It has become commonplace to find early access on Steam for all games that need polishing before a final release. Sometimes it stays in place for a few weeks, sometimes a few months... before reaching what the developers wanted to create thanks to the support and feedback from the players. Today, we are going to reveal our preview of Scavengers, a royal battle that will try to find a place among the behemoths of the genre such as Fornite, PUBG or even Apex Legends.
Graphics, atmosphere and performance
The game runs relatively well from my Strix G17. The biggest negative point is the different slowdowns that we feel at the start of the game, and at the start of the tutorial: for several seconds the game is clearly unplayable... However, we bet that this will be fixed during the final release. Otherwise the game behaves quite well in general and has successful effects and environments providing a more than welcome immersion. The moment when a storm passes over us is just monstrous and makes us feel the imminence of danger... a real happiness.
Gameplay
The game is a battle royale that allows 20 teams of 3 people to fight in order to extract as much data as possible, even if there are sometimes fewer participants or people in a team depending on the world present. and possible dropouts. Each team will start at a given point and will have to find weapons and equipment around, while making sure to get by with their own skill.
Each person will be able to use their basic ability to help them in their task, and this is very varied: anti-bullet shield, deafening trap, EMP wave, stealth, additional shield, improved speed, area heal, you will have the choice of weapons depending on the character chosen before the game. In addition, everyone will have their own favorite equipment as well as a customizable equipment palette based on the research carried out.
In the field
You will have to manage your body heat which you can recover from campfires or with consumables, your stamina which will be replenished by eating and your life which you can heal with consumable items such as medkits, bandages and food. bio foam. You'll be able to craft some of them, hunt for food, or get lucky in the many chests you find on the map. Because yes, chests, there are a lot of them, but often with scrap metal and/or ammunition... it's up to you to find them to survive as long as possible. However, the biggest threat, even more than the prowlers who will shoot you, or even hostile creatures, is the other teams who will not hesitate to kill you to recover your data. If your health drops to zero, you are bleeding out, and a teammate can still revive you. If you wait too long, you will die and drop half of your uncashed data.
To save stamina and go a little faster, sliding will be your best ally. Are you on a slope? you can let yourself slide so as to arrive at low speed while doing what you want: shoot, reload, take a consumable... or just let yourself be carried away. It will be a vital component of the game as it will become crucial to avoid storms, flee an enemy or even rush into the heap.
Scrap metal collected here and there will allow you to increase your shields, to make pre-selected equipment, but also to make your favorite weapon which has a more interesting feature than most conventional weapons. But nothing forces you to do so, because many weapons are scattered everywhere and will be of more or less good quality, identifiable with the associated color (White: common, Green: uncommon, Blue: rare, Violet: epic). Each weapon has its own rate, range and mode of operation...it's up to you what you want to use.
Objective points
To extract data points, you will have to go to certain places and use your guardian robot which will allow you to recover these precious resources. Often guarded by armed bands, entrenched in fortresses, they will be obtained when you have eliminated enemies, in crystals around infected, or by eliminating other teams. The only way not to lose them by dying is to cash them in with uplinks that will recover all that. Obviously, this takes time and will leave you at the mercy of others who might cross your path.
Other objectives will also be interesting. For example, in certain small camps or guarded buildings, you will find various chests which can contain weapons, scrap metal in large quantities, various consumable objects, etc... To find your way correctly, the icons on the map will be essential, and cooperation in your vital team for the destinations that you will indicate... without it, it is unlikely that you will arrive at the final goal: to embark on the ship.
The ship will land after a while. You'll have a good 5 minutes to get there, open the doors and walk away, but nothing is that easy. Because the trickiest part is staying alive while in the ship, other teams can always shoot you down and steal your data. One of the common strategies is to hide and run to get into the very last seconds and try to survive. Or if you have confidence in yourself, to hold on and try to protect the area as much as possible with your companions of fortune.
Research
Research is essential to advance in the game. For resources and a lot of time, you can unlock items, weapons and new talents that will help you survive longer. The more research projects you complete (materials don't count), the more research levels you can unlock (4 at the moment) which will give you access to increasingly rare items. In the beginning, it will take a short time, but it will go up very quickly and will take you several hours and energy that fills up over time. A simple and effective method to not ramp up too quickly.
The vital materials for all this are harvested via objects that are dismantled. They are collected on the planet via treasures (biomass from the scourge, treasure from the ranger, etc.), starting from the planet alive, or by going up in level. It's random and the quality and quantity will vary quite often... but keep hope, you can disassemble items to get nanites and make others instead, even if the ratio is clearly not fair.
Shop
Currently the store only offers skins, 3 hour exp boosts and explorers. This is purchased with a currency that is obtained by leveling up, and for the past few days with free chests. But the questioning of microtransactions is always thorny, because as long as they remain small boosts or cosmetics... it's not too much of a concern. For explorers, neither saving money will be a problem, nor even being able to speed up searches.
Summary
Scavengers is a demanding game that will put your gaming skills to the test. Whether it's survival, combat or just luck, nothing will be done to make your job easier. Currently, the game is in early access and will surely go through a lot of changes, fixes as well as additions over time, but what we have seen so far is really quite interesting for fans of the genre. Other than the big question of possible microtransactions and performance, I think we can be optimistic.
