Frostpunk: Complete Edition PlayStation 4 Review

All is fun and games in steampunk euchronias until we realize climate change is also part of the equation when we power entire megacities with coal. Therefore, Frostpunk is the answer to the question, “What if global warming but in a steampunk reality?”. This game comes from 11 Bits Studios, the minds behind the critically acclaimed This War of Mine.

Now, the stakes are higher, and instead of controlling a ragtag group of war survivors, you must ensure the survival of an entire society on the brink of extinction due to the coldest temperatures ever recorded by humans in a city-building simulation that stands out from the rest for all the good reasons. Frostpunk made its initial debut on PC, but now consolers can get the same experience with the three DLC expansions in the Complete Edition of the game. Is it worth it? Let’s find out.

 

All cities have fallen, and all societies have broken down. London has been swallowed up by snow, and the last survivors travel north, trying to escape the freeze. You find a generator far to the north, where you can build the last city and start the last position of humanity. It is the last city; it is in a crater on a frozen wasteland. There is nowhere else to go. If you don't survive the cold here, you don't survive. The temperature is plummeting, and there is a storm on the horizon.

This game places us shortly where the weather finally went to hell, and with storms, the temperature drops to -120 °. You, as an omnipresent entity, oversee a handful of survivors who, with luck and a lot of trial and error, will turn a pile of ice into a decent place to live. The main enemy to beat in Frostpunk is temperature because you must always make sure you have enough coal to turn on your generator and that it provides heat to your population.

Suddenly, there will be changes in temperature that will improve or worsen the situation. And, when it gets worse, so prepare for your population to drop like flies from disease, amputation, or freezing temperatures. As a good manager of resources, you must build houses for them and generate coal, food, iron, and wood, but not everything here is love and happiness. 11 Bits Studios gave us a lot to think about with the decisions we had to make in This War of Mine. Now, these decisions affect not only a small unit of survivors but also an entire civilization.

Will you follow the path of spirituality and ensure everyone’s happiness, albeit a higher chance for those same people to die, or will you rule with an iron fist and create a police state in which hard labor is expected and required, but survival is almost guaranteed? Frostpunk takes elements of these moral decisions, and we quickly tell you that in Frostpunk, it is not possible to always keep the population happy and make them survive.

 

As an example, one of the first decisions you must make is whether or not to make children work. In our reality, child labor is heavily frowned upon if not completely illegal. However, when humanity’s survival is at stake, does it matter? But if we survive by these means, is our society worth saving in the first place?

Most times, you only get a few days to generate enough coal, so, with time on top, it is most likely that you will have to put your population to work overtime, and children are able bodies that can help the survival efforts.  That’s just a taste of what comes with the responsibility of creating a sustainable society in Frostpunk, which follows a rather disjointed campaign that works more like game scenarios.

Throughout the game, you’ll have to keep on making decisions that will lead to a fight against an upcoming storm when the temperature drops to -120 °. You’ll not only have to collect materials to feed the generator but also hunt or produce food to feed the surviving people and, at the same time, scout across the nearby landmarks for resources.

Besides resources, you’ll find people dying for help, and it’s your choice whether to help them or to leave them to die. Sometimes, when you try to save others, your people will oppose it because it might also endanger their lives. Sometimes, people will leave your city due to low hope. So it’s a constant fight not against just the harsh nature but the situation with the survivors who are counting on you.

 

The console version of Frostpunk comes with four campaign scenarios based on the base game. These are very different from each other, both in the approach, the objective, and what you must do. But the games don’t end there; aside from the mandatory endless mode, which is a sandbox survival mode, console players also received a free DLC, the Fall of Winterhome, and the three DLCs in the Season Pass, which can be purchased separately, with the season pass or with the complete edition of the game. Three DLCs are included: On the Edge, The Rifts, and The Last Autumn.

The most distinguishable expansion of the three is The Last Autumn. A prequel story set before the endless snow takes the game's mood to a whole new territory. With green trees, a dock used to obtain resources, and a task for players to oversee the emergence of the base game generator, the stakes are high, and the deadline is short. You must decide how much you pressure your people in a fight to build a tool that could be humanity's last hope.

On the Edge follows the events after the end of the base game. Your mission is to build and maintain an outpost far from the city, far from the generator, but the possibility of extracting resources from a recently discovered military warehouse seems to be worth the risk. Equally risky but also worth the effort is maintaining trade routes with the settlements of other survivors.

 

Finally, The Rifts adds a new map for Endless mode and Bridges, a new type of construction to collect resources scattered around the islands. A city-building game may sound odd for consoles but Halo Wars 1 and 2 showed us that a little ingenuity can be a suitable replacement for the mouse and keyboard standard setup for these types of games. In the PlayStation 4 version, you will find changes in the interface, such as a quick menu, selection circles, larger icons, etc. This is a graphical and command redesign that works perfectly well.

The other key aspect is the visual department, which wasn’t that great initially. Despite that, the difference can be sensed immediately, and the PC version looks better than its console counterpart, but that’s nothing to worry about, as the gameplay is not affected by the small change in graphic quality. After all, how much detail could you lose in a top-down city management game? Even though you can zoom in or out into the city with all the ice, sometimes it’s difficult to tell which building is for what purpose if they’re located close by.

The game, however, achieves that undeniable steampunk aesthetic with a layer of frost and a gloomy setting that completes the sordid picture posed by the story. Good camera controls and the ability to make shots at different distances to facilitate gameplay. The sound effects are simple but good, the voices are clear, and the ambient sound is realistic.

 

Frostpunk is a great addition to the genre, and console players might want to finally know what all the fuzz was about. Translating a game like this from its PC roots to a console like the PlayStation 4 is no easy endeavor, but the result is quite good. If you can handle a challenging city-building game, try Frostpunk and see how many days you can survive. The hardship of survival in the last position of humanity is definitely worth the time.