Just walking in the door after a successful and exciting night hunting for resources and trying to survive Nether.
A first-person shooter based in an urban sprawl, this game requires quick reflexes and a flexible mind to survive. You scavenge for resources and use them to craft items required to succeed in a dangerous and scary environment. Nether is a game that gives a moderate first impression, but it definitely needs more work. You can sign up for the game and check it out here.
Getting Started Playing Nether
Getting started playing the game was easy and quick. The download and latest patch only took about five minutes to load. You need to sign into Steam to download and install the game. Once the game was ready, logging in was quick and painless.
Massive Environments
The urban environment in Nether is massive, and they have only completed about 20 percent of the city environment to date. You get to adventure in 70 city blocks of urban-chaos that, at first, seems rather serene… until the Nether find you.
Danger is Everywhere
At first, there doesn’t appear much going on in the game, but pretty quickly things start getting more interesting. Keep your ears open for weird noises, because a Nether could be close. Nether teleport to targets, so you want to stay away from them until you get a better grasp of the environment and gameplay.
It’s best at first to stay to yourself and try to find ways to keep out of sight. I found players at first a little shy, which considering the ‘Pray or Prey’ aspect of the game, isn’t surprising. Players can attack and kill you, so be wary.
Use buildings and other large objects in the Nether environment to hide from view. You can move into buildings and other large structures, but this requires a little searching to find the entrance. At first, I found it hard to find them, but once inside the world view changes. Many of the buildings have multiple floors where you can scavenge useful items and resources.
The Player Interface
The player interface is simple and easy to understand and use. At first, it took me a little looking around to understand how it works, but it wasn’t as difficult as I first thought.
The different categories are listed at the top and you can use quick keys to access character information. Players gain experience points as they progress through the game and increase in level. The different character screens are nicely constructed and easy to understand. If you hold the mouse over something, you usually get a brief description.
Weapons, Movement and Combat
You start Nether with only a kitchen knife, and will need to scavenge the environment for extra weapons, resources and other things you need to survive. This might seem rather simple, but when one considers the environment and world, it’s no walk in the park.
Moving around the urban environment is seamless, but using the mouse requires small movements of the hand. Keep the mouse steady and you’ll have more success. I found a few areas in the environment that were hard to move around in and got stuck moving along a high ledge. I wasn’t able to jump down off this ledge and had to quit the game and start again.
Combat in Nether is simple, but frustrating at first. This could be due to still being at first level after about six hours of play. You just click the mouse to swing the knife, but keeping my character in place to strike a blow was hard. This will likely get easier as I play the game more.
You can use the arrows to move around or WASD keys they have mapped to character movements. I found using the keys was easier, but keeping my character level horizontally was difficult. This resulted in me taking more damage, which I wasn’t able to heal, and my death.
The First Impression
Nether is fun and entertaining, but slow in the beginning stages. Playing and surviving is easier if you stay out of combat at first. Stick to scavenging from the environment and finding useful resources you can trade for food and other items you need to survive. Stay out of sight and hide in the shadows.
