While shambling cadavers are by no means the least of your worries in engaging turnbased team tactics title Urban Strife (Picking stylish headgear, or deciding whether to belt a melee opponent with a frying pan, monkey wrench, or rolling pin, are more trivial concerns) the game’s zombies don’t focus the mind and quicken the pulse as proficiently as members of rival survivor gangs such as the Gatherers.
Prior to their first brush with the Gatherers, my party had had some narrow squeaks but they’d never lost a ‘man’ or felt the need to beat a hasty retreat. Perhaps that was why we piled through the front door of the Gatherers’ HQ in such a cocksure, foolhardy manner.
During their previous outing in Urban, Georgia, Tally-Ho, Billy Bo, Kaylee, and Lucy Li had dropped dozens of Zeds using a mix of pistols, shotguns, nailguns, crossbows, knives, and blast bombs. Battle-hardened and relatively heavily armed, what did my lads and lasses have to fear from a gang of monkish sandal-wearers?
Quite a bit, it turned out. Before we were able to find cover or spread out, we were taking crossbow fire from the kitchen, upper landing, and rear of the house, and a Gatherer who had dashed around the side of the building, was complicating a tactical withdrawal. For a few rounds, our bullets, bolts, and buckshot kept the cowled cultists at bay. It was only after Tally-Ho intercepted a right hook with his jaw, and fell to the ground stunned, that things started to unravel.
Having spent just three hours with White Pond’s eight-years-in-the-making debut, I can’t tell you much about its rich base management or faction relationships sides yet, but I think I’ve already seen enough of the AI, UI, ballistics, and storytelling, to say fans of classics like Silent Storm and Fallout Tactics are going to bond with this £24 Early Access offering PDQ.
Thus far, nothing about Urban Strife screams, or even whispers, ‘work in progress’. The visuals, audio, writing, interface… they all feel remarkably polished.
True, early adopters don’t get huge operational freedom at present. Until ‘random encounters’ are introduced, outings are as canned as the foodstuffs survivors scavenge from the musty cupboards and larders of Urban’s abandoned homes.
This one had already made my wishlist but that Silent Storm reference.. dang it, now I’m impatient!
The use of action points, the AP scale, interrupts, and what looks like a stamina meter all give a very Jagged Alliance 2 feel