Trapped, for PC

Rating: 5.0/10; Average
(based on the game as it is now with assumption that bugs will be fixed)

Played: July 26 2019 (free trial)

Game could be decent with improvement but does not have enough content to be worth much right now.

This is a first/third person shooter where the goal is to capture and hold multiple places on the map against 2 hostile factions (that are also hostile to each other). I first tried to change keybindings; I changed inventory from “tab” but was unable to set “tab” to be anything else because it instead scrolled down the list. I accidentally changed jump and was not able to rebind it to “space” for some reason. Why is there no option to return to default?

My first attempt was on Hard difficulty and it went like this: start with no equipment, looked around a little bit thinking how I need to up the sensitivity, then was attacked from behind by a monster. Run to nearby backpack to loot; died while trying to figure out the loot inventory. WTF. On a later attempt I was killed by a monster while I was on the character select screen. WTF!!! My first proper game went decent and I survived for quite some time, but I became over encumbered and could not figure out how to manage my inventory. While in the game menu trying to look up how to split items in the inventory, I was shot at and nearly died. Why the hell is there no pause? For singleplayer? I eventually figured out how to put single copies of items into a container though it did not seem to work for simply dropping the items. Also if you drop all copies of a gun you have equipped, you also drop the one you have equipped, which is annoying. Also very annoying that all guns come with 0 bullets loaded. This shows why games need tutorials or at the very least a safe starting area; a game should not throw the player into the water without first checking to see if they know how to swim.

The inventory could use improvement: a keyboard button to loot and a button to loot everything because many times I accidentally shot my gun while clicking to loot things. Some sorting to separate items by type and separate equipped weapons from other copies. More intuitive controls for using and dropping items. Using “interact” to open a container requires pressing “esc” to get out of it. Why can’t I press “interact” again to close it? “esc” does not work to back out of the game menu, which is bad especially with the lack of pausing in the menu. You need a safe button to press in an emergency that will return you as quickly as possible to a playable state.

The game is like a tactical shooter because of your low health. I even played as the guy with the most health and could die extremely easily. The monster enemies are fairly easy to defeat because they act like mindless melee zombies. The soldiers are the ones that will kill you. If a single soldier opens fire at you, your odds of survival are not good. There is very little leeway for error. The game ends when you die unless you control at least one point, which allows respawning. Respawning starts you with nothing though you can loot the starter backpack again. Despite the soldier AI not being very good, they by far caused most of my deaths and created the most amount of tension (you would think the monsters would be more scary). Traversing the map is about minimizing the chance of being shot, so go slow, stay in cover, stop to recon and aim down sight. This changed completely after I had captured multiple points because the black goo flooded the low lying areas of the map and the soldiers were too stupid not to be killed by it. I only encountered a small number after that and I could more or less freely sprint around.

The goo/water causes damage and I think might spawn monsters. There is an item that grants temporary immunity to goo damage, as well as healing items and food/drink that grants temporary buffs. Thankfully the game has no hunger or thirst meters. There are crafting components but I could not find any way to do anything with them. If there is crafting, that needs to be in the tutorial. I somehow got a bug that made me immune to goo damage, which made the game quite easy.

I tried coop multiplayer. I was not able to join any of the 3 servers I seen so I started my own. I had a dozen or so people join me but most left without doing anything. I only actually seen 2 of them and only 1 person communicated and stayed around long enough to actually play. The monster spawn at control points seem to vastly increase with more players. I did have to recapture some places and the late game was mostly just boring running around. I did explore most areas and the world is pretty interesting, but how did those trucks get in the mine? Especially the truck in the small chamber which only has a single entrance that is nowhere near large enough to fit a truck. Also why does the mine have signs in what I assume to be Russian, yet the military is U.S. Army? Some story context? I did find a U.S. Army helicopter in the middle of no where with some devices that said something about teleporting mutants for study. Interesting?

This game reminds me of Unturned and PUBG in bad ways because of the focus on multiplayer mechanics. The game does have some elements that remind me of Stalker, State of Decay and horror shooters in general and I think the game would be better off incorporating more elements of those great single player games. Overall the core of the game is decent; it just needs improvements to user friendliness, polish and balancing. I personally would not buy it unless it includes significant improvements to singleplayer, such as: saving, a story with lore, dialogue and character backgrounds to make it interesting, more rewards for exploration. The game could also use a larger variety of weapons, weapon attachments, and different types of monsters that require different tactics to defeat (instead of everything being like a mindless zombie). Maybe also tone down the prevalence of the military and increase the prevalence of the monsters to make them the main threat; like how Stalker has the military mostly confined to bases and checkpoints. A high risk high reward scenario where you can try to attack the military to get needed supplies to fight off the monsters instead of worrying about being killed by random patrols. I also found some of the visual effects, such as the blue circles for loot, the taking damage indicators and the icons above capture points, to be garish and interfere with properly seeing the environment and enemies. Lots of lootable objects do not even have the blue circles. I would suggest a subtle glow for all lootable objects, like State of Decay has.

Pro

• Good gunplay
• Interesting world and concept
• Multiplayer
• Need a walkie talkie to see things on the map and get intel

Con

• Changing keybinding not working properly
• Somewhat clunky and user unfriendly inventory and menus
• Too much emphasis on multiplayer. Singleplayer needs saving and pause
• Excessively long load times to start a match
• Lack of tutorial or otherwise teaching the player how to play
• Can die before the game is playable, or shortly thereafter
• Guns start off unloaded
• Enemy loot and your stuff dropped upon death despawn over time
• Slayer achievement did not work
• First person camera sometimes still showed parts of the player when switching
• Inconsistent indication of what is lootable, sometimes hard to get in correct position to loot and blue indication circles are garish
• Lack of mini map
• Did not notice compass at top of the screen until hours in