This gameplay video from the Generation Zero closed beta has me finally engage in some robo-dog combat. The first video was a relaxed introduction to the 1989 Sweden setting, but the video above get a bit more tense. You'll have to pardon my low, insufficient vocals from time to time. The game's sound effects were good at overpowering my talky bits, mainly because the family had already gone to sleep as I was recording, and interrupting my wife and daughter's beauty sleep is a terrible thing because they're the most beautiful people in my life. Also, I didn't want them yelling at me.
Skip to the 18:00-minute mark if you want to get straight into some combat. I've decided I'll have to ditch playing on a gamepad and go with good ol' keyboard-and-mouse controls. I certainly don't prefer WASD if I can help it, but there doesn't seem to be any aim-assist when I've got the gamepad plugged in, making too many of my bullets shoot wide. Also, I'm learning as I go, just like everybody else in the beta, so I've made inevitable off-the-cuff mistakes. Just let the gameplay speak for itself and we'll be fine.
I really like what I've seen so far. Mainly because I've been playing overly cautious since I don't know the enemies' full capabilities as of yet, nor how many bullets it takes to take them down. Hint: head shots are good, body shots are fairly useless, and I can shoot some kind of canister off their backs for some reason. I also like how the open world, as of yet, hasn't run into the Far Cry 5 problem of having three or four separate random encounters start overlapping into some kind of cluster soup every 30 yards.
The beta runs through the weekend. Avalanche Studios is obviously collecting bug reports from beta testers, but I personally haven't run into anything game-breaking. A little screen tearing here and there isn't much to worry about.
Generation Zero is keeping its launch window to a vague 2019 for now.
