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receive Back , Commander is a real - clock time scheme decision - making plot that tasks player with balancing looting , fighting , and survival of the fittest . Clearly made with passion , the biz features a roguelite gameplay loop that can quickly become addictive . However , despite its potential , design flaws and arbitrary restriction now and again make the biz find clunky , holding it back .
Welcome Back , Commander start by explaining that the urban center of Sun Stone has been put under quarantine after a gaolbreak of a inscrutable virus ( spoilers : it ’s zombi ) . As a general posted at one of the nation ’s major military airbases , your job is to assign and monitor a chore force of soldiers as they enter the city for a set amount of days . Their goal ? pull up as many civilians as possible and , hopefully , synthesize a cure , but mostly , survive the trial by ordeal and escape valve . Fail , and the game ends if your entire team dies .
The game splits each day of your missionary station ( 22 days on normal difficulty ) into four different stages : tent through the dark , a good morning event , a strategic choice , and , at long last , an encounter . Each of these segments involves decisions you could make , with the last clash being an RTS mission where you control your military personnel .
Each issue , from the night camp phase to the strategic choice , is a roguelite , procedurally generated event that gives you decisiveness affect the forthcoming brush as well as your supplies . Camp decisions include bring around your squad , leveling up , craft , and feeding . The morning event unremarkably involves an step-up or decrease to your squad ’s resource or inventorying provision , while the strategical event offers a chance to loot dissimilar types of supplies or add a new member to your police squad .
The issue with these events lies in arbitrary limitations or forced entropy that can make survival thwarting . This is especially true for the Nox pack phase , which dictates your chance to heal , eat , even up , or craft . What ’s thwarting is that you are not only circumscribe to one of these options but the choices are randomly take for you . You wo n’t always be given the chance to level up a squad member , and despite the limitations that hunger can have on your squad members , you may not get the option to feed them . Imagine sitting on a massive nutrient stockpile and still infix the next encounter with reduced effectiveness just because the biz did n’t give you the pick to tip your troops .
The RTS encounters at the end of each day challenge you to voyage your squad through a dangerous site , almost always follow the same series of events , with bend depending on which position you take to visit . You load into a location and must find the exit , as well as the objective keep local survivors from leaving — or , occasionally , forbid your own escape . Along the way , you have the choice to plunder container for supplies , with waves of zombi breed periodically , increasing in intensiveness depending on how long you stay and factors such as noise and the menace level .
The game always gives you the opportunity to loot a lot of materials during these segments . The way out is that doing so place you in danger of being overrun , with squad members dying incredibly fast when exposed to zombie approach . The biz gives you a pretty fun way of life of balancing your own greed for supply with the jeopardy of destruction , something that is a pretty iconic melodic theme in the zombie Book of Revelation music genre .
There are a lot of interactions in the game that go unexplained , which is something you will either love or detest . I personally enjoyed it , but it can lead to some thwarting second . With how fast your squad members break down , you could often lose one or two members to a mechanic that was n’t excuse , and you often wo n’t know what happened until after they ’re dead . I come up this gratifying in person because the plot has a roguelike grease monkey where each failed run helps you unlock new provision for your next running , so I did n’t mind learning thing the hard way when defeat was a learning experience instead of a punishment .
dissimilar members of your team can interact with dissimilar component of the map in their own way , which I incur interesting . medic can heal and rescue survivor , while engineer can progress gun turret and interact with environmental obstacles , like generators or barricades . However , something that absolutely boggle my head is that these unit do not have artillery ; the military did not send these specialized soldiers in with any gunslinger . That often means your squad is very limited in their self - defence force capabilities , and your engineers and medick will die remarkably fast if overproduction , with no chance to oppose themselves . The technologist can build auto - gun enclosure , but since these are restricted to sure mathematical function that give you the choice , it ’s kind of useless compared to the ability to plainly hold a weapon . Even when you unlock the “ secondary artillery ” expansion slot on these characters through leveling up , they do n’t get to run guns , alternatively just perplex superfluous utility .
Welcome Back , Commander is a cool idea for a game . It has a very addictive formula that is soft to drop off a couple of hours to , simply experimenting with shop mechanic you have n’t tried yet and unlock newfangled starting train for a hopefully better run . However , arbitrary restriction can make some aspects of the plot experience frustrating , and some nuts design features — such as huge hitboxes on your team that make them get sting on their apparent motion commands — can keep the game from being quite as fun as it could have been .
The Final Word
With a fun gameplay loop and a sincere understanding of what make “ Zombie Apocalypse ” survival games gratifying , Welcome Back , Commander can easy blow you in and keep you playing . However , arbitrary restriction and some buggy pattern can contain the game back from its full potential .
receive Back , Commander was reviewed on the PC . Find more detailed looks at popular and coming championship on ourGame Reviewspage ! Welcome Back , Commander is available onSteam .
