Been a while since I've done one of these, so what better way can I settle back into my rhythm then by jumping into the deep end. Today I want to debate about a feature that is often spat on by the general gaming audience. Yep, I'm defending 'Survival modes' today. First let me start by saying that this isn't a feature that I defend wholesale. I definitely believe that is an artistry to these modes and much of the bad blood the public has towards them stems from those who blunder these mechanics. Therefore I will be covering both good and bad examples.
When people say 'Surivial mode' it usually means a couple of things. Firstly, that the game will feature some sort of resource collection gameplay, (and sometimes a crafting system) and secondly, that the player will be beholden to more than just their HP gauge. How this develops into a fulfilling gameplay experience depends entirely on the quality of the implementation and the type of core game it's being stuffed into. Oh, and this genre is distinct from survival horror in that resources usually aren't too scarce/finite. With those definers in mind, lets go all the back to 2011 for our first entry
Everyone's heard of Minecraft, right? It's that quaint little game about building whatever your little heart desires in a lovely blocky world with nothing at all to trouble you. Except for the very real possibility of being eaten by the hoards of zombies, shot to pieces by the legions of skeletons, mummified by the clutters of spiders or blown into little chunks by the... creepers. (Darn it, they don't have a collective noun.) Or, as of Minecraft's 2011 Adventure update, starving to death.
Somewhere along the way Mojang thought that Minecraft needed survival mechanics in order to truly come alive, and so they tested it out 8 years back and it was so successful that the fundamentals haven't significantly changed in all that time despite constant support. The game features two hunger counters, one symbolized by a bar (hunger) and another that is invisible but affects that bar (Nutrition). By keeping the bar full (though satisfying both counters) players enable the ability to sprint and regen health, but risk losing those buffs should they let their stomach go empty. Luckily, Minecraft's core build-it design means that players have little trouble keeping up with food requirements as they can easily put a farm together.
Minecraft's survival mode is simple but effective, adding an extra layer onto the gameplay without sacrificing the game's fun. There are plenty of crops and livestock in the game to support the survival mechanics and Mojang are adding more every year. Honestly, it's almost impossible to imagine Minecraft without this survival aspect in today's day and age, because it marries the package of the game together so deftly that it feels like it has always been there. If only all games pulled off their survival modes with such grace.
The next topic I want to cover is not so much a game as it is a concept. You see, Rust, Day Z, H1Z1 and all those other steam survival games are all ostensibly unique games, but at their core they are all identical experiences that suffer from the same pitfall's. Back around 2013 there were a spate of games that all jumped on the 'surival' bandwagon in order to put out a deluge of low-effort trash that has forever sullied the name of survival games. (As well as Steam curation in general) To be fair, the three games that I mentioned are not examples of the low-effort copy cats, but rather the archetypes that these games all tried to emulate, however, that doesn't make these game's survival mechanics good.
Honestly, I don't know why survival was so popular around this time giving how poorly it was implemented in these products. Pick up any of these dime-a-dozen survival games and you'll find the same thing; a barebones concept-less third-person experience wherein the only gameplay is scavenging, crafting and surviving. Almost sounds like Minecraft right? Except Minecraft had a robust core, solid mechanics and actual talent under the hood. What makes these games particularly infuriating is the fact that their survival modes are never optimized to be fun. Food and water drain at such a rate that one will spend all their time worrying about maintaining their bars rather than experiencing what little game there is. This makes the survival mechanics an abject hindrance to the player rather than an interesting challenge.
Even some more well focused and thought out games have suffered from this kind of thing, such as early versions of We Happy Few. Back before that game came together, Compulsion games put together a public demo that consisted of the stylistic themes they were reaching for but with none of the substance. Fans who were excited about all the previews came away with a bad taste in their mouth after they realized that the game was chock-full of status bars and seemed to be more a bar management Sim rather than a pseudo-Bioshock successor like the previews implied. (Although to be fair, even when the devs did reshuffle the content into a decent game it still wasn't a Bioshock successor in any way shape or form.)
It seems that survival modes have a time and place where they are appropriate, and more often than not they can be detrimental if misplaced. This can make it hard to predict what survival systems will enrichen a game and which will hinder it. If you had asked me at the time of release whether or not a Survival mode would make Skyrim Special Edition a better game, I would have bawked at the concept and laughed in your face. (Which is to say, I would think 'no'.) However, the survival mode offered by Skyrim Special Edition's Creation club (Whatever you think of the service itself) is simply perfect for the game.
I remember the slight disappointment from the community back before Skyrim released when Bethesda confirmed that they weren't working on a survival mode. (Following the success of another game's mode. One which I may be bringing up later...) It seemed that the icy tundra of a medieval viking land seemed like the perfect setting for a hunter/gatherer sub-game, but Papa Todd said no and Papa Todd knows best. (Or does he?) Fast forward to Skyrim's rerelease; Special Edition, and one of the first pieces of extra content added to the game is a fully functioning and enjoyable survival mode.
One of the benefits of this mode is the fact that Bethesda didn't forget the defining characteristic of the land of Skyrim whilst designing it; that being the fact that the land is cold. Yep, that means that whilst hunting for food and managing your non-regenerative health bar, (An absolute godsend to lovers of challenging fights!) you must contend with the viscous cold too. Spend too long outside and your movements will start to slow, remain out there and you'll start to die. Skyrim's ailment system also means that you can afflicted with a prolonging case of frostbite even after you warm up, or 'addlement' if you avoid sleep too long.
One issue I do have is the fact that some bar's inflict punishments that are too harsh right off the bat, making it essential that you keep them fully charged at all times. (Slightly defeating the point of having a progressive bar decay system.) Missing out on even a little bit of hunger slows down you weapon attack speed. In a melee focused game that is a freakin' death sentence, I have no idea what Bethesda were thinking with that one. Other than that, I love the bars, the lack of natural health regen and disablement of map-based fast travel. (Skyrim is such a beautiful land it's a privilege to have to walk through it all.)
Not every Bethesda game works so well with a tacked on Survival mode, however. Take Fallout 4, for example. Honestly, it's not even fair to call Fallout 4's mode a 'survival mode' as it should be known as 'Dark Souls: Fallout edition' for how unforgivably brutal it is. However, Dark Souls is a lot more fun with it's brutality. (I didn't mean for that to sound so sadomasochistic.) Fallout 4 launched with a 'survival' difficulty setting, but at the time all that did was change the way stimpacks worked, buffed enemies and forced a few more legendary spawns in the game. (So it was essentially the 'fun mode') But everything changed when the Bethesda nation attacked.
Apparently discontent with having something decent in the largely disappointing Fallout 4, Bethesda decided to mutilate that Survival difficulty by implementing some of the most overbearing survival mechanics that I've ever seen in a video game. Yes, I understand that Fallout takes place in a post-apocalyptic wasteland in which everyday survival must be abject hell but you didn't need to make that suffering so real Bethesda!
To start with, Fallout 4's survival mode features an infection system that fits you with an illnesses for just about any action in the game. Did you step in a bear trap? You probably have an infection. Did you get hit by a enemy with a melee attack? (Which is around 80% of the game's enemies.) You probably have an infection. Did you eat non-fresh food? You almost certainly have an infection. Did you take a freakin' Radaway? Well, you don't have an infection but you are 50% more likely to contract one. "But how bad are these infections?" Delete your game, bad. They can be as groan-worthy as crippling your Action points to as, for god-sake which idiot in Bethesda's team though this was a good idea, as periodically damaging your health until you are cured. (And yes, it will kill you.) How do you cure such infections? Well, you find an Antibiotic, which are rare, craft one, which is hard, or wait it out, which isn't an option if you are getting periodically damaged.
And that's only one aspect of this game's ridiculously overbearing survival systems. Also, the food and hunger suffer from the 'too fast' problem which means that you'll spend most of your time looking for food and water and there is no fast travel system in the game anymore. (Hope you like looking at the same bits of nuked out highway as you hoof it back and forth everywhere!) The cherry on top of it all, however? You can only save by sleeping. That means that if you die you go back to where you last slept. Invariably. From Software eat you freaking hearts out.
Now, let me end with what I consider to be the greatest survival mode of all time. The gold standard that every single video game should follow. The survival mode featured in Fallout: New Vegas. (No. I didn't do a third Bethesda game, this game was made my Obsidian, remember?) FNV offers you the chance to choose the survival mode at the beginning and those that do will be amazed at how naturally the game handles it. It's almost like the franchise was built from the ground up to accommodate such a seamless system.
Firstly, New Vegas' survival mode is the very soul of of unobtrusive. You can go several weeks without eating, sleeping or drinking with no fear of keeling over, making the Courier seem like one stubborn SOB. Of course, failing to keep one of your bars full will give the player a debuff; but, unlike every over survival game out there, the initial debuffs only effect RPG stats rather than core gameplay stats. So yeah, this can be a pain in the butt if you are trying to do a highly specialized task, but you don't have to pause you're entire playthrough to go hunting for a cheese wheel because your character got a little peckish.
Secondly, this mode actually goes a long way to solve one of Fallout's biggest problems, meaningless clutter. Part of what brings a Fallout world to life is the abundance of things that the player gets to interact with, however, most of the time food and water is entirely useless to most players. All they do is weigh you down whilst offering a pitiful amount of HP upon consumption, encouraging most players to ignore them altogether in favour of loading up on Stimpaks. New Vegas' Survival mode counteracts this by giving every food item a value in it's nutritional benefits. Suddenly players have a reason to raid fridges that they come across and dabble in the hundreds of recipes available at the campfire.
Thirdly, Obsidian went out of their way to ensure that this mode says 'No' as little as possible. I may have praised the fact that Skyrim SE's survival mode disabled fast travel but that's more a testament to Bethesda's talented world designers for making a world space worth travelling through. It still sucks to have to do. Fallout 4's saving restriction, on the otherhand, is an unreserved disaster that turns a difficult-to-love game into a stress inducing nightmare. Fallout: New Vegas' survival mode does none of these things and only provides restrictions where the gameplay experience could be improved. People need a purpose for consumables so they added hunger and thirst bars, damaged body parts seemed to inconsequential due to their being healed by Stimpaks so Obsidian replaced that functionality with doctor's bags, people carried around so much ammo that fights stopped being fun so Obsidian made ammo weigh something. Every restriction was a hidden improvement.
Just like with any aspect of a game, Survival modes are a spectrum. Some can be wholly and utterly transformative to the experience whilst others are so bad that their envisioners should be banned from ever having another idea again. (Looking at you, Fallout 4 devs.) I will admit that I do approach a game that labels itself with the 'survival game' moniker with some caution, but I've had too many memorable experience due to such mechanics for me to turn them down outright. (I'll never forget the night I charged across The Reach whilst addled from sleep deprivation and swinging a Buster sword at anything that moved.) Next time you see a survival game, give it a shot, you may find you new favourite sub-genre.
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