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Romero's Aftermath

Romero’s Aftermath is a post-apocalyptic zombie survival game. Scavenge the desert wasteland in search of supplies, protect yourself from bandits, build a base, and eliminate the zombie infestation.

Publisher: Free Reign Entertainment
Playerbase: Medium
Type: Zombie Survival Game
Release Date: September 24, 2015
Shut Down Date: December 24th, 2016
Pros: +Simple base-building tools. +Extensive crafting. +Town liberation.
Cons: -Frequent Crashing -Wonky melee combat. -Not optimized. -Numerous bugs.

Overview

Romero's Aftermath Overview

Romero’s Aftermath is an MMO zombie survival simulator taking place in an enormous desert wasteland. Start with nothing but your legs and your wits, and scavenge for materials in abandoned encampments and cities. Deconstruct supplies for resources and craft new materials to aid you in your survival. Arm yourself with weapons to fend off unrelenting zombies. And carry a firearm to protect yourself from enemy players. Harvest resources from trees, stones, and crops, and create a fortified shelter where valuable loot is secured. Or store loot in a global inventory that can be accessed from safe zones scattered across the map. Work with others or fly solo to liberate infested cities by killing zombies and restoring power, calling supply drops with powerful weapons. Customize your character with an extensive array of cosmetics that must be unlocked by finding weapon cases and their corresponding keys. With limited direction players choose how they want to survive in Romero's Aftermath.

Romero's Aftermath Key Features:

  • Cosmetics - distinguish your avatar with a large array of custom cosmetics, unlocked by finding weapons cases and their corresponding keys.
  • PvE Servers - work together to control the zombie horde on specially designated PvE servers.
  • Zombie Eradication - liberate zombie-infested cities by restoring generators and eliminating enough zombies to spawn supply drops.
  • Base Building - harvest resources from the environment and construct a shelter with an easy-to-use system.
  • Crafting - deconstruct seemingly useless items to gather materials and craft weapon upgrades, tools, medical supplies, and more.

Romero's Aftermath Screenshots

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Romero's Aftermath Featured Video

Romero's Aftermath Gameplay HD - Gumble's Grumbles

Full Review

Romero's Aftermath Review

By, Sean Sullivan

Romero’s Aftermath is a flagrant copypasta served cold and lathered in ingredients cherry-picked from other titles. Compliments to the chef Sergey Titov who has returned to release his faux second zombie survival game, following Infestation: Survivor Stories—formerly known as WarZ. The prefix “Romero” is the savory spice, indicating George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead. But the cult classic filmmaker is not part of Titov’s project. Instead, his son George Cameron Romero is lending his name to Aftermath—marketing tactics I applaud but don’t reflect the game’s overall quality. But, while far from perfect and guilty of rehashing innumerable elements in various contexts, Romero’s Aftermath is a fairly good survival game.

The World Is A Wasteland

Instead of verdure forests Aftermath’s apocalypse is a mountainous desert, decorated by marula trees and strips of dense vegetation. Pocket-marked skyscrapers beckon players to their doom like Sirens with a song of gunfire. It’s a big world. Beyond metropolises there are smaller encampments—farms and military outposts—that may not promise the best loot but they are areas less traveled by gunslinging bandits. But roaming between destinations is a vast emptiness; the world is a bare desert. And sandy plains provide little cover against bandits, adding a sense of helplessness through the expectation of gunfire.

The aftermath of Romero’s apocalypse looks good, not great but good. Running across sand dunes, distant mountains look jagged and realistic. While rocky hills are fat blurry textures up close. Visual hiccups are frequent: wonky shadows, bleeding models, and rehashed textures that uncannily resemble WarZ buildings. Rehashed elements are common and veterans will spot them everywhere. And frame rates ride an infinite sinusoidal roller coaster, fluctuating as they please. Issues are expected. As an Early Access title (a tag it will likely hold indefinitely) Romero’s Aftermath is unoptimized and weak PC’s will stutter like a jammed printer.

Brain Dead Combat

Equipped with a brawny blade sharp enough to cut meat slivers I killed my first zombie. It wasn’t fun. Poking the undead for thirty seconds was monotonous. If I could auto-attack I would have alt-tabbed and watched YouTube. Melee combats only reward is the zombies tiresome grunting fit, culminating in a rag-doll death. Up-close combat needs variety. Blocking or a choice between slow strong attacks and fast swings would make fights engaging.

The zombie AI is, as expected, stupid and each undead is a behavioral clone. Kiting zombies one at a time is an easy extermination. They are a pestilence for scavenging players rather than a focal point of gameplay. And only present a problem when carelessly grouped together because running through the horde is preferable. Instead, the most dangerous game is players.

Nearly every player is a self-interested survivalist and will shoot anything that doesn't move like a zombie. Or they'll lunge at you with clenched fists while laughing into their microphone. There's a persistent paranoia on PvP servers, because every encampment is a potential conflict. And gunplay is unremorseful where the element of surprise almost always guarantees victory.

While killing a player with a bullet is a mix of aiming, lag, and tactics, the victor of melee combat can be nonsensical. More than once I lost a fight thanks to one solid punch. And the amount of damage my oversized mace dealt varied wildly, leading to zombie one-hit KO's to nine-round boxing matches. Whether my stamina was drained or my character was well rested didn't make a difference.

Scavenging and Crafting

A bottle of acid is not used to force-feed players for disturbingly comical videos [DayZ]. Instead every seemingly useless item can be deconstructed into constituent parts and used to craft equipment. Tear apart an old firecracker for cloth and chemicals, then combine the two to make bandages. But survivors aren’t born engineers. Recipes are unlocked by finding corresponding blueprints, typically by breaking down crates.

Blueprint hunting provides an additional incentive to scavenge, but I’m disappointed that I don’t start with rudimentary recipes such as cloth bandages, scissor shank, and garden frame. An entire aspect of gameplay is barred until useful blueprints are discovered. Free Reign Entertainment ought to provide basic recipes to immerse players in a core mechanic. Otherwise, innumerable players will ignore crafting as a secondary gameplay element.

Home Sweet Home

The finished product of a shelter is crude but the process is simple. Pressing “B” draws up an easy-to-use building menu that’s simply drag-and-drop. If your pockets are lined with the right resources dragging a translucent green structure onto a buildable surface and giving the signal creates. Harvesting logs from trees, stones, and disassembling items provides the needed materials. But you’ll need to mark your territory with a Soviet-esque statue to prevent others from building onto your base.

While traveling the world the statues are always in sight, an ominous presence like a sea of monoliths. Some, like the player structures they signify, hover above the ground disconcertingly. A better signifier is needed, something like Rust’s cupboards. Otherwise the landscape will be saturated by towering figureheads.

Becoming A Special Snowflake

While cosmetics can be unlocked with cash, military-grade cases with a variety of items can be found throughout the map. They’re nearly identical with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s weapon cases, and are intended to be used similarly. Find a corresponding color-coded USB key and opening the case spins a slot machine, landing on a singular flamboyant item. I unlocked a serial killer clown mask called The Friend, magnetizing my skull to sniper rifles. But finding a case and its key is a luck-based task, like finding winning lottery tickets in a senior citizen home. Players eager to shine as a special snowflake may be tempted to spend cash to unlock cases.

Imprudent Developers

Romero’s Aftermath isn’t the only source of player ire but the development studio’s history is held against them. Unfortunately, Free Reign Entertainment continues to shoot themselves even when doing their best to aim at a target. Romero’s Aftermath strategically forced my browser to play a YouTube video selling the ga

me’s merits after installing. I don't believe the YouTuber in question had anything to do with the hijacking but the video opens with a thumbs up, leaving the taste of cringe on my tongue. Whoever made that decision failed to think before acting, and it’s the development company’s imprudence that will kill Romero’s Aftermath, not the game itself.

Final Verdict - Good

There is an odor emanating from Romero’s Aftermath, stinking sour memories of Hammerpoint Interactive’s WarZ. But to judge a game by its spiritual predecessors is unfair. It has to be judged by it’s own merits, seen through clear eyes. Does the game accomplish what it purports? Yes. And features, more or less, the same number of bugs and issues generally accepted from an Early Access title. It is a survival game, a warped reflection of DayZ, but that doesn't condemn Romero's Aftermath to dismissal. And while it’s legs may be rotting in some places, the latest survival game to grace the Steam store can stand on its own, albeit shakily.

Screenshots

Romero's Aftermath Screenshots

Videos

Romero's Aftermath Videos

Playlist: Romero's Aftermath

System Requirements

Romero's Aftermath Requirements

Minimum Requirements:

Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit, Windows 8.1 64 bit
CPU: i5 2.7ghz
RAM: 6 GB RAM
Video Card: NVIDIA Geforce 660
Hard Disk Space: 4 GB available space

Recommended Requirements:

Operating System: Windows 7 64 bit, Windows 8.1 64 bit
CPU: i7 2.4GHZ
RAM: 8 GB RAM
Video Card: NVIDIA Geforce 970
Hard Disk Space: 6 GB available space

Music

Romero's Aftermath Music

Coming Soon!

Additional Info

Romero's Aftermath Additional Information

Developer: Free Reign Entertainment

Developer(s): Sergey Titov

Closed Alpha Release Date: March 26, 2015
Open Beta Release Date: September 24, 2015

Steam Release Date: September 24, 2015

Development History / Background:

Romero’s Aftermath is developed by Free Reign Entertainment, a team composed of numerous members who worked on Infestation: Survivor Stories (formerly known as WarZ). The former members left publishing company OP Productions LLC because they could not make the modifications to Infestation they wanted. The game was sold as an Early Access Alpha title for $14.99. Although select players who owned Infestation/WarZ were given free access to Romero Aftermath’s alpha. George Carme Romero, son of Night of the Living Dead director George Romero, collaborates with Free Reign on the development of the project. It entered Early Access Open Beta through Steam on September 24, 2015.