Available on PlayStation 5
A game that was initially released on Windows at the tail end of 2021 and has now made its way to console, ICARUS comes from the mind of DayZ creator, Dean Hall. Developed by RocketWerkz, ICARUS is again in the survival genre, this time with a slightly futuristic bent but with the same sense of a world of beasts and nature itself being against you.
Visually impressive, and a game that does not hold your hand, ICARUS is all about incremental progress and practicality, playable online with multiplayer, this is a game that has you weathering out storms, building structures to protect you from wildlife as well as the planet itself...structures that can go up like a lit match if you are too cavalier with your campfire placement!
Certainly a game that invites you to dive in, explore...and survive in a harsh unrelenting world, this would be a blast with the up to eight players that can be in each drop, gathering and managing resources whilst fighting off curious animals as well as preparing a transient home away from the natural elements, but I did find a slight disconnect between these hostile planets, futuristic setting...and the fact that -initially at least – the fauna that you deal with are bizarrely very Earth-centric.
It would have been cool to be up against things other than boars, wolves, and bears, as it can make the whole setup feel a little superficial, not taking full advantage of the fact that this could be a truly alien world, full of surprises, instead of being just another survival adventure, with the tutorial effectively snapped off.
Finally, the in-game text is minute with seemingly no way of enlarging it, so if you have trouble with your eyesight, be prepared to get close up and personal with your TV.
