Surv1v3 Review

Kill zombies with your friends in this realistic FPS

 Amanda BlainPosted:October 31, 2021
Updated: August 20, 2024

Let’s get started on this Surv1v3 review (or maybe if you are coming from google – Survive VR Review)

What is Surv1v3?

Surv1v3 is an extremely realistic 4 person co-op zombie survival FPS. The game focuses heavily on realism and immersion to make you truly see how you would handle being in a zombie apocalypse.

Fire, run, hide, lockpick, pretend to be a zombie, be smart, plan your moves and coordinate with your teammates!

Who Makes Surv1v3?

Surv1v3 is created by developers Candymakers. They are a small 2-man indie game developer from Milian, Italy. Surv1v3 is their flagship product.

Which VR Headsets is Surv1v3 On?

Surv1v3 is available on Steam VR, Viveport, and Oculus Rift. Playstation VR is coming soon.

Surv1v3 Gameplay Review

The V1V3 virus has spread throughout the world. Many people are dead.  Although the zombie and horror concepts are cliche,  SURV1V3 is anything but.

There is a lot to go over in this Survive VR review so let’s get to it.

3 Game Modes To Play

There are 3 game modes in Surv1v3. Story, Trial, and Survival. There is also a detailed tutorial that is longer than some entire other VR games. You select your game mode from the menu by shooting the hanging zombies.

• Story – A roughly 20-hour campaign mode to play through solo or with your friends.
• Trial – 3 additional side missions that are like typical Horde modes in games.
• Survival – An open-world RPG like Fallout. Each player gets a house and needs – Eat, drink, outside, and connection. Crafting and small missions.

Tutorial

You start Surv1v3 with a very in-depth tutorial. The first few screens go through basic VR setup options. There are many different options and these can be changed later.

After the initial setup, you start learning how to play.

Surv1v3 is not like any other Zombie VR or FPS I have played. The developers spent a lot of time trying to make things realistic and immersive.

This means when you pick up ammo you have to actually go through all the parts of reloading the gun. Open the action, remove the old bullets, grab the bullets from your belt, put new ones in, close action, cycle the action.

You have to do all these steps after every magazine. There is no counter telling you how many bullets you shot floating magically on the gun. You need to count them. Just like you would in real life.

Did I mention there are a ton of zombies coming after you while you are doing this? And you are also now out of bullets? The zombies are still coming. It gets pretty intense.

Not like Most FPS – Focus on Realism

As mentioned this game is not like your typical FPS button mush and kill things. There are quite a few more realistic components here.

There is no Heads Up Display. What you see in front of you, is what you would see if this is really happening to you. It definitely makes everything feel more ‘real’. Everything that would normally be handled by an in-game menu is done on your tablet that is stored in your backpack.

The zombies have a very real sense of you. When you are moving around, making noise, shooting things, the zombies will notice you when they should.

As you get attacked, your entire screen goes red. Sometimes to the point of being almost unplayable because you can’t really see. This is indeed how it would be in real life if swarms of zombies were attacking you but it makes for some pretty frustrating gameplay.

You quickly learn that rushing ahead is not the way to play this game or you will easily be overwhelmed.

At the start, you only get to carry 3 items in your backpack at any given time. As you go over the various huge open-world maps you are looking for guns, ammo, healing sprays, and door openers.

Many doors you come across will be locked and you will need to use a drill to unlock them.  Creating noise causes the nearby zombies to attack. No open doors everywhere you look like pretty much every video game ever. Not here.

You grab items off your body to use them. Ammunition magazines will be on your belt. Most items in your backpack that you need to actually reach over your shoulder and go through and select them. Healing items will need to be pulled from your backpack. There is no fast instant heal button push. You get the idea.

Types of Weapons in Surv1v3

There are many different weapons you can use to survive. Rifles, machine guns, snipers, shotguns, handguns, bows. Each of these weapons has a realistic reload as I mentioned. They also have different realistic recoil and bloom options.

This game is for serious hardcore FPS fans.

Bloom is where the bullets are likely to land in the area you are shooting. There is a certain amount of inaccuracy in firing that FPS games add to certain weapons to make them less “overpowered”.  Surv1v3 tries to use realistic effects here.

Recoil is the backward momentum that happens when you shoot a gun. This can cause you to miss your target after the first shot. Different guns will have different amounts of recoil and you will need to learn them and compensate for the recoil to maintain active hits.

You also have the option of using a melee weapon like an ax to attack zombies. I usually use the melee option in games, and with all that reloading this seemed like a good option here.

Unfortunately,  VR melee has its issues. Some melee items don’t do any damage as you slash away at the zombies. It is like they just miss. Some break after a few hits.

I have been playing this for several months and although they have made some improvements in this area, the melee still needs some work.

Types Of Zombies

Like most Zombie games, there are many different types of zombies. Each of these zombies has an ability that you can most likely figure out. They also all have a weakness that you will learn as you play through the game.

You will come across such vile characters as:

1. Walkers
2. Runners
3. Radioactives
4. Pukers
5. Tanks
6. Bosses