Quick Look: Mutant Year Zero - Road to Eden

I just got to the first battle from this Quick Look. I went to the next area without fighting anyone, then came back through and found that the starting enemy paths force me into battle immediately. Super.

I keep thinking bout this but don't have money atm to pick it up so debating if I should play jagged alliance 2 (never played it only the first one but have heard it's incredible) or silent storm because as much as I like xcom I would rather shoot humanoids and use firearms instead of lasers. Anyone here can suggest jagged alliance 2 over silent storm, or should I just play silent storm because it's probably the best stealth turn based game compared to this it seems from first impressions of how much stealth is involved

Get out of here, Stalker.

I would go for Silent Storm over Jagged Alliance 2. They're both tough as nails and difficult to get into in a modern context, but I've actually gotten somewhere in Silent Storm before. Meanwhile, I've tried numerous times to make any sort of headway in JA 2 and never felt like I had any sort of grasp on it.

Regardless of which one you try out, they both benefit immensely from fan tweaks. JA 2 has the 1.13 patch (or rather, one of the various 1.13 offshoot patches) which I guess fixes/adds a bunch of stuff. Silent Storm has mods that fix a lot of the janky-ass quirks of that game and speed up the animations so it doesn't take literal minutes for enemy turns to complete.

I like the exploration phase and can isolate encounters

If people are trying to decide between console or PC go for console. It uses Denuvo on PC and the community manager has been rude when people have complained about it. Not something to reward them for especially if you already got this on gamepass.

@schnoo: Ja! De som inte snackar svenska missar ett helt lager av humor och referenser.

@sicamore: In Xcom you were generally picking off stragglers before things inevitably kicked off. It was incredibly rare to complete a mission without breaking stealth. In this game if you have broken stealth on higher than normal difficulty you are already dead as is shown by Vinny here. Basically think of Xcom as closer to what Naughty Dog's games have been recently, where you stealth until you can't stealth anymore and then go loud, whereas this game is more like a traditional Splinter Cell but with turn based combat.

So I have been playing this on normal and have found it to be a good level of challenge as an Xcom and turn based strategy game veteran. Not quite as hard as Xcom 2 with all of its expansions is. But a decent challenge nonetheless. Worth reiterating what has been said both in the quick look and in these comments: focus on taking out enemies before they alert their comrades. It is possible on normal to manage to fight your way past two or three enemies, but anything more and you are finished or at the very least are going to expend virtually all your resources winning the fight.

Also worth mentioning because it is not mentioned in the game, is that many later maps have enemies of multiple different factions and it is entirely possible to get them to kill each other while you sit back and watch from hiding.

Dang this seems really cool. Wish I was into the Xcom-style, but I can at least recommend this to friends.

If anyone is interested in jagged alliance 2 and silent storm for older turn based games they are 2 and 3 bucks on gog winter sale. Apparently the steam version of ja2 is not as good as the gog one so that works out quite well. They're usually 10 bucks so it's a good sale.

Does the video cut off for anyone else at the end?

Looks like something I'll have to pick up sometime; good QL, you guys.

@steveurkel: JA2 has a "1.13" mod that adds a billion quality of life features, highly recommended.

Great job Vinny. I've been looking forward to this Quick Look.

@poobumbutt: This is on GamePass with Below if you've got an Xbox

@samlane94: Well, thank you very much for the consideration, but I've already used it up as an early Christmas gift. I really need to get into the habit of considering game pass for any game I'm on the fence about. I don't have it yet, but if games like this are getting added, I should really be paying attention. Thanks again, I'm gonna go kick myself :)

Did Vinny name those characters or is that the default?

One interesting aspect however is that the Mutant franchise was created two years before the Chernobyl accident (and Howard the Duck, though anthromorphic animals in real world settings had definitely been a thing in adult underground comics at least since the 60s). Tarkovsky's Stalker was of course released in 1979, but didn't really gain notoriety as prophetic until the '86 disaster, so at the time this was a pretty unique take on post-apocalypse as everyone was going after The Road Warrior.

Also really enjoyed Karlstad and Uddevalla street signs firmly placing the game in the Midwest of Sweden.

@doncabesa: you can't be that surprised that Giant Bomb wasn't informed about Xbox right? It's just the way it's been this generation.

On another note, this game looks rad. May need to check it out. Been meaning to get gamepass. With this, Below and Ashen, it would be crazy not to get it.

It just feels so lazy, like none of this is hard to spend 10 minutes looking up beforehand.

@noelveiga:Especially for tactics games, I think the intro into the systems is critical to me understanding if I will like the game or not.

And this one looks to have a really great style and very puzzly element, I love how the original XCom sensibilities are being modified and would probably pick this up... if I hadn't been having XCOM 2 just staring me in the face for months now.