Look at this lovely winter scene: a shelter amidst the snowfall. Now listen to it, because the cave is full of some horrible monsters, it seems. It’s a super brief teaser for the next game from the studio that created Generation Zero. It appears to be an FPS with a possible horror bent, given the infested cave of screeching somethings.

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Just before Generation Zero released nearly a year ago, things looked great for the game. Its trailers and screenshots promised a dynamic and expansive open-world cooperative shooter, with robots to fight and a beautiful and detailed 1980s Sweden to explore. And it was made by Avalanche Studios, a developer long-known for its open-world action games. Aside from a little controversy when artist Simon St lenhag pointed out its thematic similarity to his distinctive art, everything seemed in place for a successful launch.

We felt really good, product owner Paul Keslin tells me. But that feeling soon changed. The game was beset by crash bugs and complaints of repetitive play, and its Steam review scores tumbled. For its small development team, the reception was a shock – Immediately, the feeling was not a good one . The post-launch plan was thrown in the bin, and so began the long job of turning the game around in the eyes of its players.

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After a wee bit of teasing, Avalanche Studios this week launched the first expansion for Generation Zero. Alpine Unrest continues the post-apocalyptic Swedish survival shooter’s story of humanity’s struggle against deadly machines with a trip to a ski resort island. How very Christmassy.

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Over the last week a series of cryptic posts from Generation Zero‘s Twitter account have had me paralysed with anticipation. A mystery has been unravelling through these posts which today turned things up to eleven with an image showing the name for what seems likely to be the first DLC expansion for Avalanche’s FPS, named Alpine Unrest.

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As time inexorably ticks away, its guttural screaming horror counting down the seconds until our infinite deaths, it’s important we remember what really matters: that the game you like best isn’t as good as the game I like best. The game you like best, the game you like reading about the most, is indicative of how foolish you are, how you’re wasting your precious moments on this planet. Whereas I, liking my> game, am making the most of it.

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One day I suspect we’ll hear the story behind why Avalanche’s Generation Zero feels like being served a pizza that’s all beautifully crisp sourdough base but no sauce whatsoever. It’s a bemusing, hollow misfire as a shooter, barely-there as a story, and its appealing rural Scandi landscapes mask entirely interchangeable interiors that would make an unflattering Ikea stereotype tumble from the lips of even the most old-chestnut-avoidant of commentators.

It is bobbins>. But it didn’t have to be. Moreover, viewed from a certain angle, played a certain way, maybe it still doesn’t have to be. This first-person shooter could be redeemed – but it would need to lose the first-person shooting.

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Few games get me hyped on their concept alone, but Generation Zero did. A promising cross between games like DayZ, Left 4 Dead and Dear Esther that draws comparisons to Simon St lenhag s stunning sci-fi art, you say? That sounds great! Robots roaming the wilderness? Co-operative tactical shoot-n- splodes? 1980s fashion? Heck yes! Has it lived up to its potential? Sadly, no.

The set up looks like this: It s 1980s Sweden. You re a teenager on your way home from a vacation with buddies in the archipelago. But when the ferry docks at an island by the mainland, there s no one to greet you. You head to a nearby house and find it abandoned, except for a gun and ominous machine bits strewn on the living room floor. From there, you stumble upon a police car, also abandoned. It seems that everyone who lived here has left, replaced by hostile robots armed to the teeth, roaming the vast, untamed Swedish countryside. You re lost in an derelict world, trawling across the landscape in search of answers to your questions. Questions like: “What happened?” and “Where has everyone gone?” You know, normal teenage stuff. We’ve all been there.

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The plan was idiot proof. One of us would lob the flares we d snagged from the church tower to distract the bipedal machine almost as imposingly tall as the church itself, while the other sprinted toward a nearby car and dumped out a backpack full of gas canisters. The firearms we d collected were so many makeshift plastic straw pea shooters against the hulking automaton s thick armour plating. We were counting on the hope that a well placed round dumped into one of the canisters would result in enough boom to put the machine down for good.

These are the sort of scrappy, improvised plans Generation Zero s game director Emil Kraftling hopes players will come up with when Avalanche s sci-fi tinged Swedish shooter launches next month. If, like me, you looked at the game’s early screenshots and worried those empty barns and expansive Swedish forests signalled another DayZ-style survival game, then fear not. Though XP-based character progression and acquiring resources are both involved, this isn’t a game where you’ll die of thirst if you don’t sip bog water every few minutes.

You re very much an underdog. Kraftling tells me. But the enemy is not the environment itself.

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Robopocalyptic co-op shooter Generation Zero – latest from Just Cause studio Avalanche – arrives on March 26th. The open world shooter may have previously drawn comparisons to Left 4 Dead, but after playing around with a beta version last year, I think this one stands out from the crowd by being a far more open, quieter and more tactical shooter. Chunky industrial-looking robots have taken over a Swedish island, and only a band of four very 80s youths can scavenge up the firepower to clear out the machines, one hot-zone at a time.

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As pitches go, “the Just Cause mob make an open-world shooter fighting robots across the countryside of 1980s Sweden” is a pretty decent one, and one that caught my ear when Avalanche Studios announced Generation Zero in June. But what is it actually like? A new narrated “gameplay trailer” gives an overview of the game, all its sneak-o-shoot-a-looting, and it does sound a fair bit like Sir, You Are Being Hunted with shellsuits instead of tweed. Here, watch it yourself below.

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