Gray Zone Warfare has been available on Steam for several days now. A German shooter expert has drawn his conclusions and, despite much criticism, enjoys the game.
Who is it about?
- Fabian Siegismund is a German content creator who primarily plays shooters on his YouTube and Twitch channels, testing new releases accordingly.
- In the past, Siegismund gained recognition for his tips and tutorial videos on Battlefield, but he is currently mainly playing the extraction shooter Hunt: Showdown, although he is also seen in other shooters, most recently in Gray Zone Warfare.
- Before founding his own channels on Twitch and YouTube, Siegismund worked as an editor at GameStar.
- In 2024, Fabian Siegismund was also nominated for the German Computer Game Award as Player of the Year, but had to concede defeat to Maurice Weber.
In a new video, Siegismund discusses the new extraction shooter Gray Zone Warfare, which was released on Steam on April 30, 2024, and summarizes his impressions after the first hours of gameplay.
- You can watch the video on YouTube
What does Siegismund say about Gray Zone Warfare? Fabian Siegismund criticizes numerous flaws that he believes Gray Zone Warfare currently has, including constant network interruptions, bots, and spawn camping at the landing zones.
Nevertheless, he comes to the conclusion during the video that he enjoys the shooter: “So far, Gray Zone Warfare sounds relatively terrible, but the joke is, I’m having surprisingly fun with it.”
He particularly likes the great graphics and the system where a “raid” has no time limit and you can theoretically repeat your loot after dying: “Gray Zone Warfare just looks awesome, and I like the system with the persistent world.”
Fabian Siegismund’s summary of Gray Zone Warfare expresses this contradiction between significant flaws and yet fun gameplay again: “So even though, soberly speaking, the friction points outweigh the fun part, Gray Zone Warfare has captured my attention.”
What exactly does Siegismund criticize about Gray Zone Warfare? The list of friction points, as Siegismund calls them, is long and clear. Here is a selection of his criticisms:
- Network interruptions that kill the match and the character
- Unpredictable NPCs that don’t want to die
- NPCs that can see and shoot you through solid objects
- The faction selection that limits who you can play with and can only be reversed through a wipe
- Quests are monotonous
- Various editions offer a form of pay-to-win or pay-to-progress (what it is of both is a separate discussion), which he finds “crappy”
- Spawn camping at the landing zones – the developers’ measures against encampment at the helicopter landing zones are not sufficient
- No long-term motivation as there is no meta gameplay like upgrading the hideouts in Escape from Tarkov
- Currently, there is no incentive for PvP; in fact, it’s more beneficial for leveling to actively avoid PvP and focus on PvE quests
- No adequate measures against targeted team kills
In general, it is apparent that Gray Zone Warfare is still in early access. Siegismund did not explicitly address the much-criticized performance of the game in his video, but there are indeed numerous reviews on Steam about it.
Extraction shooter with a special twist
What is Gray Zone Warfare actually? Gray Zone Warfare is a new extraction shooter that focuses on realism and represents direct competition to the genre leader Escape from Tarkov – but instead of a fictional Russian city, you are greeted with a tropical jungle.
In Gray Zone Warfare, PvEvP gameplay is featured. You can explore the map with squads of up to 4 players, encountering both hostile players and friendly squads from the same faction.
The unique selling point of Gray Zone Warfare is its persistent world. In most extraction shooters, you eventually have to extract and completely leave the map. If you die and drop your loot, it is irretrievably lost. In Gray Zone Warfare, that’s different. You can theoretically play continuously on the same server and recover your lost loot if you die once.
Gray Zone Warfare has been available on Steam in various editions since April 30, 2024 – the cheapest version costs 34.99 euros and can be expanded with various upgrades. You can also find Gray Zone Warfare in our list of games you should play if you enjoy Escape from Tarkov.
