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If you’ve already heard of ZERO Sievert, you’re probably wondering: why isn’t this review being done by Noldor? Wasn’t he the Tarkov enthusiast? The answer is yes, but unfortunately our survival expert is quite busy and has handed me — his buddy on Escape From Tarkov — the task of carrying forward the manifesto of extraction shooters. If you’ve never heard of it, allow me to introduce you. ZERO Sievert is a game developed by Cabo Studio and published by Modern Wolf, and up to this point you’ll say everything’s fine… well, you’re wrong. ZERO Sievert is a one-man-army project, and this man is Luca Carbonera, and in a few minutes I’ll explain why this thing is wonderful and why Italian gamers, we should be incredibly proud of this project.
Introduction to the apocalypse
Inspired by games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. and Escape From Tarkov, In ZERO Sievert your objective is survive in barren lands filled with monsters, bandits, and dangers. Like every loot and extract title worth its salt, you’ll gear up, head out on your adventure, gather resources and materials, and do everything you can to reach the extraction zone to bring home all that juicy loot. Thus, the loot-based gameplay mirrors Tarkov very closely, the only difference being complete absence of PvP. Don’t worry though, if you fear the game won’t meet your expectations for difficulty and hardcore gameplay, you couldn’t be more wrong: the game’s AI is truly well-designed and ready to take on you with a knife between its teeth, adapting well to situations and exploiting our moments of weakness and panic as human players.
The "team" (Mr. Carbonera) behind the development has opted for a fixed camera that follows the character from above — a wise choice that highlights the beautiful pixel art used in the game. The aiming system is a point-and-click, but depending on the accessories attached to your weapon, the weapon you’re wielding, and the distance to your target, shots will have a different spray in all scenarios. The inventory system accessible via TAB will allow us to keep track of all that beautiful tessoooroooo we’ve gathered during the raid, along with our current gear, and finally, pressing J will activate a branded arm display (*coff coff* Fallout reference *coff coff*), which will let us assess our health status, the progress of our skills, and how far along we are with active quests.
A bit of context
Talking about this, we give a bit of context to ZERO Sievert. We’re in an unspecified area of the East Europe, in a world post-apocalyptic. Our adventure begins inside a bunker with other survivors and hunters — that’s the term we’re called. In this bunker, you can obtain missions to improve your reputation and buy equipment or upgrades for your hideout. I found the missions not too difficult and often pushed me to explore more and learn many things, including the various maps themselves.
Every weapon and every armor has its pros and cons that must be calculated at the start of every raid. Weapons like pistols and machine guns are very easy to find and ammunition costs are accessible right from the start. On the other hand, weapons like assault rifles and precision rifles are much rarer and ammunition — and especially accessories — reach prices that will make you reconsider the price tag. The armor you wear is also important and comes with trade-offs: do you prefer bullet protection or radiation protection? It’s up to you to decide — and especially depending on the location you’ll be exploring.
Get into the heart of the action
When you’re ready, it’ll be time to ask the train conductor, departing from the base, to drop you off at your preferred location. The maps are generated as you explore them, with the exception of certain hotspots across various maps that contain rarer loot and sometimes items to be collected for quests, but between spawn points and these hotspots, the amount of threats you’ll encounter or the quantity of loot you’ll find is entirely random. When you’ve decided it’s time to cut the cord, open your arm-mounted device and look at the map — you’ll find two green circles — i.e., the extraction points — choose one and head towards it, hoping to encounter as few obstacles as possible.
Unfortunately, not all raids go this way, death is an integral part of ZERO Sievert. The AI can be truly aggressive and difficult to tackle, especially in the more advanced maps. Once you die, you lose everything you’ve earned in the raid, but the gear you acquired from the base will remain yours.
When talking about artificial intelligence, it’s worth noting that the difficulty depends very much on our skills and our gear... but also on the enemies’ equipment. Firing guns at outlaws with pistols and pump-action rifles is much easier than facing military squadrons armed with precision rifles that can kill you with a single shot. In general, the rule is "the bigger the gun, the bigger the threat" — remember this before engaging.
Learning... helps!
One of the fundamental aspects of ZERO Sievert is our skill set — this gives the title almost an RPG feel, allowing us to decide how to level up and tailor it to our playstyle. For example, our shooting ability naturally progresses as we shoot, hit, and eliminate enemies, and once we reach a certain threshold, we can choose to specialise in a particular area. These specialisations are a great tool to help us navigate specific situations, but they don’t revolutionise the game’s mechanics, so you must always stay alert.
The crafting system allows you to produce food, medicine, ammunition, and many other items (many more are coming in the future, but it’s interesting that they’re already offered to the player, so you can get a sense of the game’s development direction). Crafting is much more economical than buying directly from traders, so we recommend you learn the recipes for essential game items, such as food and medicine, to know what you need to loot during raids and what you should always keep in your inventory. Additionally, it’s possible to modify weapons with accessories at the workbench; personalisation greatly affects how weapons perform, and this is one area where Tarkov has clearly shown its influence.
From a technical standpoint the game is very lightweight and runs smoothly despite being an early access title, I have not encountered any crashes or frame drops and loading various locations is extremely fast. The interface is very clean and works well, everything is at our disposal at any time, with the exception of the bullets displayed in the bottom-left corner of the screen: personally, I would have preferred a larger, more prominent indicator, as I’ve often found myself running out of ammo and failing to notice. The build used to test ZERO Sievert is as follows: GTX 1080 - Ryzen 5 3600.
In conclusion, ZERO Sievert is a small gem worth much attention, and we hope it continues to grow as it deserves. The pixel art is a great choice and is truly well done. The gameplay, despite not being an FPS, genuinely puts the player on edge, and hearing a shot from afar will make you jump out of your seat every time — especially at night. ZERO Sievert is in early access and can be played on Steam from 15 November 2022. Thank you for your attention, and see you next time!
