{"id":95068,"date":"2019-06-13T15:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-06-13T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/radiation_city"},"modified":"2019-06-13T15:00:00","modified_gmt":"2019-06-13T15:00:00","slug":"review-radiation-city-a-bug-ridden-clone-of-dayz-thats-laughably-overpriced","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2019\/06\/13\/review-radiation-city-a-bug-ridden-clone-of-dayz-thats-laughably-overpriced\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Radiation City &#8211; A Bug-Ridden Clone Of DayZ That&#8217;s Laughably Overpriced"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"media_block\"><a href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/radiation_city\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/reviews\/switch-eshop\/radiation_city\/small.jpg\" class=\"media_thumbnail\"><\/a><\/div>\n<div id>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Radiation City Review - Screenshot 1 of 3\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/97135\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/97135\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Radiation City Review - Screenshot 1 of 3\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>No matter what your thoughts are on the open-world zombie survival game <strong><a class=\"external\" href=\"https:\/\/www.pushsquare.com\/games\/ps4\/dayz\">DayZ<\/a>,<\/strong> there\u2019s no denying its cultural importance. Ever since Bohemia Interactive first released the original <strong>ARMA 2<\/strong> mod for PC users, there\u2019s been a countless number of copycats and \u201cspiritual successors\u201d releasing on every platform under the sun. Its influence is still going on to this day; Valve\u2019s PC gaming platform Steam is forever flooded with shovelware that poorly emulates the feeling of hopelessness that game manages to excuse. Now, Nintendo Switch has its own alternative.<\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/radiation_city\">Radiation City<\/a><\/strong> is more than \u201cheavily inspired\u201d by DayZ, it\u2019s the off-brand version. If Bohemia\u2019s original was a crunchy, delicious Pringle, what we have here would be the &#8220;Prongles&#8221; equivalent. It\u2019s an apt comparison: just like how a Prongle is a dry, tasteless alternative of a Pringle, developer Atypical Games has somehow baked an <em>even drier<\/em> version of DayZ.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Radiation City Review - Screenshot 2 of 3\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/97136\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/97136\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Radiation City Review - Screenshot 2 of 3\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>Atypical has improved upon the iconic survival title in at least one way; there\u2019s at least some semblance of an overarching narrative here. Its beginning is basic; you\u2019re placed inside the cockpit of a rickety aeroplane, high above the clouds of Pripyat. For no explained reason, you\u2019re tasked with finding a missing journalist within the vast expanse of the irradiated city. All of this is told simply through visuals \u2013 your character takes a peek at a newspaper \u2013 and every other story beat is delivered through poorly-written emails strewn about the world, usually near a camp. Story here is not the focus, a blessing considering its quality; instead, the focus is on exploration.<\/p>\n<p>As you explore, either on foot or by car, you\u2019ll pop in and out of an endless number of repetitive copy-paste buildings in your search for better loot. Most of your findings will inevitably consist of the traditional survival game humdrum: clothing, food, crafting materials, basic melee weapons. Occasionally, you may be blessed with a firearm, but ammunition is scarce and letting off a round causes every enemy in a mile-wide radius to spring straight as you: their Mach-5 speed is almost as terrifying as their laughably rigid animations.<\/p>\n<p>While you search frantically for items, you\u2019ll inevitably pick up the most common discovery in the world of Radiation City: <em>bugs<\/em>. Just like its predecessor <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/radiation_island\">Radiation Island<\/a><\/strong>, Radiation City feels far from finished. Items disappear, enemies get trapped on the environment, <em>you\u2019ll<\/em> get trapped on the environment \u2013 you get the idea. Sometimes sounds won\u2019t work properly; sometimes, upon respawning, buildings won\u2019t load in causing ranged enemies to insta-kill you on spawn. Weirdly, without even touching anything, the furniture will freak out and levitate in the air as soon as you get close. Technically, this game is a trainwreck.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"picture embed\"><a title=\"Radiation City Review - Screenshot 3 of 3\" href=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/97138\/large.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/images.nintendolife.com\/screenshots\/97138\/900x.jpg\" alt=\"Radiation City Review - Screenshot 3 of 3\"><\/a><\/aside>\n<p>It\u2019s unsurprising to learn about Radiation City\u2019s mobile origins. While fantastic titles certainly appear on both Android and iOS, open-world games of actual quality are few and far between. Unless you\u2019re Rockstar Games with a mobile port of <strong>San Andreas<\/strong> or Gameloft with the <strong>Gangstar<\/strong> series, most open-world mobile titles are repetitive, asset-clones in copy-paste cities. As least Atypical Games\u2019 effort is a lot better than some; it just feels bare minimum.<\/p>\n<p>Outside of its bugs, there\u2019s nothing really of note here. It shows its competency in the graphical department; as long as nothing is moving and you don\u2019t look too close, it has an aura of something <em>akin<\/em> to a modern video game. As soon as you start moving, as soon as janky animations, horrendous pop-in and unstable framerates start rearing their ugly heads, everything falls apart.<\/p>\n<p>It doesn\u2019t help that, once again, moving from mobile to Switch has resulted in a considerable price hike on Nintendo\u2019s platform. What was once \u00a33.89 on Android is now \u00a317.99 on Switch. For such an unfinished product, that\u2019s a laughable ask.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<div id=\"conclusion\">\n<h2 class=\"heading\">Conclusion<\/h2>\n<p>Radiation City is shovelware, to put it bluntly. Within the entirety of its (admittedly large) open world, there isn\u2019t a single original idea to be found. The ideas it copies from its contemporaries aren\u2019t well implemented either. If you\u2019re looking for an enjoyable open-world zombie game, look somewhere else. If you just want a thrilling undead experience, check out <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nintendolife.com\/games\/switch-eshop\/resident_evil\">Resident Evil<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No matter what your thoughts are on the open-world zombie survival game DayZ, there\u2019s no denying its cultural importance. Ever since Bohemia Interactive first released the original ARMA 2 mod for PC users, there\u2019s been a countless number of copycats and \u201cspiritual successors\u201d releasing on every platform under the sun. Its influence is still going [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nintendo-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=95068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95068\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}