Vigor Preview

Vigor is in Xbox Game Preview as an Insider only download at the current moment. It's extremely early in development with many features noted as "coming soon", but the core elements of the game are there. I'm not entirely sure what the end result will be here, but the concepts introduced at this time are interesting. This is an open world survival game, it's like a compressed DayZ crossed with PUBG. That may be entirely off, but it should give an idea of what it feels like. It has the gameplay you're used to from those games with a smaller, focused objective that everyone is working towards. To put that aside for a second, it's time to go over the basics.

There's a quick tutorial that sort of goes over things, but it's best to just look at the control scheme and get how it works from that. You have a central home hub and the goal is to work towards improving that area. You do this by heading out into the various environments to find special loot. With that loot you're able to buy improvements that will produce helpful items or function in a special way. It's your own quaint little house overlooking a gorgeous bay, this is also where all your tools and weapons are. There are options to change how you look, you're able to select whatever you'd like item wise for matches and the clash is where things get interesting.

When it's time to get to battling or well surviving, you view the map in your house. It's still early, but signs point to multiple areas that you can choose from. These areas are time based and will filter out once the alotted time has passed on them. This will probably create a feeling of natural rotation and give fresh options for those that always want something new. The levels are fairly large and a decent number of players explore them at once. Now, this is where things are cool yet weird at the same time. So the nuclear war is over and with Central Europe having been devastated, Norway has become the last stand. This location presents gorgeous environments and a calm way of doing things. The maps are empty in terms of being lively with anything but people. You walk from house to say car scavenging. You're looking for weapons or scraps to assist.

As time passes a single cargo package will be dropped into a specific area and players can go after it. Shortly following the cargo drop is a cloud of radiation, this is the next step in pushing players out. See, you don't really have to do anything as you can leave at any time. You can grab some supplies and just leave, this makes the game empty at times. Sometimes people might shoot or fight one another, but often you don't run into anyone. I've been lucky to grab the cargo without resistance whereas other times it's quite a fight. It's a neat core concept and I really want them to develop it further or funnel players better. There needs to be more action or some extra side activities. I could see this becoming boring quickly, but again it's super early access so you never know what they might do with it. It's gorgeous right now and runs fine with some various environments, I'm just curious what the final gameplay will be like as this seems like a tease.

Read our PUBG Preview
Our Game Hubs