7 Days To Die on PS4

There aren’t a lot of survival/crafting games available on the PS4 right now, so when 7 Days To Die was announced for the console, it naturally got a lot of people feeling excited. Unfortunately, while the game has seen quite a bit of success on PC, it feels rather lackluster and unpolished on PS4.

For starters, the environments look incredibly bland and drab, and there are moments where the graphics just make the game look like a PS3 title. Quite simply, this game looks ugly and hideous.

When you start up a new game, you’ll be surrounded by empty roads, trees, and dilapidated houses that all look kind of same-ish. Upon waking up in this brave new world, the game will then task you to build a few simple tools so you can embark on your journey of surviving the zombie apocalypse and building the perfect base you can feel safe in. From my experience on the PS4, I ran into tons of frame drops, and even a few incidents where the game would just straight up freeze for a couple of seconds before I was allowed to play again.

Given that the environments aren’t particularly well-rendered or detailed, it was baffling that 7 Days To Die seemed to have so much difficulty in maintaining a consistent frame rate and preventing graphical lock ups.

While the controls have been optimized for PC, it’s clear that not a lot of effort went into adjusting them for the DualShock 4. It’s a hassle to go into your crafting menu and have to manually guide your cursor to various tabs in order to craft items and access your equipment. It’s easy to point and click at items with a mouse, but having to select things with an analog stick was incredibly slow, making menu navigation a rather frustrating experience.

Combat is also overwhelmingly boring in this one. Whether you’re hitting the zombies with a small shiv or a giant axe, there’s barely any feedback to be had from attacking them, and the animations remain the same, giving you no proper indication of how hard you’re hitting them or how close they are to death. It’s a little more fun to attack them with ranged weapons, because at least then you wouldn’t have to keep spinning the unwieldy camera around to keep an eye on the zombies while battling against the terrible frame rate.

That’s not to say the survival gameplay itself is bad, though. 7 Days To Die allows you to gather materials from any and all items and organisms you see scattered around the world. Players can craft different types of clothing, weapons, and equipment to protect themselves against the undead onslaught. You’ll also have to watch out for your character’s stamina bar to make sure you’re not overexerting yourself, and also keep yourself healthy to prevent infections or attacks from various diseases. 7 Days To Die can feel a little punishing if you slip up, but if you’re a fan of micromanaging your stats and making sure you have the optimal equipment at all times, you’ll feel right at home with this survival game.

Just make sure you do whatever it takes to stay alive. Having your character die will result in you dropping all of your items and equipment, and you’ll have to start from scratch.

A new feature introduced in the PS4 version of the game is the ability to play split-screen co-op with a buddy. This means you can team up with a friend next to you, and go hunting for resources separately. And when the zombies come for your base at night, you and your friend will be able to defend it together, making sure these undead foes don’t destroy all of your hard work.

You’ll have a lot of fun if you’re able to team up with other fellow survivors, whether through couch co-op or online multiplayer, but that certainly doesn’t hide the fact that 7 Days To Die is still plagued with annoying glitches and terrible controls on the PS4.

Right now, 7 Days To Die is an extremely shoddy release on the PS4. Hardcore fans who love crafting and survival games may find a potential time sink here, but I find it hard to recommend this title to anyone else just looking for a game to occupy themselves with during this summer drought. Don’t Starve is available on PS4. Try that one instead.

Score: 2/5 – Poor