Welcome to Basingstoke – PS5 Review

From Puppygames and Thalamus Digital comes the game formerly known as Basingstoke. Originally released on PC in 2018, it has made the move to PS5 and gained a Welcome to prefix, though we have to question quite why. The Basingstoke part could just as well have been any number of outer London boroughs, especially given the presence of a particular bit of transport infrastructure that isn’t present in the north Hampshire town itself. We suspect it’s ‘cause the devs from Notting Hill up in that Lunnun thought it sounded funny.

This could just have easily been set Reading or Maidenhead, but that wouldn’t have been as amusing we suppose. Though the former could’ve yielded Burn After Reading as a title instead. Our point is there’s plenty of other commuter belt towns to offer here, yet Amazingstoke got the dubious honour.

You see, this reviewer lives in said town, so while the post-apocalyptic aspect is fairly accurate in terms of some of the bleaker neighbourhoods, particularly Oakridge or Kings Furlong, a few other details are wide of the mark. The vacant stares from the zombies are also on point with some of the denizens of the town. The game starts in the lobby of what could easily be one of the concrete monoliths on Basing View, though we doubt there’s nine subterranean basement levels with eldritch experiments. Though that might explain why so many films and tv series are filmed there.

For example, there’s a Red Lion pub early on in the game which is correct. It’s a hotel at the top of town. Yet later on there’s a Kings Arms that you’re aiming for, only no such pub exists in Basingstoke. The closest is in Whitchurch, some twelve miles distant. The Queens Arms is directly by the railway station that we suspect the devs might’ve clocked when getting off the train. But anyway.

The main issue for us is that there’s London Underground stations in the game. Not one, but at least three. Basingstoke is slightly outside London in that regard, the Tube only extending as far as Uxbridge and Richmond on its western extremities. Then you’ve information signs on the platform stating that you can get a tube to Woking, Slough or Swindon.

We suspect that Reading might’ve originally been where this was set as you can get direct trains to the latter two destinations, but not to Woking as it’s on the same south coast main line as Basingstoke into Waterloo. Fine that you have a real world setting of sorts, but if you’re going to include details like this, try to get it right. Gamers of our advancing age and transport infrastructure geeks tend to have overlapping interests, hence our Youtube algorithm feeding us Jago Hazzard and Auto Shenanigans videos alongside videogame nostalgia and Techmoan. We’d recommend all of those channels incidentally. You’re welcome.

Enough grumbling about the setting being slightly off-key. You start in the lobby of a building, ostensibly there for a job interview. Upon collecting your id badge, you find yourself in a lift on the way to an interview room. Except you end up in a basement and things start to unravel. A clue that you’re probably in the wrong place is the experimental reactor you walk past on the way to the toilets you nip into in the absence of anywhere else to go. In a scripted sequence that pans out the same every single time, there’s distant screaming and explosions. The first time it’s OK, but when you inevitably die for the fifth or sixth time in the opening stages before you find your feet, it gets a bit annoying that this sequence isn’t skippable.

It’s also at this point that a continual problem with Welcome to Basingstoke becomes evident. It might not be so much of an issue on a PC monitor from whence this game originally hailed, but everything is just so dark. Even with brightness set to maximum in the game settings it’s really hard to see what you’re doing. Not to mention that you’ll draw attention to yourself by using the essential torch. Then you’ll have to sit through the intro sequence over and again.

We found the game virtually unplayable during daylight hours on our massive telly due to this. Hardly the most auspicious opening there. At least we got the ten campaign deaths and burning to death trophies out of the way quick. So yes, the gamma adjustment isn’t great.

Until we waited for night to fall, or during one particularly bright day where we decided enough was enough and blocked out our skylight with a sheet, we were able to prevail.

The aim in each level is to make it to the next campsite and hence save whatever you’ve picked up along the way. Early on, the main problem you’ll have will weapon durability. Once they’re broken you’re on your own. A hammer might see off zombies pretty well, but the broken shaft doesn’t. Thankfully you can use some environmental hazards to kill enemies, particularly the keep left signs that are rather more potent than their real world equivalents. Handily, they have massive arcing electrical bolts that will see off most enemies. They’ll also kill you which is something of a downside.

Talking of which, you’re likely to die. Lots as it happens. To the extent that there’s a trophy for dying in the campaign a hundred times. Some deaths feel preventable, others feel cheap and unnecessary. The enemies you’ll face start off as basic fodder that you’ll be able to dispatch with a single melee attack, though the absence of any health bar means that one moment of inattention can lead to them ending you as well. It’s a little galling when that happens, though we found that pegging it through the level is just as valid a strategy.

Slow and steady is generally the best approach though, with many enemies remaining blissfully unaware of your presence unless you switch your torch on. Or clump around right by them. Sometimes though, a confrontation is your only option, especially when you have to go through a narrow spot to reach your objective.

The odds never feel as stacked against you as say, a typical encounter in Mutant Year Zero but nonetheless you can feel hard done by when you’ve made your way carefully until that point, only for your work to be undone by having to go loud. You can create a spawn point to continue with an insurance policy, but these can be just as capricious as an ill-timed autosave checkpoint in an FPS when enemies are bearing down on you.

The levels are generally sprawling affairs that appear to be, in part at least, procedurally generated. The starts are generally always the same, though the sections in between are generally quite different upon respawning.

As well as finding weapons as you go, they can also be crafted. Our favourite being the mini-flamethrower that uses hairspray cans as ammunition. They are great against the larger enemies as one shot will lead to them burning and leaving you be. Though they’re not so great against smaller enemies such as the chestburster-a-likes as you’ll quickly burn through your ammunition facing a small group. These are best dealt with individually with a melee weapon, though you can still find yourself overwhelmed if too many bear down on you.

You can unlock extra classes to begin a new playthrough with, your first being most likely the policeman who has a truncheon available from the get-go. As you proceed you’ll also find postcards, being a prerequisite for unlocking the tourist class who can photograph enemies and in turn unlock a trophy by doing so.

What struck us during our playthrough was the little inconsistencies throughout. For example, you can fulfil some criteria for the in-game unlockables but they’ll be reset the next time you play. Or you’ll kill a bunch of enemies in the fashion that a trophy dictates but the trophy won’t update. Or worse still, you’ll have the tracker update for having done something unrelated. The worst culprit for this was the melee kills while enemies aren’t aware. Despite clearly fulfilling the criteria, we were resolutely stuck on seven out of fifty. So a bit glitchy.

The weapons are all well and good, but ammunition scarcity is often a factor. Yes, you can craft shotgun shells but the ingredients for them are few and far between. Certainly  not enough that you can be reliant on them as a steady source to replenish anyway. So weapons like the nailgun prove far more reliable due to their ammunition being readily available.

As well as items found in the world, you can find money around the place that allows you to buy some supplies from occasionally dotted around vending machines, though the far more handy military surplus machines are more sparsely dotted around the place.

Ultimately, what killed our momentum with Welcome to Basingstoke was the need to play it in relative darkness as well as the fact that we ended up having to battle through the same section over and again. We expect we’ll go back eventually to carry on where we left off, but for now we’re done.

In conclusion, Welcome to Basingstoke is fun enough but the gamma is pretty detrimental. We shouldn’t have to adjust our TV to play any game, let alone struggle to do so in daylight even if the brightness is set to maximum. The procedural generation can also be erratic in terms of how you do in levels. Never mind the fact that locations in the game such as tube station are plain wrong, especially given that Basingstoke is fifty miles from London. Nor that the name was clearly chosen for amusement value alone. Though we were happy be able to cheese the horde mode trophies by finding a convenient spot and seeing out our fifteen minutes in relative peace.