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A janky but charmingly unique MMO take on the zombie apocalypse - Undawn Quick Review

6K View2023-06-27

Undawn

8.4

SurvivalActionRealisticRPGOpen WorldShooter

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PLAY IT OR SKIP IT?

Play it if you’re looking for a more lighthearted, casual-friendly way to pass some time killing the undead, but be prepared to encounter some jank. Undawn is the latest MMO from Level Infinite, the same publisher that brought us Tower of Fantasy, and it shares some similarities with that game...and some big differences. Most notably, Undawn trades in the more traditional mix of fantasy, sci-fi, and anime aesthetics for a modern world that has been wrecked by a zombie apocalypse. This game’s vision of the end of the world is anything but generic, though. Even though some elements are frustrating or underdeveloped, I can’t help but feel charmed by this weird little game.

TIME PLAYED

More than I should have! I’ve spent just under twenty hours playing Undawn since its official global launch last week. My character is now around level 35—not quite caught up to the current server level cap—and I’ve got my homestead to level 6. I’ve also managed to get a taste of almost all of the different types of content the game offers, save for endgame raids and the annoyingly time-limited player-versus-player modes.

WHAT’S AWESOME

• Extreme goofiness. Zombie games tend toward being pretty dark and serious, and Undawn certainly has moments of that. For the most part, though, this is a more silly approach to the end times. That was obvious from as early on as character creation, when I was able to give my character a giant fake mustache or a novelty cap that made it look like he had a fish going through his skull.

Things get even wackier as the game progresses. In one early cutscene, one of the supporting characters burst into song under the moonlight, singing a ballad about being lonely and following your dreams straight out of a Disney movie—except, you know, also with zombies and stuff. A later sidequest centered on a wandering poet with an evil split personality who spoke only in rhymes. One of the antagonists I had to face aside from zombies was a gang of clowns whose screams of “You’re the real madman!” would overlap every time I fought them.

I’m not saying that all of these elements work or are particularly well developed. In fact, many of them are explicitly quite stupid. But I never felt like I had a clue what the game was going to throw at me next, and given how same-y zombie shoot-em-ups can be, I couldn’t help but appreciate that. If there’s anything that will keep me going in Undawn, it’s that wackiness.

• Rewarding exploration. In twenty hours of Undawn, I only managed to begin working my way through three of the game’s six or seven zones available at launch. Regardless of whether I was in the majestic Redwood Forest, the more settled Seinz Hills area, or the busted down metropolis called Lost City, though, I felt like I always had a half-dozen different directions I could go in at any one time. Similar to Tower of Fantasy, Undawn tracked my completion percentage across each zone and regularly offered me rewards for progress along that track. And whenever I saw something cool off in the distance, like a massive cell phone tower or an abandoned logging camp, I would be able to find something cool there, whether it’s a chest full of gear, scavenged supplies, or a dropped note providing some backstory.

• Tons of content. As hopefully made clear in the point above, there’s an awful lot to do in Undawn, even if the developers have forced players to progress at a slower speed (more on that below). Beyond just exploring, I was bombarded with quests, tutorials, events, and daily goals to work on, all of which fed into the game’s broader systems of progression, such as upgrading my gear and, of course, leveling up.

• Homestead customization. Beyond making my character look like an absolute goofball, Undawn also gave me the ability to design my own homestead camp. The camp creation tools are modest at first, but as I progressed, I unlocked new designs and crafting blueprints to add to my home. I’m pretty terrible at home decor, so I hope the guildmates I invite over don’t mind that my toilet is installed on the roof of my house. Even with my awful design sense, though, I enjoyed the level of freedom the game provides on this front, and I’ve already seen some incredible examples of user-created homesteads that allow players to live out the zombie apocalypse in style.

WHAT SUCKS

• Drama falls flat. While I enjoyed the comedic elements in Undawn, when it attempts moments of high drama, they collapse hard. The most egregious example is a series of event quests that were given to me by, uh, brand spokesperson Will Smith. I guess that’s a callback to 2007’s I Am Legend?

Anyway Will Smith (as Trey Jones) directed me on a series of missions showcasing some of the terrible events people in this world were facing—children losing their parents, an old man blowing himself up to be with his wife, a young girl needing to come to terms with the death of her dog, and so on. These are all tragic stories that should have tugged on my heartstrings, but the writing that works wonders for goofy stuff just cannot carry the weight of actual pathos.

• Inconsistent voice acting. This goes along with the drama problems, but Undawn has bizarrely patchy voice acting. At first it seems like every line of dialogue has voice-over, but the further in I got, the more I encountered random NPCs whose lines were text only. This isn’t that big of a deal of side missions or minor characters, but it even pops up in the main story, and sometimes in certain dialogue scenes, some characters will be voiced and some will not. Most incredible of all: The aforementioned Will Smith character has no voice-over. Apparently they paid enough to use Smith’s likeness but not to get him (or a soundalike) actually into the studio to record lines?

• Bad matchmaking. The group content is some of the most fun I’ve had in Undawn, as is often the case in MMOs. There’s just one problem: There’s a ton of different group co-op instances to take on, and the game’s matchmaking doesn’t seem to work well. I regularly found myself queuing up for a stronghold and sitting in matchmaking for tens of minutes before being randomly booted for the queue for no discernible reason. The game allowed me to take on these instances solo when I couldn’t find teammates, but that was a much bigger challenge (and frankly, much less fun).

• Time-limited PvP events. I mentioned earlier that one of the few parts of Undawn I haven’t tested yet is its player-versus-player. That’s because as of right now, there are no PvP modes that are available at all times. A lot of Undawn’s different modes and options are only open at certain times; that’s a common design choice in free-to-play games like this, even if I personally hate it. But for PvP specifically, there just aren’t enough modes available or enough freedom on when to play them. I’d love to tell you how the PvP feels, but I guess I play at weird hours, so Undawn doesn’t want me to experience it! Sorry!

• Arbitrary content gating. This is a minor complaint, as it won’t matter past the first month or so of Undawn’s life. For launch, though, the game has implemented a “max server level cap” similar to that used by Tower of Fantasy at its launch. Essentially, there’s a set level that’s the highest players can reach on any given day. On launch day it was level 15. By today, a week after launch, it’s around level 45. I don’t know what the eventual full level cap is, and I understand why systems like this are implemented to prevent players from just burning through all of the game’s content in a couple days. But it’s still a frustrating design choice that feels like it punishes the most dedicated players. And to be clear, I’m saying that as someone who hasn’t come close to hitting the server level cap on any of the days I’ve played!

💬 Are you ready to take on zombies in yet another version of the apocalypse, or will you be sitting out on Undawn? Let me know what you’re thinking in the comments!