Reviews for Earn to Die

[Galneda]

Not so much of a time killer as it is time waster.

Our nameless hero has to make it across a dessert festering with zombies in order for him to escape to...somewhere. Truth be told, this game makes my head hurt when I put too much thought into it. I'm mortified by it's complete absence of logic or plot.

He's in the middle of the post zombie-apocalypse dessert and he "needs to escape this place." But there is literally NO TENSION whatsoever. He clearly has all the supplies he needs except for necessary funds. Yes, MONEY. He is clearly purchasing these cars from some other survivor we never see...at least I hope so otherwise this guy is just BATSHIT crazy and enjoys wasting time and supplies. He has a Volkswagon Bug, a Pickup Truck, and Semi, but really you're only gonna have the Semi, because the FULLY UPGRADED Semi is the ONLY THING that will get to your destination. Everything before it is a repetitive waste of time, but doing so in a way that insults our intelligence, and even more incredibly, siphons the fun out of mass vehicular zombieslaughter.

Somehow the lightest car has the absolute WORST gas milage. Somehow the Volkswagon which is very FAMOUSLY converted into dune buggies so it can be the best possible vehicle for this situation, cannot possibly make the cut. So really, you upgrade to a point where you get a decent amount of money so you can eventually buy the pickup truck. Because guess what? It doesn't matter how much you soup up this POTENTIAL DUNE BUGGY, all of that money will have basically been pissed into the wind. Why even bother with the goofy lookin' propeller? This guy has access to M16's and a fuckton of supplies, but he can't just HIKE the distance to the chopper? Our hero is a bitch.

Once you get the pickup truck, you enter the wonderfully liberating world of "Never Being Good Enough" but at least you have some of the most expensive tires I've never seen for a truck. You're also introduced to boxes! Yeah, stacks of empty wooden boxes made into little hollow forts of obstruction in random spots.

"Did that not slow you down enough?" I'll pretend the game asks me, "Well how about some Super Mutant Zombies!" Yeah, BIGGER zombies! There's STILL no tension, they're not any threat. I ran out of gas going uphill, and my truck daintily tapped one of these behemoths and it made an unenthusiastic "Brargh." and died. They just slow us down more. How fun and engaging.

I figured the boxes and super mutants were what these guns were for, but they only carry about 15 shots and they shoot automatically...We can't even get the power to PUSH THE TRIGGER!? They'll lay waste to the first volley of zombies and that's it. Aka "the ones that weren't even a problem for the Slugbug." Completely depleted ammo by the time it gets to the first box fort. Again, a pretty beefy truck makes it a great distance...our guy couldn't just take a wrench, tire-iron, or disassembled the still-cool barrel of the gun, and just club any zombies over the head on the way?

Our hero is also more lifeless than the walking dead itself. Seriously, he is somehow superhumanly stiff as a board when he should be getting whiplashed around like he's at a Slayer concert. He should be having the most fun, and he doesn't make one sound. By having an open door is somehow NO THREAT TO HIM whatsoever. Zombies die on contact with the bumper even long after it ran out of fuel. No zombies crash through the windshield and frantically attack the driver from inside the car like so many Deer do for me on my daily commute. There's not even a way for a zombie to double flip into the bed of the pickup truck. Also, this guy must be strong as hell...because he can LEAN and gain influence to a multi ton machine like a pickup truck or Semi.

Eventually a decked out Optimus Prime will finish the job, even though every time it hits the ground, it looks like it should be game over. The art looks good, the music is appropriate, though it gets old near the end. The zombie voice overs are uninspiring and seem to punctuate the pointlessness of this adventure. The Ending Screen was embarrassingly underwhelming. Voted 2

[fatninja671]

fix one thing

the title that is it 9/10

[DoubleDown009]

Well...

Alright, this was an Okay game. There were a few problems that you could try to cover in a sequel, as i would very much like to see one. However, the game-play became very repetitive and easy, as all you really had to do was hold forward and tap x. The customization was a bit too straight forward, and the fact that you had to buy ALL upgrades is a bit of a turn off. Also, the fact that the big zombie's torso laying on my SEMI caused it's speed to drop by about 90 miles per hour was unrealistic, and bad.
The gun should be able to be turned on and off as well. though there were some major flaws, the game was entertaining, and the last 20 minutes doesn't feel like a huge waste.
7/10, and i really hope you take my advice and make a sequel.

[guymm]

Great game, I hope you make a sequel.

Very fun game, really enjoyed it, I'm surprised it scored lower than a 4. I think you could add a lot to it if you ever make a second one though.

Criticism:
The game-play did tend to become a little repetitive during the end, as it really just came down to holding down forward and occasionally using the boost. I was disappointed you only scored bonuses for special tricks once. As the fact you could not really do flips in your car or score anything extra for this.

Suggestions for s sequel :
More types of zombies - These could be just for show or could perhaps have slightly different elements to it (perhaps ones that are better to drive more so over then into).
A bull-bar upgrade - which would lower the amount of speed running into zombies would do.
Ability to do flips for bonuses.
A more customisable upgrade approach - instead of just having to buy everything make it so people can decide what they want there car to be like to win and can win the game without having to necessarily buy everything. E.g. someone could go for a powerful engine and big wheels, another for a better boost and bull-bar...if that makes sense.

[YukaTakeuchiFan]

I simply don't find this FUN.

It doesn't even have anything to do with the fact that there are a ton of games out here that play almost exactly like this but don't have you running the same damn level endlessly until you finally make it to the end.

My main problem with this game is that you simply didn't think about how the zombies or upgrades play together.

See, when I'm buying upgrades, I'd like to know exactly what the upgrades even do, barring the upgrades that are entirely obvious such as fuel capacity. Not that it matters at all, because the only reason you have the first two vehicles in the game at all are to act as a time-wasting beef gates until you earn enough money to be able to use the semi, as you literally could never beat the game with them- they simply don't get the upgrades or the power necessary to take you anywhere near the full distance if, say, you wanted to challenge yourself.

Not that it's the easiest thing in the world to beat the game when you have the semi, either, but it's hard to beat it for entirely the wrong reasons, said reasons being the zombies.

Don't get me wrong, I have no problem having obstacles in a game like this, but unless you plow straight through the zombies hard enough to instantly splatter their parts all over the screen- a feat that is not always possible, ESPECIALLY with the large zombies that clog up the entire second half of the map- the zombie bodies will sap your speed like hell, even when they really shouldn't be, like, say, when they're on TOP of my SEMI TRUCK'S HOOD with no reasonable way to throw them back off, seeing as you take just about any cease in forward momentum to instantly end a run, regardless of fuel remaining. And my main recourse for killing these large zombies? The guns? They're completely useless because their auto-activation feature finds it smart to waste all my ammo on small zombies on straightaways that my semi can cut through like a chainsaw through paper without dropping its speed a single iota, leaving me with no ammo to shoot at the large zombies that are actually causing me problems!

The way the game plays, it just doesn't seem like there's any way whatsoever to guarantee a victory, even at full upgrade strength, as it always seems like just enough random disasters will occur to waste your fuel and wreck your run somewhere in the last third of the map, no matter what you do.

And how to stunts even WORK? I seem to get them entirely at random, and there's no way to tell how to consistently pull them off so that the early game can be made a lot shorter.

The bottom line is that this is a game that does not feel like it rewards skill in any way. Unless you have full upgrades and get very, VERY lucky with how your vehicle bounces around to hit or pass over zombies, you don't stand a chance. And I simply can't give a high score to a game that feels like it wastes my time in the beginning simply to laugh in my face at the end.