![]() The game also has a few tricks up its sleeve to impress players, such as some great lighting effects (especially around sunset) and very atmospheric fog and storm effects. First of all, the world is very large, and while island layouts and structures are often repeated ad infinitum, you have to give the developers credit for aiming for such an impressive scope. Polygon counts are low, textures are low resolution, and character models and animations are sometimes laughably simple, but now and again Radiation Island actually manages to look quite good. The game’s presentation also betrays its mobile roots to a certain degree. Considering the amount of inventory management you have to do and how the frequency of combat ramps up throughout, the game would have benefited greatly from a major overhaul to its controls in the transition to Switch. Furthermore, the game uses a ridiculously generous auto aim system with ranged weapons that is undoubtedly very useful when playing on phones, but makes things far too simple when playing on a device with dual analog sticks. The interface still bears the markings of a mobile port, and while this still works decently while playing undocked, the home console experience is much clumsier. The game was originally designed for mobile devices and little was done to improve them in the transition to Switch. While the mysterious towers and journal entries give Radiation Island a unique atmosphere, the core mechanics are much less inspired. Thankfully, you do uncover a fast travel network across the island to make exploration a little less time consuming. This makes preparation key as you decide whether you want to try to be stealthy in your approach, or take the time to craft loads of weapons and ammo and go in guns blazing. You’ll eventually find yourself approaching towers placed inside large, derelict compounds overrun with zombies and other monstrosities. While you are technically free to go where you want and when you want, the game does guide you along a certain path that nicely builds up difficulty. The story and gameplay combine in an interesting way later on in the game. Unfortunately, once you reach the end, all the intrigue never really amounts to any big revelation or significant moment, so the journey is really more interesting than the destination. Journal pages found scattered around the island tell tales of experimentation and mutation and oddities around the world, such as massive ship graveyards and odd stone structures, adding even more mystery to the world. The game does a good job of drawing you to these mysterious structures and instructing you on how to lower all of them so you can approach the center of the island. Aside from the usual survival game clichés, you also find a series of towers zapping electricity toward an even larger structure at the center of the archipelago. In this version of reality, you were a sailor on the ship who wound up on this mysterious island as a result of the experiment. Your character is a survivor of the Philadelphia experiment, a ludicrous, yet interesting urban legend about a US Navy experiment that allegedly teleported a ship to an unknown location. However, these walking dead serve as one of many hints to the intriguing story behind the world. While the island features dangerous predators like wolves and bears, you will eventually run into the ever ubiquitous zombie as well. ![]() This game is a little different in the significance it places on scrounging for guns, which are often your best hope for survival against the island’s dangers. Veterans of the genre are no doubt familiar with this loop, as well as familiar with the process of cutting down trees so they can gather the wood needed to build shelter, boxes, beds, and other useful items. Sticks and stones can be made into pickaxes which can be used to excavate ores which can then be smelted into stronger materials which can be made into better tools that allow you access to even better materials. What can’t be found can, of course, be crafted. However, you are free to scour the land and dig through abandoned settlements to scrounge up everything and anything that might help you survive. Like in many survival games, you start the game on a seemingly deserted island with nothing in your possession. Radiation Island for Switch is a survival game with horror elements thrown in for some extra spice. To its credit, Radiation Island from Atypical Games seems like an effort to accomplish this, but in the end it all comes down to the execution. However, good developers will do their best to elevate a popular formula to create something much more unique and interesting. Often times, it seems like an easy enough business decision to follow a trend it’s a potentially easy way to maximize profit with minimal creative effort. There is always something to be said for ambition.
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