Gray Zone Warfare Impressions – Showcasing PvE Tactical Warfare

Welcome to November, a period of time when those of us who cover games can now start to feel a little reprieve. We got wind of a new update to Gray Zone Warfare, a PvE tactical shooter that is currently in Early Access. Being interestest, I decided it might be worth a look at what the game has to offer!

Two Modes?

There are two main modes that Gray Zone Warfare showcases the way the game plays. The PvPvE mode is similar to other extraction shooters on the market. The second mode is the one I was far more interested in: a PvE-exclusive mode that has a narrative focus and can be done solo or in a group. Clearly, the mode I decided to try out was the PvE mode. I enjoy that far more than trying to deal with enemy AI and enemy players who have better gear than me. I do think this mode shows why Gray Zone Warfare is unique.

Open-World That Remembers…Kinda

The first thing this mode asks of you is to make a character and pledge that character to a specific faction. The Lamang Recovery Initiative, the Mithras Security Systems, or The Crimson Shield International. Each one has different reasons, and you can technically create four characters on a single account. That means you can make a character for each faction. I went with the Lamang Recovery Initiative because it gives you a sign-up bonus of extra money for doing so. Odds are the other two likely have more players signing up for those factions.

Your character is flying in a helicopter, about to receive your first instructions, when an emergency call comes in, and the helicopter’s pilot gets ordered to bring you down to the ground to investigate. Instead of going to your base, you now get planted inside a random location. For me, it was pitch black; I don’t know if that is the normal experience, as the world map is live in an MMO-type way. So it might have just been that the server I was on was currently at night. I can see lights up ahead. There are street lights and normal lights from lamps and candles from houses that illuminate spaces for you. You can turn them on and off too by getting close to them and pressing the interact key.

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The first location I needed to investigate was under a street lamp and had two individuals who were sporting guns. I wasn’t sure if they were friendly or not, so I decided to reveal myself. Bad move; both of them shot at me, and I pulled out my gun and shot them back. I had a rifle and a pistol. The rifle could kill enemies in one shot if I shot them in the head. The first enemy went down immediately. The second enemy ran away into a clearing but I couldn’t see him now due to being away from the streetlight. I just shot where the direction of the gun was he was shooting from. After a few shots and pained cries, I stopped hearing gunshots and assumed he was dead. He was.

I discovered I could loot bodies by getting close to them and pressing the interact button. You get a screen of what you are carrying and what the dead body was carrying. I noticed there was food on one and ammo on the other. Not sure if food was important or not, so I grabbed it due to having a lot of free space. There were two more locations I needed to investigate, so I made my way there, crouching low. One thing I noticed was that everyone I could see was an enemy. I guess nobody is friendly anymore. I do find it kind of funny they had a recruit just investigate with no protocol or no backup, though. Military enthusiasts would go crazy over that.

After a few more areas to investigate, I discovered two things. One, while you are looting a body, enemies are still able to shoot at you, and two, there is an injury system to this game. As you get shot, your blood level depletes. Depending on where you get shot, you also get injured in that area. You can get headaches, broken legs, and other body parts injured. Luckily, you get access to a bunch of recovery tools. A surgery kit, a blood kit, a stilt, bandages, and pills. I had to use one of every one of these before I was back up to full. Though my energy level and hydration level were starting to get low. I ate the energy bar I found on my first enemy and now I was scavenging around one of the nearby houses before I found a nectar drink to increase my hydration level.

I went a ways back to the LZ location before I realized I couldn’t use it until after I completed the main quest I was given. So, after doing some intel gathering, I had to use the waypoint system to place a waypoint on the main objective. Not going to sugarcoat it, this system is a bit clunky. You have to move your mouse to a location on the map, select the objective with your mouse, then right-click on it after selecting it to bring up the waypoint menu, then press the left click once again to confirm thats where you want the waypoint. It would be nice to just let me click on an objective and have the waypoint automatically follow that objective on the map.

This is when the sun started to rise, and I could see the actual lush detail of the surrounding area. It looks really good. I will admit I was not too impressed with the character models, but the environments look good. They aren’t super realistic but the stylistic designs of the environments add a lot to love looking around. Especially the high grassy areas.

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Enemies Galore

Now that the sun had risen, I could also see the surrounding houses a bit more clearly. I was given an objective to find medical supplies and drop them near a house. The waypoint here doesn’t help too much, as when you get close to the house, it just disappears. I didn’t know where to place the supplies, and I even went inside and around two other houses before I found the location it needed to be in.

This is also the section where enemies start coming out of the woodwork. There is something weird where enemies seem to be able to find exactly where you are, even if you are in hiding. I was hiding under a bush and crouched when I was found immediately from beside the fence. They shot at me, and that alerted everyone else nearby. By the end of the encounter, I probably shot down at least a dozen enemies. This is where something interesting popped out to me, though. I can injure enemies. If I shoot them in the leg or chest, it can deal damage to them while they are running away and trying to also bandage themself up. They can be breathing heavily and trying to heal themself from within a house, or just under a fence. I actually think that is a cool concept to have enemies need to bandage themselves up if they get shot.

This is also where you experience the awkward situation with sound. Sound in this game is spatial, but it only really tells you direction, not necessarily distance. That said if you aren’t using a headset, you might not see the enemies shooting at you at all. The gun effects are pretty light, and there is no indicator of where you are getting shot at. If I didn’t have a headset on, I would likely have no idea who was shooting at me and from where. You can circumvent this in a way by finding cover. If you use cover from one direction and the shooting stops, you then know where they are shooting at you from. There isn’t always cover, and that can hurt you, though. Plus, if you are getting shot and losing blood, you can’t exactly try running away. It requires energy, and with you breathing heavily, you will be found quite easily by the enemies.

My last objective was finding intel in two different locations. The first one directed me to a small house that had a few people inside it. They weren’t really guarding anything; they were just stationed there. My appearance surprised them, and I quickly dealt with them. I looked at a mattress and immediately found a notebook that gave me the intel I needed. The second location was two different houses and a large two-car garage. I came into the smaller house to get rid of any enemies that might find me. Nothing stood out to me, and I imagined the intel was in the bigger house. The waypoint was not helpful, as it just disappeared. I left the small house and started getting shot at from all sides immediately. I could only tell the direction, so I utilized cover as best I could to narrow down the enemies until I could see them, and then picked them off. As I got closer to the big house, I interrupted a lot of other enemies and got into another big firefight.

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Once the enemies were dead, I was trying to figure out where the intel was. I canvassed the first floor and found nothing. I then moved to the second floor. I found a random enemy on a bed and shot him. There was nothing nearby. I eventually found a pamphlet for recruiting to whatever this organization was that was in this house. That was also not the intel I was supposed to find. I was going crazy, picking up candy bars, bottles of water, and drinks. Nothing. I opened a few doors before going back down. I went around the house before I discovered I missed a door to open on the second floor. Oddly enough, there was an enemy there, just chilling, sitting down doing nothing. I was surprised. I thought he might have checked out the firefight outside, but I guess not. I shot him in the head before he realized I was there, and there I found my prize: a smartphone.

I was led to an open space that let a helicopter land and finally went to the actual base you were supposed to go to. The mission was done, and now the mode can begin.

My Thoughts

Overall, I see the potential in Gray Zone Warfare. It has a system of trying to be a big open world with lots of terrain and buildings to discover. It is also interesting that when you die, you can go back to your dead body and loot your old gear. That said, it still has a way to go due to some of the clunky decisions in the game. The map system is hard to navigate, and the waypoint system needs some work. Enemies have a weird foreknowledge of just pinpointing your location. Guns don’t feel clunky, luckily, but the indicators can make it seem clunky. The injury system is interesting, and I do think it is cool to have to see enemies go through the same hoops to heal themselves. I also find it interesting that magazines are reloaded and don’t use the ammo you had prior. You just have a full amount of ammo in a magazine and a little bit in the magazine you replaced. When I was getting low, my character would use a magazine with like three bullets in it. If I had an ammo indicator rather than needing to check my inventory, this would be better, but I understand the desire for realism.

Gray Zone Warfare is currently in early access on Steam.

Review Disclosure Statement:Gray Zone Warfare was provided to us by
MADFINGER Games for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy.

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