SCUM
Last updated: 2025-06-17
- Deep, complex, and realistic survival experience.
- Detailed character customization and progression system.
- Fun with friends due to varied gameplay options.
- Unforgiving difficulty and steep learning curve.
- Plagued by bugs, glitches, and crashing issues.
- Clunky UI, inventory, and crafting systems.
Verdict
Mostly positive
Summary
Positive 76% · Negative 24%. Score: 24 / 100
Positives:
- The game offers a deep and complex survival experience with extensive crafting, base building, and character customization options. Players must manage their character's health, metabolism, and skills while exploring a large open world filled with diverse environments and threats. The level of detail and realism sets it apart from other survival games.
- The game features a detailed character customization and skill system, allowing players to create specialized builds and develop their characters over time. The skill system is engaging and rewarding, with progression tied to in-game activities. The game is great for players who enjoy complex character management.
- The game offers a mix of PVE and PVP gameplay, with a variety of enemies and activities to engage in. Players can team up with friends to build bases, gather resources, and fight against zombies, robots, and other players. The game is more enjoyable when playing with friends or in a squad.
- The game has a great community and is actively updated by the developers. Finding the right server can lead to a fun and engaging experience, especially on community-run servers with active admins and helpful players. The developers are dedicated and consistently improve the game with frequent updates.
- The game is simple and easy to understand, with a fairly simple interface. The game allows for both short and long play sessions without inherent disadvantage. The in-game manual is helpful for figuring things out.
Negatives:
- The game is criticized for its high difficulty, steep learning curve, and lack of adequate tutorials, making it unfriendly to new players. Many reviewers found the game complex, overwhelming, and frustrating, especially at the beginning. This often leads to a significant time investment before the game becomes enjoyable.
- Reviewers frequently mention the presence of numerous bugs, glitches, crashes, and optimization issues that negatively impact the gaming experience. These issues range from minor annoyances to game-breaking problems, with some reviewers expressing disappointment that these problems persist despite the game's long development time.
- The game suffers from clunky and unintuitive controls, inventory management, and user interface. Reviewers criticize the lack of basic features like auto-sorting, quick transfer, and clear container indicators. Crafting is also described as tedious and overly complicated, requiring multiple steps and excessive grinding.
- Zombie behavior and spawning mechanics are frequently criticized. Zombies spawn too close to players, even in cleared areas, sometimes clipping through walls or appearing out of thin air. Their speed, detection abilities, and door-opening behavior contribute to frustrating and immersion-breaking encounters.
- Cheating is a significant problem, particularly on official servers, with players reporting wall hacks, exploits, and a lack of effective anti-cheat measures. The absence of active administration and the cumbersome reporting process exacerbate the issue, deterring honest players and ruining the game experience. Many reviewers also expressed frustration with server quality and lack of private server options.
Gameplay:
- The game features extremely detailed survival mechanics, bordering on simulation. Players must manage everything from calorie intake and vitamin levels to bodily functions like urination and defecation. This high level of realism significantly impacts gameplay.
- The game features a vast map with diverse environments, encouraging exploration and resource gathering. However, the large size can lead to long traversal times, and some reviewers feel the world lacks sufficient points of interest to justify its scale.
- The game offers both PvE and PvP modes, catering to different playstyles. Some servers offer a mix of both, with PvP restricted to certain zones. Events also provide additional objectives and opportunities for player interaction.
- Base building is a core element, offering modular construction with extensive options for customization and defense. However, bases are vulnerable to raids, and the building process can be frustrating due to clipping issues and limited options.
- Vehicles, including cars, boats, and airplanes, are present in the game and can significantly alter the gameplay experience. However, they often require repair and maintenance, and can be difficult to acquire and operate safely.
Performance:
- The game suffers from inconsistent optimization, leading to performance issues like frame rate drops, stuttering, and lag, especially in specific areas like cities and underground locations. Some players experience these issues even on high-end PCs, while others report smooth performance on similar hardware, indicating optimization is a key area for improvement.
- Some players have reported severe crashes, including full system crashes and D3D device errors, making the game unplayable for them. These crashes appear to be more frequent for some users, suggesting potential compatibility issues or driver-related problems.
- Players report issues with server stability, including frequent disconnections, lag, rubber banding, and high ping, especially with a large number of players online. These issues negatively impact the PvP combat and looting experiences.
- Several reviews mention vehicle-related bugs, including cars and planes falling through textures, graphical tearing, and stuttering when driving with others. These issues suggest problems with collision detection and rendering, particularly at high speeds or in specific areas.
- Some reviewers praise the game's graphics, noting detailed environments, dynamic lighting, and improved visuals compared to other games. They appreciate the atmospheric weather effects and realistic character models.
Recommendations:
- Many reviewers recommend SCUM to fans of the survival genre, especially those seeking a challenging, realistic, and immersive experience. Some consider it a top-tier survival game, even better than DayZ or Rust, while others suggest it's a must-try for hardcore survival enthusiasts due to its depth and mechanics.
- Many reviewers express concerns about the game's current state, citing bugs, lack of polish, and performance issues. Some reviewers cannot recommend the game due to these problems, suggesting players wait for updates or consider other survival games. Some reviewers feel the game is not worth the price.
- Many reviewers suggest that new players start on PvE servers or single-player mode with boosted loot to learn the game mechanics and avoid the harsh PvP environment. This allows them to familiarize themselves with the game without the risk of losing progress or being overwhelmed by experienced players.
- Some reviews show signs of review bombing, with hyperbolic claims and emotional language without specific details. These reviews often express extreme frustration or disappointment with the game.
- Reviewers note that the game needs rebalancing in many aspects, including PvE difficulty, grind, and skill costs. They hope that the developers will address these issues to create a more enjoyable and dynamic gameplay experience.
Miscellaneous:
- The game is in Early Access but is being actively developed with frequent updates and community engagement. The developers are consistently adding new content and features, showing dedication to improving the game based on player feedback.
- Reviewers suggest adding more content such as new vehicles with attachments, diverse zombie types with unique abilities, and language options. These suggestions aim to enhance gameplay variety and accessibility.
- The reviewer's positive voting is limited to playing with friends on a closed custom server. The reviewer notes that the developers are constantly adjusting server settings.
- The multiplayer experience varies significantly depending on the chosen server. Drop rates and overall gameplay can differ between official/default servers and those offering more extreme survival experiences, impacting the player experience.
- The game emphasizes realism, which some reviewers appreciate. The game's confusing aspects mirror real-life situations.
