buildings too. As far as the actual gameplay is concerned, its an objective based shooter sending you from point A to B. The only problem is that the enemies are nearly impossible to kill with the weapons/amount of ammo given. There will be times that you will have more enemies chasing you than you have bullets, and they will be shooting at you non stop creating the most ear shredding sounds. While inside the hospital you are 1shot by everything, and I really do mean everything. There is an animation where a zombie dies and his body explodes sending his guts flying out. As I attempted to walk past the body, my foot would touch on one of the zombies guts and I would instantly die. I played for 1 hour and I would say 45 minutes were me laughing at the game, the last 15 minutes were total frustration as my stream viewers pleaded with me to stop the terrible sound effects. I am giving this a positive score because nobody comes to something like this expecting a quality gameplay experience. If you like to laugh at terrible games than this is the most comedic 50 cent asset flip title I have ever played.

TL:DR The game is full of annoying, bugs but is far from unplayable. It is okay for a NOW discount game worth a few hours of modest enjoyment and a good deal of confusion and frustration. If you are expecting a polished modern FPS, you will be disappointed. However, I think a truly open-minded person who wants to see what Z.I.O.N has to offer, will have some enjoyment. I understand the complaints people have/had about this game for a full price title. The volume is EXCEPTIONALLY loud, turn your system volume down. The most frustrating glitches to me are sometimes falling under the map when leaving the hospital, though it is possible to clip back into bounds or simply reloading. "Maverick" goes into great detail on more of the minor to moderate bugs. If someone is looking for a modern day graphical "masterpiece" or a game that will hold your hand, this is not the game for them. Yes, the game can and will be frustrating. There are so many games that are leagues superior. However, I disagree with the people saying it is the worst game ever made, or that it is unplayable. The music is minimal but fitting. The map is a decent size. It provides a genuine challenge to navigate some areas or to figure what you are supposed to do in some cases. I appreciate that aside from the Decoder, the order of objectives are up to the player. Health, ammo, rockets, and coffee are always available for respawn at the Caches after reloading on the map. The aggressive pursuit of the larger robots can provide some extra difficulty if you do not wan to simply despawn them by going into structure. People have been spoiled by having an entire armory of weapons and ammo at their disposal. A lot of modern day games hold your hand and tell you exactly what to do and where to go. Old Atari games and some early NES games did not take you on a tour. Z.I.O.N feels like an retro game that experimented with a lot of things that did not pan out. I have played through the game three times as of this review. The first one took me about 6 hours. Now I can beat it in about 90mins. I grew up playing games used to looking at everything, exploring every corner or small detail of the map, and trying outside the box ideas. Now that the game is discounted, it is worth a shot. I really wish it had a proper ending though. I wish I could agree with the vast amount of negative reviews. I understand the hate, people do not usually have a lot money or time to play games and they want to enjoy themselves. However, it seems to me that people either want to torture themselves games that are meant to be near impossible to beat and purposely agitate, or they want overly simple leisure strolls in the park. I know people will think this is wordy or that I have no sense of what makes a good game. I cannot help but feel the people who hate this game are probably strong fans of Halo, Borderlands, Overwatch, or CoD (I do enjoy Halo and Borderlands substantially, and I do not hate the other two). It simply isnt fair to compare Z.I.O.N to blockbuster big budget titles with online multiplayer.

Most fun part is parkour-sprinting over the poorly generated terrain, but even that is ruined by terrible fall-damage system. YOU CAN BREATHE UNDERWATER but YOU TAKE FALL DAMAGE. There's "So bad, it's fun", then there's this.

i don't recommend this game i bought this game when it was on sale for like 79p that's to much but that's wen its on sale so don't buy maybe buy for the cards but that's realy it you just walk around a city

ZION was released too quickly after being greenlit. It's hard to believe that the game could not be improved if the effort was made. I didn't expect this to immediately show up on Steam after it was greenlit and not even be in early access. The concept is great and there is potential, however, the game never made it past what is clearly a very underdeveloped state. ZION should be changed to early access (if possible) and should be worked on regularly. Improvements should be made and updates published for the players. This game could actually be something if it got the attention it deserved. Currently, I feel bad for anyone who voted for this game on greenlight and / or purchased it afterward.

I only played for 22 minutes and the game could be something if the devs worked real hard on the game for @ least 6 month. Frame drops on menu, when shooting robots and some areas of map. There isn't much to the map or game it just looks like they through something togethor in a few months. I don't recommend right now, so refunding.

So, this is what Steam has become? Allowing absolute trash onto the store. This game is one of the worst titles I have ever played on Steam. There is nothing about this that could be redeeming. I could see this being done in like 2 days with little experience. Here is my video Impressions.... More enjoyable than the game IMO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ccaxh6Ue1os

This is the WORST game I have ever seen on Steam, period. I saw the trailer which truly expanded what I knew to be possible about bad Steam Greenlight games, so I bought it to check and see how bad it got. (I have since refunded this game. Don't worry.) There are two weapons in this game - an assault rifle and a rocket launcher. The rocket launcher has no animation when fired. You pull the trigger and see an explosion happen. There is no way to tell when, how, or if the enemies are attacking you. There are things in the environment that will make you curious only to insta kill you for approaching them, without warning or explanation. The level design is unexplainably bland - open ground and corridors full of reused assets - that's it. It is unintentionally creepy due to an eerie lack of music. I won't even mention the nearly nonexistant story. What would you expect from the shovelware Greenlight garbage that floods the store these days? DO NOT BUY THIS GAME. Unless you're intention is to show yourself and your friends the absolute depths of lazy design that a game can achieve in the modern day, STAY FAR, FAR AWAY. PS - I am aware that this game was created from start to finish by just one person. Good for him! That's awesome. Keep working on your trade. However, you have absolutely no business selling your half-baked practice games on Steam.