7 Days to Die

Lock the doors children, the blood moon is upon us.

7 Days to Die offers some solid survival mechanics mixed in with the ability to craft most of what you need to survive but is hampered by terrible visuals that are only made worse by constant performance issues and boring combat mechanics.

A mixture of Minecraft and DayZ may sound like a fun idea but this new Telltale release is possibly the worst game of the year to date. 7 Days to Die originally came out on Steam's Early Access in 2013 and is now available to console users.

PS4 version tested. Review code provided by the publisher

There's a hint of a good game in 7 Days to Die's mix of zombie attack preparedness and crafting and cooperative stands against zombies, and it has valuable ideas to contribute to the genre. In fact, you can almost hear them screaming to escape from beneath terrible graphics, barely useable menu controls, and shoddy console optimization. This is an apocalypse amongst apocalypses.

They say first impressions are everything, but also not to judge a book by its cover. When I first launched 7 Days to Die I was immediately turned off by the horrendous graphics and controls. I desperately wanted this game to be stellar, being a huge fan of the zombie genre especially with survival mechanics thrown in the mix. While disappointment came full steam with 7 Days to Die, I can’t say it’s a complete write-off. There are some fun elements but otherwise this is a mostly forgettable experience.

In the end then, 7 Days to Die is a promising idea that attempts to put a unique spin on a few overused genres, but ultimately it falls far short of what it intends to deliver. It’s hard to overlook the terribly outdated and buggy graphics, and the fact that the clunky presentation feels hardly optimised for consoles. Whilst gameplay can be enjoyable at times, it soon grows repetitive and tiresome, and the flawed day/night cycle means you’ll spend a great deal of time with nothing to do other than twiddle your thumbs. Ardent fans of survival and crafting may find something worth playing here, ...

The premise behind 7 Days to Die is strong: it's an open-world zombie survival horror game smashed together with the crafting and building elements of Minecraft. That description sounds compelling, but the final product doesn't come anywhere near to being fun.

This ties into the game’s overall presentation which, even for a budget current gen release, remarkably poor. Iron Galaxy’s port is disappointingly buggy, for one thing, and the game’s graphics are terribly basic, from character models to textures and lighting. Wherever you step foot in Navezgane, you’ll come across some truly garish sights, especially if you dare to venture underwater. The audio is just as bad, with music and sound effects cutting in and out, failing to create a meaningful atmosphere.

Should Telltale have released a game in such a poor state? Probably not. And it’s questionable why they would allow something of such a low quality tarnish their otherwise strong pedigree. But it’s hard to recommend 7 Days To Die to anybody unless you’ve got somebody to bring along with you and laugh along with it. After all, they do say that misery loves company.

7 Days to Load.

Considering it’s half broken and patently unfinished this doesn’t deserve to be called a video game at all, just an unpromising work in progress.