Review of the game "Life After"
“Life after” was made by one of the most experienced studios in the Sony “family” - Bend Studio. Back in the days of the PlayStation One, many years ago they created the cult series of action movies Syphon Filter, the continuation of which many owners and fans of the PlayStation have been waiting for all these years. The team has worked on Life After for more than five years, and it is this blockbuster that should return the experienced Bend Studio team to the league of developers of the highest echelon.
Life After is a massive post-apocalyptic action movie in the open world. The protagonist of the game is a biker named Deacon St. John and his friend are trying to lead a nomadic lifestyle. They willingly take on the work of local gang gangs and simple communities, thus obtaining for themselves food and provisions. Everyone has a faithful motorcycle, which must be looked after during the game - to repair, pour gasoline and in no case be left unattended.
Structurally, Life After is similar to many competitors - from Far Cry and Mad Max to, of course, the great Red Dead Redemption. The passage turns into an endless series of boring and not so tasks, constant movements on a motorcycle and rare fights with infected people. In Bend Studio, this simple frame was hung with all the modern entertainment for such games: hunting, pumping a character and a motorcycle, random mini-tasks on the map, armed camps and much more. “After After” does not really have any ideas (except perhaps a motorcycle), but its authors skillfully combined the best elements of competitors in the game. Therefore, in "Life After" you will definitely not have problems sorting out if you played at least 1-2 games of this genre.
“Life after” was announced three years ago at the E3 2016 exhibition, and even then the game was surprising. The main question is: why Sony, with The Last of Us in its sleeve, a reference game about post-apocalypse, is launching another project on a similar topic. Won't it wash the audience? Well, will players get tired of fighting zombies forever? Time has shown that the claims are quite appropriate, but the fact is that The Last of Us 2 is in no hurry to the store shelves and is unlikely to appear on sale in 2019. Most likely, the game from Naughty Dog is being made with an eye on the PlayStation 5, which should be available next year. And so Life After is quite capable of quenching the thirst of an audience who loves such a setting, in anticipation of another exclusive from Sony.
In addition, “Life after” has the most important function - to become the main exclusive from Sony this year. The company, which largely won this generation of consoles thanks to its own exclusive projects, desperately needed an excellent blockbuster in 2019. After all, there is at least a year before PlayStation 5 and The Last of Us 2, but something needs to please the loyal owners of PlayStation 4. So “Life After” is in many ways the main game for Sony at sunset PlayStation 4.
Someone from Life After will be scared away by its secondary nature, someone - a setting, but the real problems of the game are different. Home - the stupidity of the enemies of the protagonist, and infected monsters, and - more importantly - ordinary bandits. Opponents never try to deceive you, acting in a straightforward manner, sitting out in shelters. Monsters are constantly running towards the main character as soon as they notice him, but at least they can be understood - the intellect disappears after infection.
Add to this a completely leisurely shooting, a constant lack of ammunition, and it turns out that it is more convenient and more correct to play “Life After” slowly, constantly being in shelters, healing enemies one at a time. Not that this was a minus - at least there is a post-apocalypse in the game, in which you need to be careful and not attract attention - but some players, we dare to assume that they will be unhappy.
Another problem is noticeable technical bugs. Enemies often get stuck in the scenery or even completely disconnected from the game, ignoring the main character. Some objects may disappear while moving, while others may lose texture while moving. However, these technical imperfections of the game can be completely cured by patches. Even before the release, the authors had already rolled three updates onto the game, so we believe that “Life After” will eventually get rid of technical problems.
Life After is a great modern game. Its passage will stretch for tens of hours, especially if you perform not only story, but also side tasks. There are all the relevant entertainment inherent in games of this genre - from a long branchy plot, leveling of characters and a scattering of secondary activities, such as hunting, picking flowers and plants, doing hired work, and much more. It seems that Bend Studio, having sacrificed originality, decided to please all fans of games in the open world, collecting all-all-all in Life After.
But, despite the overflow of content, the impressions of "Life after" are spoiled by not too smart enemies, technical bugs and the absence of any unique ideas of their own. This is an honest, nice action movie, but of course. Far from the best PlayStation 4 exclusive, which, however, should still brighten the waiting time for all owners of the Japanese console until next year.