The Front early impressions review: A more-than-standard survival game

The Front is a new title coming to us from new developer Samar Studio. On the surface, it’s a fairly standard survival game with first-person shooting elements and plenty of crafting mechanics. But the game looks like it could have some serious potential if you’re willing to put in the hours. Check out what The Front has to offer in this quick early impressions review.

The Front: Early Impressions

If you’ve played virtually any other survival game like 7 Days to Die, Ark: Survival Evolved, Rust, or even the recently released Palia, then you’ve already got a basic understanding of what’s going on in The Front. You’ll be plopped onto a beach where the first few hours consist of hoarding sticks and rocks and banging those against a tree. You’ll then slowly start to craft more impressive tools and structures that will enable you to better survive in the world. And alongside shelter and weapons, you’ll need to hunt for food and water to stay alive.

The Front has a surprisingly dense crafting system that functions similarly to a skill tree. The game also features an EXP meter that levels you up when raised. You can then purchase new branches in the Tech menu to unlock varying types of tools. Eventually, you’ll even be able to make things like assault rifles and helicopters. But before you get to any of that, The Front’s first few hours will undoubtedly be like any other survival game you’ve seen.

But the coolest part about The Front is arguably the setup for its narrative. You’re a resistance fighter who’s been sent back in time to stop the eventual rise of an empire. And I’m a sucker for time travel and dimension-hopping stories, so this game understands me on that level at least. The game doesn’t seem like it will be all that story-focused, though. Again, it’s much like other survival games in that the in-game plot is rather straightforward, leaving you with just one objective: survive. During my time with it for this early impressions piece, I didn’t come across much of a story in The Front. But there could be some deeper elements further into the game that I just didn’t come across.

Survival comes at a cost

The Front is the very first game to come from Samar Studio, which means a few things. Since this is a rather big game with plenty of systems working together at once, it’s easy to see some growing pains here and there. The basic gameplay loop feels fine but not spectacular by any means. The simple act of knocking down trees and picking up materials has no satisfying heft or consequence. And using weapons feels like a rather limp experience, too. Then you have the firearms, which sound awful and don’t have the right sense of feedback when firing.

Its problems don’t end with the gameplay, though, since it’s the user interface that has most of the issues. The menus are basic and lack intuitive design, which wouldn’t be too much of an issue in most cases. But it makes finding specific parts of the game more difficult than it has to be. For instance, finding a specific item to craft in the Tech tree is made more difficult by the lack of a search function. So you’d need to go around to every single option here to figure out where a craftable item is.

These issues are emblematic of a first studio’s attempt to make a game like this. So, a certain amount of goodwill has to be applied here while the developer inevitably updates and addresses these issues slowly over time. Just like most other hugely popular survival games that started out as extremely rough experiences. So take my gripes here with the understanding that most survival games follow this path and The Front surely will too.

An average first impression

When I booted up The Front, I was excited to try out a survival game that I hoped would run against the norm of what’s available already. And this is something the trailers led me to believe. However, for the majority of its playtime, The Front was a fairly bog standard game in this genre that didn’t do anything to particularly impress me. Its initial loop is nowhere near as interesting as the potential for its endgame scope. But in order to get there, you’ll need to put in several hours building your character and materials up to that point.

In its current incarnation, it’s hard for me to recommend The Front to anyone who doesn’t already love survival games. Its limp gameplay, confusing UI, and boring loop didn’t do much to keep me invested in anything that was going on in the game. But I see its potential somewhere deep within. And if a community forms around the game and helps to propel it to greater heights, then it could become something special. But right now, the early impression of The Front is that this is a game that needs a lot of work to match the titans of the genre.

The Front is available now in early access on Steam.