A Journey to the Nether Regions of the Mutant Apocalypse
By
Peter Brown, Editor
With elements of DayZ and Left 4 Dead in its DNA, Nether presents an interesting take on the multiplayer survival simulator.
I know what you're thinking. Someone mentions a new multiplayer survival game set in a postapocalyptic world that's overrun with subhuman creatures nipping at your heels, and your first assumption is "been there, done that." But then a game like Nether comes along. Its mix of design philosophies, which falls somewhere between the frenetic nature of Left 4 Dead's action and the cautious play favored by DayZ, could inject this subgenre with some new life.
Crumbling walls and forgotten streets draped in fog dress the world around you. An unexplained cataclysmic event 10 years in the past, known as the "Call," befell civilization. A large part of the population mutated into twisted creatures, known as the nethers, whose sole desire is the eradication of the remaining survivors. These abominations come in different stages of mutation, effectively acting as classes with varying abilities, but two constants apply across the board: every nether is blind and is capable of teleporting short distances. Despite their inability to see, the nethers' enhanced hearing lets them easily identify noisy players. Therefore, it may be a bad idea to sprint through town with your finger on the trigger.
Nethers are fast-moving, hard-hitting, and persistent buggers. The crucial distinction between nethers and zombies--even the fastest ones--is the aforementioned teleportation ability. Because of this, they can easily move into your blind spots, and running is hardly an option. Hunter nethers make flight particularly challenging, given the class's advanced tracking abilities and strength, and the diminutive shrieker alerts other nethers nearby with a high-pitched howl. In most cases, your only recourse is to stand your ground and eliminate the threat as quickly as possible. If you can do it silently, say with a kitchen knife, even better, but it won't be easy. Even a single nether poses a significant threat to you, making the use of firearms an attractive, albeit risky, proposition.
Nether is as much about defending yourself from other players as it is about fighting off deadly creatures. It's a scenario that breeds teamwork, but also paranoia. Imagine that your neighbors, who have covered your back on more than one occasion, seem a little too interested in your cache of supplies. Do you second-guess your suspicions, or eliminate your closest allies just in case they're cooperating under false pretenses? It should come as a relief to some players to know that death doesn't impact your progress as much as it does in a game like DayZ, but it's not to be taken lightly. Though you hold onto your cash and skill levels postmortem, all of your equipment is up for grabs when you bite the dust. Have fun respawning at a random point on the game's sizable map, too.
The Chicago-inspired metropolis in Nether is an incredibly large and dense environment. Buildings line every block, each containing multiple floors, and according to the game's director, Chip Sineni, every room, staircase, and corner is accessible. Safe zones are available if you want to hang back and secure items indefinitely, but the vast majority of the map is a hostile environment. Yet, missions and the need for supplies force you out into the world, so it's expected that you'll spend a lot of time away from home. It's possible to fortify and hold entire buildings, if you're up to the challenge, but your hard work could easily become a target for other players. The verticality introduced by multistory buildings can turn a single building into a complex micro-society, and if the 64 players on a given server are feeling particularly aggressive, you may even find multiple conflicts springing up on a single block. Then, when you least expect it, a group of nethers will show up to ruin the party.
Development on Nether is still early, which affords Phosphor Games a bit of fluidity where design is concerned. Sineni emphasized their willingness, and desire, to incorporate community feedback into the development process moving forward. In fact, the first video footage on YouTube caused quite a stir among its audience, leading to the elimination of a significant feature: the ability to switch between first- and third-person views. Where player versus player is concerned, such a feature would give an unfair advantage to anyone playing in a third-person perspective, and give players who like the immersive quality of a first-person perspective the short end of the stick. When enough people raised their voices in defiance, the option for a third-person camera was thrown out the window, which is a testament to the validity of Phosphor Games' promise.
Sineni was quick to point out that any requests with enough support will be considered. If, for example, enough people want to play with fantastical weapons and abilities, Phosphor Games will do its best to accommodate those players, perhaps on a server-by-server basis, without interrupting the rest of the community. Sineni and his team are hoping to get a beta version of Nether into your hands as soon as possible, with a rich forum, to get the collaboration ball rolling. When it does hit the market, Nether will be sold for an upfront cost--no subscription fees or free-to-play models. It will be possible to rent servers, but that's currently designed to give people an easy way to host private matches. With persistent characters, it makes mod support for private servers a tough challenge to resolve. However, if the community presents a solid solution, there's always a chance Nether will gain mod support down the road.
Nether deviates just enough from other multiplayer survival games to stand on its own for now, but with so much competition from games such as State of Decay and Day Z, and the upcoming Tom Clancy's The Division tackling urban survival sometime next year, there's a chance Nether will find itself outnumbered before too long. If anything, Phosphor Games' pledge to adapt to the community potentially gives Nether an edge over the competition, but the efficacy of their promise relies on players' willingness to participate and ability to wait for results. Unfortunately, it's going to be an uphill battle. Patience is a rare virtue, and with a healthy lot of competition, it will take a considerable effort for Phosphor Games to corner the market on one of gaming's most popular subgenres.
By
Peter Brown, Editor
Peter Brown has been writing about video games and hardware since 1999. He grew up with the NES and has an unwavering love for retro and arcade games. Though he's a New England native, he's called the Bay Area home since 2004.
121 comments
sorry but the nether and the hunter nether's abilities will be a huge fail meaning the gimmick will wear off fast. teleporting might sound good but it's just a cheap way to keep the player engaged thinking it's horror. my thoughts. Make the enemies more grounded in the REAL world and they might have a special game.
so no third person view??? I really wanted to play in 3rd person view it looks so beautiful.... why no make specific servers with 1st and 3rd person view??
LOL why even check this game out not to mention commenting on it if you don't even like survival horror/zombie games? Makes no sense at all... I'm looking forward to this. They've got a lot to fix tho before it launches and if they do this could be a very interesting game.
name made me think of minecraft and the pictures made me think of warz/dayz :/
i dont understand the fun of being constantly killed by players or zombies only to have to start over and look for basic items like food or whatever
very interesting. I'll keep my eye on this one. I'm intrigued with the mix of stealth and shooting. Co op is always nice too
They tried to copy the Day Z recipe without any of the key ingredients. Those jerkoffs should've finished Project Awakened instead of investing their time in this flop.
looks nice but they need to put at least another year of development in to this to really smooth out animations add more variety etc. I'm sick of devs releasing alpha's and unfinshed bugged games that destroy immersion.
Judging from the pics, a cross of Silent Hil with Dead Space. Nothing new even if they try hard to make it original. And worsen a little, yet another FPS. Jeez...
This looks amazeballs... Great aesthetic, amazing looking world... but the monsters/creature look and act terribly. Ruined.
I hope this will evolve in really good, survival game, with elements of horror and mmo. Most of people thinks, that if they make postapocaliptic world, throw there some monster and tell people to survive there, then they succesfully created survival game...
I think, that we all can agree, that's not the way...
So here is my idea- Let's add to game crafting system, based on srcap-like items fined in the world + main survival resources managment- I mean just bases, like water, food, medicine, stuff like that. This would force people to explore and fight for survive.
I like idea of enemies we face in game, but I think, that they should be more tough and more to fear of- to avoid situations, where like in L4D 2 players where shooting to infected because it was fun. That's my opinion, but I think, that we all can agree, that those few thing mentioned earlier could really turn this game in true survival, not another ffps, who wants to be called like that...
Secret World is by far the best mmo out there at the moment. Warning it snot for WOW kiddies, this game requires actual thought for lots of the missions.
Combat looks boring, and the game looks like somthing we have seen a dozen times before. Hope they will be able to profit from this, but i doubt it very much.
Looks OK and game world is big enough but what kind of morons asked for 3rd person to be taken out? Could have really made this stand out against other titles (L4D, Dead Island, Dying Light etc,,,).
Big mistake and will see this stuck with the rest of the also-rans.
Enemies defying the laws of physics. This is bad-ass immersion breaker. Without immersion, no scare. This is not a survival game, but just another online shooter. Probably boring like many others. Probably going f2p..
Thanks, but no. I'll rather wait for Dying Light, which looks quite promising to me.
Looks big and boring. Slash, shoot, slash, shoot, move along, slash, etc. More mutants and apocalyptic worlds. If gamers were as demanding now as they were in the mid 80's, there'd be bargain bins all over filled with these games. I swear gamers these days would be excited over E.T. for the Atari 2600. Look at the way he sticks his neck out, that is so awesome!
@DMND yup, just like in Left 4 Dead, Dead Rising, Dead Island, Shadow of the Damned, Resident Evil, Boarderlands, Quake, Doom, Mass Effect, Fall Out, Arkham City, Fable, Halo, Saints Row, GTA..........any game that has any sort of monsters/ mutations.......
@k0k066 Because third person view completely ruined games like this.
Go look at WarZ PvP and try to prove me wrong...
@k0k066 Its still in the works and has a flexible system. He said they are looking into adding features such as third person.
@Sharth00 EVERY SURVIVAL GAME EVER IS A COPY OF DAYZ NOW YEP YEP YEP YEP YEP NOT A DUMB STATEMENT AT ALL
@666NightsInHell As opposed to something like call of duty which the only difference is that the enemies are alive instead of dead.
@Gorke47 "7 days to die" is the game you are looking for . (Graphics similar to minecraft)
@kcwright415 Yeah because ND invented open world zombie survival games when they made TLOU right? Oh wait...
@highlanderjimd DayZ is another interesting MMO. I haven't played it personally, but I like the concept. I played the FF XIV ARR beta and had a lot of fun. That and Elder Scrolls Online both look like fun. Add this to the mix and that's 5 great MMOs! I was always interested in TSW since the very first gameplay trailer they released years and years ago.
@highlanderjimd i was never really in to mmo and probably never will be.......but the Secret World is one mmo game the got my attention and at one point i was This close from buying it....but its still an mmo so i ddnt........but i still might get someday.....
@Snaptrap so you think people will care about zombies in this game or any kind.
is anyone bothering with zombies in war-z ? or day-z ? this is just a open world PvP game with zombies in it. Nothing more. And thats just fun to chase people and run away from the zombies at the same time.
Also i dont think they are zombies , he said in the interview they are Mutated Humans.
So teleportation is a normal thing among Mutated Humans , ever played Singularity ? Or watched "Jumper" movie. In movie human with mutated gene and in Singularity its just people who poisoned but mutated after radiation.So zombie is actually the wrong choice of word.
@Mustaklaki after reading your rude aggressive comments, maybe we should switch names?
@Mustaklaki @Mustaklaki I am not going prove you you are wrong because you just like first person games and that is ok the problem here is I don't. I don't like the idea of two hands flying around, what I mean is that you can't see your body and I don't like that. Also it is a GAME I don't like the idea of putting me in somebody's shoes even if I create to my likings. Also I just want to see the character I create I especially when there is a customization system.
I understand how you feel about it because the corner peeking and all that but that isn't me I'm ok being killed by someone that way. I can put up with 1st person view if the other game mechs are good enough and that's what I am going to do here but I never liked it so that's why I want a 3rd person camera switch because many people like 1st person and others like me don't. but I don't think that it is likely such a thing will be put in because of all the people like you and also it needs more work to be done with all the animations and stuff.
@Chevyc95 really?? I thought that they tried 3rd/1st person at first and because of the people's reaction that like 1st person they removed it. Anyway I got the flexible system thing and that's why I was making suggestions...
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Nether
Not Following
-
PC
- Publisher:
- Nether Productions
- Category:
- Role-Playing
- Release:
- Q4 2013
