Generation Zero stumbled out the gate. The game was too big, too empty, and too glitchy. It broke my heart to give the game a 6.5 out of 10, when thematically the game soared. Coming back home to Sweden as a teenager in 1989, only to find your towns and countryside overrun with dieselpunk Boston Dynamics robo nightmares.
Despite incessant comparisons to the artwork of living legend Simon Stalenhag, Generation Zero never captured the boring dystopia or the post-capitalist wastelands of Stalenhag's paintings. Which is too bad, one, because Generation Zero only looked like a Stalenhag painting because they shared a Swedish homeland, and shared a similar Generation X appeal. But where Stalenhag mashes together Gen X nostalgia and Reaganomics dread, Generation Zero was so rarely anything more than just robots and guns.
But it's been two years. The "Indie Corner" of Avalanche Studios has quietly plugged away at their little homeland shooter that could. On the heels of its second anniversary, Generation Zero launches the Resistance Update on April 27. It looks like home base defense mode is being activated, and revamps of key map locations "are just the beginning" of what's scheduled to arrive.
I can't help but still root for Generation Zero. Perhaps this update will effectively be Generation Zero 2.
