Generation Zero
UNEXCEPTIONAL IN THE ’80S ALEX SPENCER
PUBLISHER AVALANCHE STUDIOS / DEVELOPER AVALANCHE STUDIOS / RELEASE DATE XBOX ONE / COST £34.99/$39.99
the Cold War. Oh, and also there are
robots. Lots of robots.
The idea here, which is mostly just
hinted at, is that Sweden’s answer to
the arms race was building a drone
army – think the Boston Dynamics dog
bot, but with machine guns strapped
on top – until, one day, the robots
turned on their human overlords. Who
could have predicted that, eh?
The game begins as your
customised teen returns from a
weekend of partying to find their home
bloodstained and devoid of life – but
helpfully packed with guns, ammo
and flares. From here, you’re sent on a
path of exploration, nominally to find
out where all the people have gone.
In practice, this is just a smattering
of narrative breadcrumbs to lead you
through the map. The game itself
plays out like the first ten minutes
in a game of PlayerUnknown’s
Battlegrounds, spun out indefinitely.
You move across stretches of open
land. Occasionally you come upon
a settlement, and go from house to
house, hoovering up their contents –Between Stranger
Things, the nostalgia
of Ready Player One
and roughly half of
recent pop music, it
feels like we spend
more time today in the ’80s than
anyone ever actually did at the time.
And Generation Zero, a shooter set in
1989 Sweden, is no exception
The game hits a lot of familiar
period tropes. Fire it up and you’re
greeted with those towering John
Carpenter-esque synths, just as
gorgeous here as they are in Stranger
Things. The character creation screen
loops through teen movie archetypes
like it’s quoting the speech from the
end of The Breakfast Club – the rebel,
the punk, the preppy kid, the nerd.
There’s not a flicker of neon to be
seen, though, and Generation Zero
stands out simply by virtue of being
set in Sweden. Avalanche uses the
period setting to highlight a side of its
home country that isn’t often seen:
the heavy militarisation that followed
World War 2 and the beginning of
weapon attachments, medkits
that gradually bump up your health
when activated, gear ranging from
dilapidated to actually useful – into
your inventory, in preparation for the
next encounter.Familiar ground
Even Generation Zero’s Baltic island
setting is reminiscent of PUBG’s
Erangel, with its sparse foliage,
weather cycle with a penchant for
moody rain, and overall sense of
desolation. Initially, it’s a fascinating
world to explore, poking around homes
with their abandoned dinner tables,
TVs tuned to static and little cross-
stitched Swedish sayings on the walls
(handily translated when you point the
reticule in their direction).
Quickly, though, you’ll realise it’s the
same dining tables, detuned TVs and
cross-stitches repeating in an endless
loop. (Actually, in fairness, there’s a
decent range of Swedish sayings on
offer, just in case foreign-language
proverbs are your particular jam.) It’s
like doing circuits of your local Ikea.short
cutWHAT IS IT?
Hunt and be hunted
by Swedish robots in
a starkly beautiful
open world.
WHAT’S IT LIKE?
If you removed 99
players from a game
of PUBG, and replaced
them with robots.
WHO’S IT FOR?
Only true ’80s kids will
remember this! Or,
you know, anyone
who’s watched
Stranger Things.078 THE OFFICIAL XBOX MAGAZINE