Snowbreak: Containment Zone is a captivating marriage between third-person shooters and ARPGs. Read on to find out our first impressions of the game, as well as everything else we know so far about it.
Snowbreak: Containment Zone Review | Shoots For The Stars
The "Post-Juvosis Era." It is the name used to refer to the world before the calamity. It was when humanity arrested the pandemic known as Juvosis. It was also when AI-driven manufacturing had become the norm, and the immensely-popular Valkyrie Games had overshadowed all forms of entertainment. It is a form of e-sports where augmented participants are pitted against each other to fight for glory. At that time, humanity was at the cusp of a golden age.
That was until the "Titans" arrived.
Discovered and rescued from a crashed pod in the middle of the great, walled area of Containment Zone Aleph three years later, the player is forced to become an adjutant of the Heimdall Force. It is humanity's first anti-Titan armed force, mostly made up of the participants of the Valkyrie Games. Driven by his desire to find his missing sister, the adjutant leads the operatives to battle against monsters and his own kind.
Snowbreak: Containment Zone Gameplay Screenshots
When I first saw trailers or teasers of Snowbreak: Containment Zone's gameplay, I initially thought it was just an asset flip third-person shooter on the Unreal Engine. However, I was willing to try the game because it had a gacha system (help me). But when I was given the keys to the metaphorical car that was Snowbreak's Closed Beta Test, my impressions of it were shattered spectacularly.
Snowbreak: Containment Zone is something special. While it definitely doesn't feel like it has the same amount of passion behind it as HoYoverse's Honkai: Star Rail, the game still sets itself apart by being an action-packed marriage between an ARPG and a third-person shooter.
That admiration only grew when the game was officially released, with some of my previous gripes about it addressed relatively well. True, it still retains some immersion-breaking issues, such as text being too long for its small text boxes or the lack of care for enemy audio; the release version is still a noticeable improvement over its CBT form.
Featuring outstanding sound effects, voice acting, gameplay, great boss fights, and a deep character progression system, Snowbreak: Containment Zone will leave a lasting impression on anybody willing to pick up a gun for humanity.
Great Audiovisuals
Right off the bat, the game exposes you to their music with its hauntingly beautiful melodies before you even boot up the game. When I first heard the music, it immediately set my expectations of the game's audio sky-high. And, oh boy, it did not disappoint.
The game features incredibly satisfying audio feedback for each bullet fired and heart-pounding music during combat. The developers indeed weren't afraid of blowing eardrums, as each shotgun shell exploding from inside the barrel felt like it inflicted real physical damage to the player. Headshots even have a much louder and vastly more satisfying sound effect which I can only describe as the sound of tearing metal. I recommend tuning down your in-game Music and Voice volumes for maximum immersion while increasing your system volume. You might go deaf, but at least it adds to the experience.
Special care was even taken with how the guns make noise. Particularly attentive players might notice that the pitch of their shots changes as they slowly empty the magazine, which eventually results in the characteristic pinging sound when they are completely drained.
Unfortunately, the same couldn't be said for most of the players' enemies. The sound they make as they hit you with their blades or shoot you with their form of "persuasion" (bullets. I mean bullets) sounds muffled or muted. You often won't even be able to discern where the enemies are while they shoot at you without relying on the enemy direction indicators. The story mode also lacks voice acting for all but the most critical scenes in the game.
Solid Gameplay
Going back to its roots, Snowbreak: Containment Zone features a vanilla third-person shooter experience that practically anybody with experience with the genre can enjoy. It's very well-polished, without any feeling of clunkiness. On top of that, the game also features equally familiar and popular ARPG elements, such as being able to rotate between characters, abilities, and even a Support Skill function that resembles Punishing Gray Raven's QTE system. The latter allows your teammates to manifest themselves onto the field and perform supportive actions without taking your control away from your current character.
Aside from their support skills, each character also has passive, standard, and ultimate skills they can use when they're the active operator (the one on the battlefield). These abilities have a healthy amount of variety between each character, ranging from simply increasing the damage they deal, strategic ones like deploying turrets to cover an area, to downright wacky ones like pulling part of your enemy's soul from out of their bodies so you can shoot at it.
It also features a cover mechanic, something dearly missed by many modern shooters nowadays. It makes playing the game thoughtfully much more fun and expands your choices in every situation by leaps and miles.
The level of gameplay polish that went into the game is very remarkable. It combines familiar, time-tested mechanics into something that stands out among the sea of ARPGs and other shooters.
Similarly, Snowbreak: Containment Zone flaunts its giant bosses as one of its signature features. A sneak peek of one was available back to their first trailer, and one of the fears during the wait was if it would just be an equally-sized bullet sponge.
Fortunately for expecting players, that is not the case. In addition to their intimidating scale and presence, each boss is unique in how they fight and how the player needs to deal with them. Some of them have the player run around to get to blind spots, while some require careful use of covers. One of the game's main bosses, Ymir, even has such a scale that it can sweep through a large area with a single swing of her arm.
Although the gameplay loop remains the same, each boss still feels distinct from one another. Some fly, some are armed to the teeth with cannons and guns, and some are just absurdly big, etc. But the point is, each boss is a unique experience that requires careful planning from their players, especially at much higher levels.
Deep Investment Features
Strengthening one of your operators includes investing in many aspects of their growth. The most obvious of these is the ability to raise their levels artificially by providing them with combat records, the game's equivalent to exp fodder. Levels increase their stats depending on their growth rate by a set amount for each level. You can also assign a logistics team to support them in combat, which is a highfalutin term for miscellaneous equipment because the logistics team doesn't actually appear in battle. Matching members of a logistics squad allow special effects to trigger, such as increasing your character's damage whenever they aim down their sights.
To deal with duplicate characters you may pull from the gacha, Snowbreak offers the option to reinvest them into the operator's "Manifestation." These are milestones that are achieved by continuously pulling those characters from the gacha or farming them from that operator's personal missions. These effects are very significant, perhaps the most influential of all the things you can provide them, as they often change how specific skills function at a fundamental level. In a way, it determines whether or not the operator can act like a grizzled veteran on the battlefield or like a new recruit who barely has her bearings.
You can also customize your characters into playing a specific role in the team by investing in their Neuronics, which are special effects added to their skills. These additional effects strengthen the skills and sometimes even allow them to do something entirely new.
Lastly, there's also weapon swapping, upgrading, modifications, and part changing. Weapon swapping is precisely what you think it is: it allows you to change the weapon that your operator uses. However, they can only use the guns they specialized in, such as Fritia only being able to use assault rifles or Acacia with pistols. Upgrading is similar to investing in a character's level, as each weapon can also progressively grow stronger by feeding them exp fodder. Weapon modifications function in a relatively synonymous fashion; only you need duplicates of that weapon instead of exp fodder, and performing it raises the weapon's attributes, such as its elemental damage bonuses, instead of its base stats.
On the other hand, part-changing is a different matter in that it resembles the progression of a shooter instead of an RPG. Players can swap a weapon's sights, muzzle, etc., into parts that directly benefit their play style. Each piece has a different unlocking method, but they mostly revolve around upgrading a specific weapon to level 50.
An Excellent PC Game, Not As A Mobile One
... Oh god, just looking at my own screenshot gives me an aneurysm. It's almost just as bad as Call of Duty: Mobile's keymapping.
Anyway, the controls for Snowbreak: Containment Zone for the PC is, in a word, standard. At least it doesn't try to do anything fancy with its layouts, such as assigning the reload button to any key other than R. However, that also means that the game is incredibly accessible for anybody with even the smallest amount of experience in playing third-person shooter games. As they always say, don't fix what's not broken.
What definitely is broken, on the other hand, is its control scheme on mobile. Because the game feels and plays like modern-day third-person shooters on the console and PC, it's well within expectations that you'll have many different actions you can take; common examples are sprinting, aiming down your sight, shooting, and reloading. However, Snowbreak: Containment Zone is more than just your average third-person shooter - it's also an ARPG. There needs to be places on the screen you can tap to use your character's skills, activate their support skills, or switch characters.
The many requirements that make Snowbreak: Containment Zone such a feature-rich game end up debilitating its accessibility as a mobile game. And unfortunately, they can do little about it unless they get creative with the shortcuts. So, if you're struggling with the game's mobile version, try to keep playing it on the PC instead.
Terribly Basic Enemy AI
Despite having their core mechanics polished to a tee, Snowbreak: Containment Zone's overall gameplay experience is sullied by a very simplistic and predictable AI that controls the regular enemies. For example, the AI will frequently wholly ignore the existence of cover right within arm's reach while the player guns them down from behind a wall. Some enemies are also really terrible shots and, in a way, resemble Stormtroopers who are ridiculed for having a comedically lousy aim.
Regular enemies are also quite predictable. Snipers will have no trouble fishing for headshots on running enemies, as they show no concern over their own lives and run with their heads up high. Players can sometimes even finish certain missions while standing stock still due to the combination of the above factors.
So, What’s The Verdict?
Worth Your Time And Attention
Snowbreak: Containment Zone is an incredible game. Fans of shooters and ARPGs will surely miss out if they don't give the game a try, at least. On top of that, it's very welcoming to players new to the genre by virtue of having a fantastic audiovisual experience. And since the game is free, anybody can get into the action without paying a cent despite its monetization methods.
However, those who play exclusively on their phones might find it difficult. Snowbreak: Containment Zone's controls share the same woes as other mobile shooters in that it feels like you're piloting a tank instead of human beings.
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Snowbreak: Containment Zone Product Information
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| Title | SNOWBREAK: CONTAINMENT ZONE |
|---|---|
| Release Date | July 20, 2023 |
| Developer | Amazing Seasun |
| Supported Platforms | PC, Android, iOS |
| Genre | Shooter (TPS), ARPG |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | TEEN |
| Official Website | Snowbreak: Containment Zone Website |
