After 20 hours on the game I feel comfy enough to leave a basic review.

First off let me state that this game has the most whiny children I ever seen leave a reviews. Constant dev bash and so on. It is not all deserved. This is the best early alpha early access game I have played, note that it is 20% FINISHED. Its not even close to half yet. The devs have been putting in the work, it can be argued that maybe they should have waited an extra week or two but the EFT drama caused a perfect window to drop the came and get in front of as many new people as possible and those EFT vets (like myself) finally happy to have a competitor in the space. The good news is the short attention span cod players who review bomb the game and insult the devs will be gone, than people with actual intelligence and over the age of 19 with understanding on how stuff like servers and networking work will be around to provide real feedback that matters.

This is as early as EFT was when it was just customs, we need to stop the trend of expecting a polished game from early access that is in ALPHA.

Rant over. Time for my thoughts.

Pros:

- Open world is fantastic. There are other points on the map that are unmarked. This is something I wish EFT had. This stops the no lives from knowing EVERYTHING about the map. What you'll do, where you'll walk, when you'll walk there. EFT has this problem where all the long time sweats know everything and ruin the game. Open world removes that problem nearly entirely.

- Animations are really solid even with the current optimization issues. With all the objects we have in game now the animations are smooth and entertaining. The gun animations in particular are really great.

- Healing is really deep and satisfying and if your with a team of people and you get messed up, you may fall into a coma and allow your team to heal you instead of dying instantly.

- Quest progression is satisfying. You have a bunch of stater tasks in your faction's home town where there is less likely to be other PMCs, just AI. This allows you to get use to the game and how the AI works as they are kind of annoying before you learn to deal with them. As you keep progressing the quests get a lot more interesting and take you deeper into the map where you are likely to see other players. Note: 15 players each faction, 45 on map total.

- Exploration (outside of the main town) is really nice.

- Realism aspects are on point. It plays like arma. This is not a easy shooter, bullets REALLY hurt, more so than they do in EFT in my opinion.

- Factions are a really cool edition. Each have their own bio so you can kind of rp what type of PMC you want to be.

- social interaction. Thank GOODNESS! I wish EFT has more incentive to be nice to your fellow PMCs outside of a bad co-op extract that no one ever does. In GZW people will talk with you, join you, teach you things, help you with quests, and so on. Its so refreshing.

Cons:

- Server instability is rough at times. You will lag, you will rubber band. It's just going to happen. Check what server you are on first, for some reason it put me on Asia right away and I played on that for a full day, switched the the right server and it was so much better. This will improve with time, remember the game is 20% finished.

- Optimization is hit or miss. I wont talk much on this since everyone is. But the game will either run fine or very badly. I do not have a super computer but I can run this on medium with 80-90 frames no issue. Check out setting guides online, it requires some tinkering but you can find a sweet spot.

- Keys. Keys are WAY TO RARE! And they only spawn on AI near the quest. For example I was stuck on a key quest in the starter town for nearly a full day. Clearing the entire down if no one else did already to no luck. It would be nice if keys spawned elsewhere outside of just on the AI and where more common. If im spending more than a day trying to get a key to drop something is wrong. In EFT, Keys will spawn everywhere and are more common to find, making it a non-issue most of the time.

- AI aimbot. They have it. Just like scavs in EFT but in this game it feels a little worse since its so hard 90% of the time to acquire your target before they see you through the bushes and one tap you in a organ. Combine that with shotty hit-reg sometimes and it can lead to a lot of painful unfair feeling deaths. Sometimes you don't even hear them but you fall over dead.

- LZ camping. This is a big issue just like extract campers in EFT. This is worse though since they can actually spawn camp you. Imagine waiting 5 min for a helicopter than the three/four min flight to land and get shot right off the drop. Honestly for me, the scariest part of my runs are landing at the LZ to get going. If i made it to the woodline I feel a lot better. There have been a few suggestions on how to fix this. Upgrade the heli to be a bigger one that have gunners on the side to auto target campers, have smoke auto drop, or have a small timer of invincibility to get to cover, like how the faction bases have a no kill zone. The gunners wont work since some people are not trying to exit camp, but leave or are simply passing the LZ. This happened to me a few times where people just landed by me as i was sneaking by. Smoke would hardly help. I think the small timer of invincibility would be the best.

- Helicopters are cool but they are loud as hell and take forever. 5 min depending on where you are. That and each faction can only have 4 or 5 out at once so you can be waiting at an LZ with a thumb in your rear for 10-15 min if your REALLY unlucky. Maybe uncap this is possible but its not really a big deal. With cars on the road map and a full road system already in place, this will remove a lot of the pains I have with the heli's.

there are more but those are the really big ones. Just keep in mind this is an EARLY ALPHA and the game will only get better. Play at least 15-20 hours before dumping a half assed review crapping on the devs and the game. It is a solid entry into early access and having a different military extraction shooter that is not EFT is a breath of fresh air.

If you want to see me play GZW check out: https://www.twitch.tv/ember_loom