Old review from March 8, 2015: One of the greatest zombie survival games with a wealth of features in 2.0, and ridiculous customization possibilities in 3.X. A must have game, even worth the gold membership.

New review:

The game's come a long way. Hell, it's finally been released, and what a rollercoaster. Massive props to the developer, Nelson Sexton, for making such a fantastic experience. The game's got flaws, sure, but those pale in comparison to the wealth of content. I myself am a proud hoster/owner of two vanilla easy with ballistics servers, running PEI and Germany.

-Singleplayer: It's a good mode with plenty to do, and workshop support makes it easy to tweak it or add maps. My only gripe with it is that the liberator and its quests just kind of feel empty in a way. It falls into the uncanny valley. I feel that it's probably because of how the character interactions are pretty simple without much charm. They could do with SOMETHING, maybe just a simple voice clip when you talk to them like in Zelda games or Starbound.

My other gripe with singleplayer is that it's really easy. You have to go out of your way to turn up the difficulty by editing the config. Even then, once you get a decent melee and master circle-strafing it's basically over for the zombies.

-Multiplayer: Easily the better mode of the two. It's not overly easy like singleplayer is, and the human dynamic keeps it from becoming stale. PVP is quick and interesting, with many weapons and attachments to choose from. I do, however, have some gripes with multiplayer.

For one thing, sniper rifles aren't useless enough. They don't seem to 1-shot enemies with helmets pretty much at all. The max range also seems just about the same between rifles like the Maplestrike and the snipers like the Timberwolf or Grizzly.

No bullet drop in easy mode. Easy mode is pretty much the best mode for good PVP, as there's no durability or anything complicated like that to worry about. A custom config fixes this however, assuming the server runs it like mine. No bullet drop on the majority of servers kind of makes up for snipers being terrible however, but in exchange they're broken beyond belief in most cases. I firmly believe that ballistics are the way PVP and just the game in general should be played. This isn't really any sort of issue with singleplayer because snipers are impractical there.

No easy way to host a LAN game. From 2.0 to 2.2.5 there was a button in the menu that allowed you to host a LAN game where friends could join. This also let you host public servers with portforwarding or something like Hamachi. Why not bring this back somehow? It would be a great feature for many people, especially if you could allow friends into your singleplayer saves to show them things without the added hassle of setting up a server.

Servers need more and better admin tools. Sometimes spying on someone saves a screenshot to the server, but other times it does nothing. This needs to be fixed. Also, servers need full chat logs, autosave functionality, and more. I should be able to turn hide_admins on and off at will, I should be able to easily post clickable links in the welcome message, and by that matter a two-line limit to chat and welcome messages is stupid. Especially stupid, however, because if you type in-game then you can type more characters than will actually be displayed! We need powerful tools for servers, preferably before any new maps or major features. The game is out, so polish is a more important feature than new features are. Some suggestions of mine are:

>Customizeable chat restrictions, like message length

>Make most commands editable mid-game, like welcome messages, hide_admins, etc. Obviously some should still be locked such as difficulty, but some still just feel arbitrary.

>FULL log files. We need chat logs, connect logs, etc, not the gimped ones we have now.

>Admin coordinate teleports and node creations. Admins need to be able to teleport to specific coordinates, as it would make it FAR easier to catch out-of-bounds bases. Creating additional location nodes, especially hidden ones, would also be fantastic. Also, creating these nodes from and teleporting to your view at your free-camera location would be great for admins.

>Live spectating. A video feed would be impractical, sure, but if you could watch someone from their perspective by simply using free-camera coordinates, angles, viewmodels, etc. that match up with theirs would be sweet and a good way to catch hackers. Of course this would be for admins only.

>Reserved admin slots. An admin should be able to exceed the max player count. This could also be customizable from the server's config, for example setting three admin slots, which would be shown on the server list. It would not be shown if hide_admins is on.

>Somehow make it easier to get custom maps known. Custom maps on servers are basically a death wish. Many players will simply search for "no workshop" or only search for one map, such as PEI. This leaves servers with custom maps difficult to find. Ideally, there should be a way for people to EASILY find custom maps with just one or two obvious clicks.

There are probably more tweaks that I'd want for servers, but that's the general idea. Some other general tweaks that the game could use are:

>saveable server list settings with diff. profiles
>saveable cosmetic loadouts
>cosmetic sorting

Other than these things, however, Unturned is an utterly fantastic experience. Most of these problems don't affect the average player and really only affect server owners, which is acceptable. I'd definitely recommend picking up the game, and it's free so what do you have to lose?

Old review from March 8, 2015: One of the greatest zombie survival games with a wealth of features in 2.0, and ridiculous customization possibilities in 3.X. A must have game, even worth the gold membership. New review: The game's come a long way. Hell, it's finally been released, and what a rollercoaster. Massive props to the developer, Nelson Sexton, for making such a fantastic experience. The game's got flaws, sure, but those pale in comparison to the wealth of content. I myself am a proud hoster/owner of two vanilla easy with ballistics servers, running PEI and Germany. -Singleplayer: It's a good mode with plenty to do, and workshop support makes it easy to tweak it or add maps. My only gripe with it is that the liberator and its quests just kind of feel empty in a way. It falls into the uncanny valley. I feel that it's probably because of how the character interactions are pretty simple without much charm. They could do with SOMETHING, maybe just a simple voice clip when you talk to them like in Zelda games or Starbound. My other gripe with singleplayer is that it's really easy. You have to go out of your way to turn up the difficulty by editing the config. Even then, once you get a decent melee and master circle-strafing it's basically over for the zombies. -Multiplayer: Easily the better mode of the two. It's not overly easy like singleplayer is, and the human dynamic keeps it from becoming stale. PVP is quick and interesting, with many weapons and attachments to choose from. I do, however, have some gripes with multiplayer. For one thing, sniper rifles aren't useless enough. They don't seem to 1-shot enemies with helmets pretty much at all. The max range also seems just about the same between rifles like the Maplestrike and the snipers like the Timberwolf or Grizzly. No bullet drop in easy mode. Easy mode is pretty much the best mode for good PVP, as there's no durability or anything complicated like that to worry about. A custom config fixes this however, assuming the server runs it like mine. No bullet drop on the majority of servers kind of makes up for snipers being terrible however, but in exchange they're broken beyond belief in most cases. I firmly believe that ballistics are the way PVP and just the game in general should be played. This isn't really any sort of issue with singleplayer because snipers are impractical there. No easy way to host a LAN game. From 2.0 to 2.2.5 there was a button in the menu that allowed you to host a LAN game where friends could join. This also let you host public servers with portforwarding or something like Hamachi. Why not bring this back somehow? It would be a great feature for many people, especially if you could allow friends into your singleplayer saves to show them things without the added hassle of setting up a server. Servers need more and better admin tools. Sometimes spying on someone saves a screenshot to the server, but other times it does nothing. This needs to be fixed. Also, servers need full chat logs, autosave functionality, and more. I should be able to turn hide_admins on and off at will, I should be able to easily post clickable links in the welcome message, and by that matter a two-line limit to chat and welcome messages is stupid. Especially stupid, however, because if you type in-game then you can type more characters than will actually be displayed! We need powerful tools for servers, preferably before any new maps or major features. The game is out, so polish is a more important feature than new features are. Some suggestions of mine are: >Customizeable chat restrictions, like message length >Make most commands editable mid-game, like welcome messages, hide_admins, etc. Obviously some should still be locked such as difficulty, but some still just feel arbitrary. >FULL log files. We need chat logs, connect logs, etc, not the gimped ones we have now. >Admin coordinate teleports and node creations. Admins need to be able to teleport to specific coordinates, as it would make it FAR easier to catch out-of-bounds bases. Creating additional location nodes, especially hidden ones, would also be fantastic. Also, creating these nodes from and teleporting to your view at your free-camera location would be great for admins. >Live spectating. A video feed would be impractical, sure, but if you could watch someone from their perspective by simply using free-camera coordinates, angles, viewmodels, etc. that match up with theirs would be sweet and a good way to catch hackers. Of course this would be for admins only. >Reserved admin slots. An admin should be able to exceed the max player count. This could also be customizable from the server's config, for example setting three admin slots, which would be shown on the server list. It would not be shown if hide_admins is on. >Somehow make it easier to get custom maps known. Custom maps on servers are basically a death wish. Many players will simply search for "no workshop" or only search for one map, such as PEI. This leaves servers with custom maps difficult to find. Ideally, there should be a way for people to EASILY find custom maps with just one or two obvious clicks. There are probably more tweaks that I'd want for servers, but that's the general idea. Some other general tweaks that the game could use are: >saveable server list settings with diff. profiles >saveable cosmetic loadouts >cosmetic sorting Other than these things, however, Unturned is an utterly fantastic experience. Most of these problems don't affect the average player and really only affect server owners, which is acceptable. I'd definitely recommend picking up the game, and it's free so what do you have to lose?