Closed Beta Review: Vigor (NS)

I honestly knew very little going into the beta week on the Nintendo Switch for Bohemia Interactive's survival semi-action kinda-battle royale online 3rd person shooter that takes place in post-apocalyptic Norway, Vigor; the same company behind the Arma series and Day Z.  The closed beta test happened after I filled out a form through Bohemia's website and then a few weeks later (maybe a month, time as a concept has been weird of late), I received the email that beta keys would be sent out.  Vigor has been out on the Xbox One since August of last year and is currently in their 3rd season, so that gave me some idea as to the

Vigor is advertised as a 3rd person shooter, and while it is that, there is a bit more to it, as well as a lot that either leaves to be desired and a lot that is left unexplained.  In the game, you take on the role of a character taking the appearance of one nine characters although you can change your appearance at any time while you are not actively playing what are essentially matches.  The main objective in the game is to gather resources in a stage along with several other players who are trying to do the same.  When you come across another player, more often than not, they are going to be hostile and will try to kill you.  Unlike games like Player Unknown's BattleGround and Fortnite: Battle Royale, you do not have to kill other players in order to win as you are able to leave the map in-game at any time you want as there is no penalty if you decide, five seconds in, that you would rather head back home and check your rat trap for food.  There was at least one match where I maxed out my inventory after fewer than 10 minutes and decided to leave (which I will get to later), so the point is, you are exploring a map with other potentially hostile characters with no obligation to kill them.  But you probably will because the one time I thought another player and I were cool (because we both waved at each other), I got stabbed three times and died while trying to avoid them by jumping over a boulder.

The Difference Between Base Level 4 & Level 5.

The point of gathering resources in these matches is to find better gear (in the way of guns and ammunition as all other clothing options appear to be only for cosmetic purposes) and to build up your home base which is used to produce more resources and craft additional gear and weapons.  Your home base simply acts as a HUD where you gather resources that generate, swap our your appearance and clothing, purchase new clothing, level up your Battle Pass (more on that title later), practice using different types of available guns at your shooting range. . . and that seemed about it.  While you do upgrades on your house which give you varying resources as you build them up, the visual appearance of your house also evolves as your house level progresses.  What else there is to do there, I am not really sure.  Maybe as you progress there are scripted events that happen around your home base, because having an assault on the one place that you consider safe would make, at least to me, all the more reason to cherish that safe space.  And it would not have to be a large scale Call of Duty type of assault either.  Just a group of three Outlanders who want to take your resources.  Maybe if you fail, you lose a certain percentage of your stashed resources?  

As I mentioned above, exploring happens when you go to a map inside your base and select to go on a mission that had a limited selection during the beta test phase.  Normally there would be the option of seven different areas, but this was whittled down to one of those areas randomly chosen for you in whatever the game meant by Quick Play.  I cannot say what the difference is between Quick Play and actively deciding that you want to explore the Dverg Forest or Fiske Fabrikk (Dwarf Forest, and Fishing Factory in English) as I believe that I went to all of the locations during my time playing.  You also have the option to play in solo mode, or with another person, but because I did not feel like turning my microphone on or having to talk to another person, I stuck with solo excursions; I know that that makes me a bad beta tester, not trying out all of the available options and mechanics, but there you go.  You are then taken to a queue showing the people you are going up against, which varied for me between five and 12 other Outlanders.  What is nice is that you can examine the weapons that each person is bringing with them so that you can decide if you want to spend the in-game currency Crowns to purchase Insurance, which guarantees that any guns you take with you and loot you scavenge will still be with you if you die; otherwise, your body can be looted and anything you found along the way (including your guns) will be taken.  You are also able to use Crowns to increase the frequency and amount of loot you find, as well as the Crate, which is airdropped and contains some of the better loot in the level, except that it seems like such a sought after target that I just avoided it whenever possible; I even went so far as to change the location of the airdrop (because you can do that if you find a communication radio/tower) to be further away from where I was so I would not have to run into other Outlanders.

Yes, I played Vigor semi-strategically or at least based on my own strategy.  After arriving in the area, I would try to stick to the outer areas that still contained buildings to loot, but that was also still somewhat close to one of the multiple exits in the stage.  This is what I really loved about Vigor as mentioned above.  Once I was full of loot, I could just run back to an exit and head safely back to my base.  However, because this is post-apocalyptic Norway, there is a radiation cloud that sweeps through each area around five minutes after the airdrop lands that thankfully is marked on your map so you can at least see the direction that the storm is coming in from.  My issue with this radiation storm is how quickly it seems to sneak up on you.  Early on in the beta where the storm originated and when it was determined when it came up on the map were a bit of a mystery, but after visiting both the Vigor subreddit and the Facebook page, it was made a bit more clear when I needed to GTFO.

Thankfully I was never killed by the radiation storm, because as you might have noticed above, as you are in the storm, your health begins to deplete until you either escape or you are killed.  I know this mechanic is, more-or-less, identical to The Storm in Fortnite: Battle Royale, but I like how it is implemented here as an invisible force that wreaks havoc on your vision and health, although from what I can tell there is no permanent damage caused by the storm after you reach your base.  It would be interesting if there was some type of permanent or at least short-term damage if you spend too much time in the storm, but that is video game logic for you, which I am really okay with, if only because in-game when you are shot "dead" you are still able to respawn at your home base.

During the beta, I read that some people were unhappy with how "clunky" the shooting in the game felt and while they are not wrong, I came to a different conclusion.  First off, the aiming of the gun, especially the starting handgun is poor and you should not rely at all on using the crosshairs.  Yes, you can hit other Outlanders just using the crosshairs, but only after playing for a couple of hours did I find out that you can press down on the left joystick and it brings up a first-person perspective when aiming, which once I realized this, was my preferred way to shoot if I was able to do it fast enough.  Otherwise, you run the risk of shooting like an idiot.  May I present Exhibit A:

I swear the game knew what I was trying to do and slapped me in the ego for my hubris.  But in my own defense, I had already missed three previous times on the same group of bottles, which is when I decided to walk up to the proverbial TV and tried to shoot the bottle like a three-year-old playing Dunk Hunt.  Once I figured out the aiming-down-the-barrel mechanic it made hitting targets so much easier, as well as being able to use a sniper rifle like it is supposed to be used.

As clunky and jittery as the aiming is here, one reason why it did not bother me too much was that it feels like Vigor is trying to be more of a survival game where shooting comes as a last resort.  If Vigor was trying to have gunfights that felt like something out of Fortnite, Left 4 Dead, or even Overwatch, then they really fell short.  To me, it kind of felt like the difference between Killer Instinct or Mortal Kombat 2 compared to Bushido Blade in that Bushido Blade is not a slick fast pace fighting game, but more of a tactical fighting game where one hit can kill you.  In Vigor, in the encounter mentioned above where I let my guard down, I was stabbed three or four times before I died, and in Exhibit B below, I shot someone fewer than 20 feet away once and killed them (sorry, spoiler).

Vigor, like some other free to play games, has created a Battle Pass (which confuses me that they would choose wording that is already identical to the week-long subscription used in Fortnite, Call of Duty, Apex: Legends, DoTA 2, and some other games) that allows the player to earn cosmetic upgrades and in-game money as they progress through each season, possibly 10ish months-long like other games (Fortnite, Apex: Legends).  Maybe they were only going with a name that was already recognizable for the product being offered, but I really think that Bohemia could have just as easily gone with Survival Pass, being closer to the objective of the game.  Like every other Battle Pass out there though, this one lasts the entirety of the season, although I did read that on the Xbox platform that some people were unhappy with the Season 1 Battle Pass progression in that it took too long to raise in levels and earn rewards, even leaving tiers unfinished at the end of the season.

And while we are on the topic of progression through seasons, I do wonder what happens to the progress you make on your base when you go from season t0 season.  Does the location change at all?  Does the work you have made on your home reset with each new season?  And do the locations change at all, or are you visiting the same seven areas?  I realize that this beta test was not so much a beta test for the game, but for the game on the Switch, how their Switch specific servers run, and how the Switch community responds to the work that has been done on the game, but a lot of these questions were what I was thinking of while playing.  There were times when textures looked less than ideal, or at the very least, like the game as a whole was in beta, which could either be due to the graphical limitations on the Switch or even because I only played in handheld mode for the eight or so hours I put into the game.  

One of the biggest issues I had though, that I also read a lot of other people were also experiencing, was that the audio would frequently only come out of one speaker, more often than not it would be the right speaker.  This tends to make things difficult since hearing someone running through water or snow is integral to your own survival if you can only hear audio from one channel on one side of your head.  On a lesser note (maybe?), some of the running sound effects sounded like there were only two or three footfall sounds which made running (which I did a lot of) sound rhythmic, mechanical, and a little annoying.  The last thing about the game that I sometimes had issues with was the graphics, not that they were bad, but that they were a little fuzzy, which makes spotting another Outlander off in the distance rather difficult.  I first noticed this at the shooting range at your base, when trying to make out a plate hanging on a tree some hundred yards off (this was also before I figured out the whole aiming down the barrel mechanic).  So the few times I did have a sniper rifle with a scope, trying to spot, let alone hit something that is probably another player and not just something fuzzy going on in the environment was rather difficult.  Lastly, I did have a couple of connectivity issues, although none while I was playing in a match.  The times I got kicked out, I was fiddling with stuff in my base, or opening up crates that I had earned through the Battle Pass.

As it stands right now, Vigor is scheduled to be released later this summer on the Switch as free-to-play or you can purchase a $20 Founder's Pack that gets you into the game a bit earlier along with some cosmetic upgrades and Crowns to spend on. . .stuff.  I will most likely be jumping in when the game opens up to everyone as I do not see myself immediately plunking down $20, but if I put in enough hours and the game continues to be fun from season-to-season, I could see myself opting in for the Battle Pass.  Especially when I find out what happens to your house because seeing the upgrades were very satisfying.

If you would like, you can read more about the closed beta test from Bohemia Interactive here, or just check out this handy info-graphic above with a number of the finer points.  And just know that yours truly here was one of the few (1/266) that was killed by being stabbed to death.  But at least I was not killed by the airdrop in the tutorial or anywhere else.  N00bz.



~JWfW/JDub/Cooking Crack/Jaconian

Instrumental


P.S.  Here are some more screenshots that I couldn't figure out where/how to include them in the body of the article.

I mean, who wouldn't be a bit panic-stricken to find themselves in post-apocalyptic Norway all of a sudden?

A minor issue with body parts lining up when you switch perspective. No effect on gameplay from what I could tell.

Just an example of some low-rez mist coming off of a stream.

Part humorous, part sad when one of your sources for food is a rat trap constructed from a large tin can/bucket.  I never found a point or use for food in the game, aside from donating it to other Outlanders, which can get you additional items, crates, etc if you give enough.

My preferred loadout: A handgun for back up, a shotgun for close encounter firepower especially when indoors, and a carbine rifle for slightly longer range attacks.