Nether Preview

The ‘Survival MMO’ genre seems to be making a huge rise since DayZ. Games like Rust and mods like MineZ have been created and all follow loosely in DayZ’s footsteps; survive and scavenge. Amongst such games to use the genre of Survival MMO is Nether. Nether is currently in open beta and available to buy and play on Steam, but what is Nether and what makes it so different? Also, I’m going to try to do this preview without making any jokes based around the game’s name, and trust me, there have been plenty to make whilst I have been playing.

The story behind Nether is that the world was taken by a plague. This plague killed almost everyone, but some of them came back as mutants, abominations, called Nethers. This event wiped out almost all of humanity and is named ‘The Fall’. These mutants are all varied in size, strength and power, but all have two things in common; all can teleport with ease and all are ruthless killers.

First off you have your Crawlers, which are your most common Nether. These guys (you’ll never guess it) crawl on all fours. Despite being the most common, they are also one of the most annoying, as they instantly hit you after coming out of a teleport and their small size makes them very difficult to hit. Then you have your Hunters. These run at you, hit you, and retreat. They also have a projectile attack which they can use from a medium distance. They run away if struck, meaning they are fairly easy to deal with. You have your Watchers, who let out a very obvious bright red light wherever they look. Watchers act similarly to Hunters, but without a projectile attack. True to their name, these Nethers have the best sight out of all of them, and will most often see you before you see them.

There are also Shriekers. These are the weakest kind of Nether, in turn for being the most annoying and will often be what kill you. These guys can spit vomit, which deals low damage but blinds you temporarily. They also let out an ear-piercing shriek. This attracts all Nethers in the vicinity towards you. They almost always keep a distance, making killing them a much more difficult task than it should be. Then you have your Golems. These guys are your ‘Tanks’ of the Nethers. They can take a pounding and hit hard. Thankfully, they are slow and their teleportation doesn't reach very far, allowing you to easily get away from them if you need to. You also have your boss Nether, the Reapers. I have never actually had the luxury of seeing one of these things first-hand, but what I do know is that if you’re near one, you’re dead and they can take an extreme beating. However, I have had the honour of seeing one of the most recent additions to the Nether family, the Mantis. These things are a bugger to down; they fly, meaning you can only take them on from a distance. They also breathe fire, and, despite their extreme damage and strength, are very commonly found throughout the city.

You start off with nothing but a kitchen knife. From there, you need to search and scavenge for food, weapons and supplies to survive. There are three outposts in which you can safely enter and resupply, buy weapons from the market and accept a variety of missions. One of these missions is a package run from one outpost to another. These reward you with XP and money. XP can be used to level your character up to give them different perks, such as increased health or the ability to jump higher, allowing you better mobility and access to normally unreachable areas. In the middle of the city, there is the main safezone, Lakeside. Here you can use the money you’ve collected up to get kitted out and help face the dangers of the city. However, these places periodically become under attack from Nethers. You have one hour to repair the anti-Nether generators, and if that fails, the safezone is offline for the next hour and you can’t access any of its facilities.

There are a set of random events that happen as well, that can be completed for a money and XP rewards. One of which is the safezones going down, but there are also Nether Surges, in which large groups of Nether appear in one area. There is also the Reaper event, in which the Nether Reaper spawns. These events are marked on the map and there is a timer for how long it will remain and how much of it has been completed.

Guns are a rarity, and finding a gun in one piece is not very common. Instead, you find gun parts scattered around the city. You need to find the right parts and go to one of the safezones in order to craft the pieces together. You aren't told how to craft most things until you actually do, meaning you just have to experiment with the pieces until something works.

Not only can you collect gun parts, but you can also collect parts of the Nethers that you have slain. These can also be traded in at safezones for an assortment of items, such as health regeneration items or guns to get you started off early. These add a nice touch to the game and help separate it from other games of the genre.

However, like most games of the genre, it falls into the pit of PvP. Not like DayZ. In DayZ, ammo and guns are scarce so most people don’t bother picking fights. But here, any old Joe Bloggs can get hold of a gun and some ammo, and unfortunately, you’ll find almost everyone just shoots everyone on sight, even when they have nothing. This can lead to a lot of moments of rage when you are just randomly shot from halfway across a street. There are a lot of people wanting PvE servers because the amount of ‘Kills on Sight’ is getting too high on the normal servers.

Overall, there is a lot of work that needs to be done to Nether, but at the moment, it’s definitely worth picking up. I can only hope they add more events in the future and maybe even a PvE server. I know I said I would try to go through this whole thing without making a pun, but I think we all know that was Nether going to happen.