Worst MMO Ever? - Anomaly Zone 

"It's like Fallout without power armor." Oh god, he's never heard of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. before.

"My skill level is too low to equip trousers" I see they have implemented vodka accurately, at least.

It's STALKER rip-off, the game even crashes every few hours or so. The true STALKER experience

"Mom I want STALKER-" "We have STALKER at home" Josh's fallout at home

To give you some perspective, this game is but one of many ripoffs of the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. series. S.T.A.L.K.E.R. was a single player game, but because the features lend so well to an MMO, people have been trying to make S.T.A.L.K.E.R.-esque MMO's for a while. Everything you praised in this game was not achieved by the devs. They ripped it off straight from the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games.

I like how you try to compare this to fallout when this is clearly ripping off STALKER

This game is based on S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Shadow of Chernobyl, which is loosely based on the film, Stalker, which, in turn, is very loosely based on the wonderful novel, Roadside Picnic. There's even a poster for the film Stalker in the bar.

you need to play STALKER if you tought this game was inspired by Fallout

"You can improve your shirt wearing skill up to level 7." Level 1: Shirtless Level 7: Shirt That's How Anomaly Works

It's relatively amusing watching someone who has never played STALKER, review such a blatant ripoff.

When this first showed up on my feed I was like: "oh shit there's a S.T.A.L.K.E.R MMO?" But then I noticed the show...

A STALKER rip-off... I remember trying to play this shit. Remember it being shit. And also remember how one of my classmates was whaling in this game and boasting about it lmao.

"Think Fallout without Power Armor" - So... how I normally play Fallout games. But I think "Stalker" would have been a better comparision. Because it even looks like a cheap version of Stalker.

Since this look like stalker mmo- the throwing garbage is for detecting anomaly

As noticeable on the name this MMO is based on the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Franchise and the book Roadside Picknick. The garbage or screws are a detail from the book to trigger Anomalies.

Hi Josh, just wanted to say I liked the video but you say that you can not see how many bullets are left in your clip. You are actually able to see how many bullets you have left by looking over you hot bar at the bottom right corner above slot 9 and 0. You can see the big number counting your shots left in the clip, the number to the right saying the maximum size of the clip, and above there, there's the ammo type and to the right of that there's how many bullets that are in you inventory, and then there's the icon showing that you are holding a gun. Just wanted to point this out in case you missed it post editing. Otherwise, really good video like always! :)

I do love my S.T.A.L.K.E.R, but I got a feeling I won't love this.

Josh, the reason both Anomaly Zone and Stay Out share the same map is, they were the same game at one point. Long ago a game called Stalker Online was being developed that was based on...Stalker, the cult (and awesome) fps series that came out in the late 2000s. While being developed, a split over the game occurred and depending on who you believe, the code/databases was stolen. So now you have two groups, each developing a game called Stalker Online. The original group sued the group that broke away and won a court case, so they held all the rights to their game. They changed their name to Szone because they worried GSC who develops the single player games would sue. The second group who lost, continued to work on revamping their game, but they were still calling it Stalker Online. Eventually it went in front of a judge again, this time the judge ruled since the game underwent what he deemed "significant" changes and gameplay alterations, they weren't really the same game. So both developers were now free to keep developing their respective games. Szone then changed its name to Anomaly Zone, Stalker Online is still called Stalker Online when it comes to its Russian launcher/servers, but on the steam relaunch and for the US and EU launch, they changed their name to Stay Out.

Everything even remotely decent about this game, all of it - is stolen from STALKER series. It's a decently popular game even outside post-USSR, surprised you never heard of it.

Josh: "I got spawn camped by dogs, that's not even funny" Me: dying of laughter

Just a few small notes: - Those shots you have heard aren't ambient, it's actual NPC guards shooting down mutants that come too close. - You can still switch to first person view, it's F4 by default. - There are multiple ways to get out of starter city, but walking up to gate and just getting out isn't one of them. Quest designers trying to subvert expectations and perhaps being a bit too tricky with it for starting zone. Good that you still found a few things worth a praise! :)

"I cannot put on the pants. I do not have the skill to do this." 😂😂😂

So it's Stalker, but online, but all the problems are somehow even worse. I feel only shame for my country.

I love the idea of a STALKER MMO. Like, the idea of becoming an actual Stalker and working with other Stalkers or on your own to try to bring back artifacts from the zone in search of fortune sounds absolutely awesome to me. I just wish it was actually executed properly...

Aaaah Sergej Titov, creator of Big Rigs, where „you‘re winner“ no matter what, and with physics that would make Dr. Hawking cringe. Truly a man who always stays true to his QoL standards.

This game wears its S.T.A.L.K.E.R. influences so clearly on its sleeves that at 8:26 it even has a poster of the original Stalker film by Tarkovsky :p

Christ, this really is just Great Value STALKER.

The silence during the dog spawning kill is golden as words cannot describe how bad it is.

"Why do designers always overstretch, and focus on the bells and whistles like faction reputation or seven levels or wearing a suit skill before they've made the game stable and the opening experience smooth?" Designers usually can't do anything about a game's stability. It takes a programmer to investigate why the game is crashing and change whatever piece of code is causing the game to crash. Also, the game might have been perfectly stable when most of the systems were implemented. Crashes typically become more common and hard to track down the later you get in development as more and more features come into the game and have to play nicely together.

This is obviously another attempt at making Stalker Online. There have been many, and there will be many more. People love the Stalker universe and people love multiplayer survival games. This is just one of many attempts that will go nowhere.

This is like that time he played the Black Desert rip-off without having played Black Desert lol.

I LAUGHED the entire time you respawned from the dog revenge, I’M freakin dying over here

14:27 - the guy asked "Where are you running already, listen to me, I'll explain where you have to go." - did you take quest and run around and he was supposed to explain something more to you? If so , it's really cool game mechanic if he caches you afterwards to finish the explanation where to go. But might be just a random text from npc.

Oh my god I remember when this game was called sZone Online and me and a friend tried to play it because "omg online STALKER!!!" and we kept getting killed by giant spiders and giant dogs and the interface was a mess to follow

8:45 I actually love that, that a beginner quest seems way too easy, so the player will look around the back rooms for loot/optional quest items. And you find something utterly horrifying. Actually kind of a cool quest idea.

I'm in the middle of binging the entire series, so imagine what a pleasent surprise seeing this popping up in my subscriptions!

I like that even when you’re playing an awful game you’re still willing to point out some positive aspects instead of just biasly slamming every part of a game you don’t like

"Think fallout, without power armor" *You have alerted the horde*

I just wanted to leave a comment, that wasn't mentioning STALKER. Goddammit.

Moral of the story, don’t steal toys from children*.

As soon as he threw bolts, we knew it was a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. ripoff.

That stint of being spawn-camped by the dog was genuinely hilarious, I think the silence throughout that scene really drove home the hopelessness xD

I’m my opinion being able to swap the over the shoulder camera is very important for over the shoulder shooters. Having a button to easily swap between them is extremely nice to have to effectively 3-peak around a corner and line up shots. Except that only really matters in fast paced games, so the devs were really over estimating the usefulness in this game.

Honestly, what i got out of this video is a desire to see Josh play Stalker.

"I got spawn camped by a dog. That's not even funny." The way you sounded genuinely offended honestly *made* it funny lmao

5:50 reminded me of something. There's a quest giver NPC in City of Villains that can see through time. The problem is that they often have trouble knowing where in a series of events you actually are. One time he starts trying to give you a quest, only to realize he already gave you it a while back. Later on he says you'll have to go through this long chain of complicated quests and events in order to find someone's location... But since he can see the future, he already knows where your target is and just tells you.

I've recently picked up a game called Neocron Evolution. It seems like a game that would be right up the alley for one of your videos.

I am quite a busy person, but I really enjoy playing these in the bg while I work :)

Wait, hold on a minute, did the reviews say this was a Sergey Titov game? The auteur behind Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing and WarZ?

The having/adding new mechanics before polishing/fixing the old ones has always drove me nuts

Great video as always! You can see the ammo counter though. It's that small green bar above the bigger bluer number bar. You'll notice you have 10 max ammo, and when you shoot it goes down and when you reload it goes up. The super small blue gun icon seems to show you how many rounds you have left, still, should be made more obvious.. I think.

"Pressing Q throws some garbage..." Oh, he's never heard of S.T.A.L.K.E.R. before... those are your bolts you throw to check for ...anomalies... in The Zone...

I know this has probably been said before but this video really reminded of TotalBiscuits (R.I.P) old content which i am honestly happy to see. He was one of my favorite creators back in the day and having similar series emerge in his general style/tone is cool to see.

Me: Mom, can we cheeki breeki? Mom: We have cheeki breeki at home. Cheeki breeki at home:

Make Josh play S.T.A.L.K.E.R and then E.Y.E : Divine Cybermancy

If the game absolutely has to put a timer on the death window at least make the default selection go to town. Even the oldest MMOs know better. Anarchy Online in it's early days stopped letting death loops happen by resetting your bind point when you switch factions. So many complaints forced them to do it.

13:35 "how would I describe this game?" ...i love these. I love how when someone tries to describe a game whose direct ancestor they have no idea about, that description comes out as a weird combo of at least 3 very disparate things.

9:05 I'm not sure if it comes up later in the vid but there's like. Totes an ammo counter in the bottom corner. It's terribly small but it's there

Missed a real opportunity not making it "Spawn camped by a zombie dog, and then the game crashed, out of ten."

"Mom can I have STALKER?" "We have STALKER at home" STALKER at home:

"Hairstyles change your entire face shape and skin, and it got weird name like Bob, William, Psycho" I think it might be picking heads Josh, lol

"They have certainly got some audio balancing to do, because getting close to the doctor makes this happen" ... Yeah I don't see an issue here

I hope you enjoy making these videos, because I love them. Especially when you have good feedback. Keep up the amazing work.

I played this game many moons ago when it was szone, so here's some context regarding this and Stay out(also known as Stalker online). This basically started out as a single project called Stalker online, there were issues with the development team and they split into two seperate projects, both claiming legal ownership over the source code and game assets. One side of the split became Szone, the other continued as Stalker online. Both have taken quite different development paths, szone focused on more traditional MMO designs, like having pets/companions, where Stalker Online focused primarily on pvp and gun mechnics. Both titles had to change their games respective names for legal reasons for inclusion on Steam, Szone became Anomaly zone and Stalker Online became Stay out. Both titles are inspired by the book Roadside Picinc, the 1979 Stalker movie and GSC's S.T.A.L.K.E.R games.

Everyone: Calling it a STALKER ripoff My dumbass: *Has never heard of STALKER before*

17:30 just yesterday I've played Rimworld properly for the first time. I think this is how it would look in third person to watch my guy fight a maneater ram and repeatedly fall unconscious from its attacks.

Dying and having the game crash on you is like a cartoon character being crushed by an anvil, only for them to then be crushed by a piano immediately after

4:23 The music fading in and out is beautiful. Maybe there's just in an echo in that dude's booth.

Ngl the dog spawn camping you was so funny.

"My skill level is too low to put on trousers" ...well... it's a russian game, of course you need a specially trained skill for that, why do you think all the gopniks only wear the lvl1 pantwearing jogging pants?

9:19 There is a HUD element that has the bullets displayed, bottom right above what I assume is the action bar, the first number deplete when there are fired at the dogs, second is the capacity and the last one is how many left. I will give that it's a smaller than I'd like compared to any other bullet count indicator for a FPS, but it is there or does the it's size just mean it doesn't really count.

Love this series, truly I do. Hey Josh, got a suggestion for next in line. Mabinogi; a fundamentally broken 'kawaii-desu bullshit' game with a terrible cash shop, yet exceedingly unique style. I think it would be fun to see you pick it apart.

those rats must be wearing heavy armor if they need 2 bullets to kill them

I actually enjoyed this game alot in something like 2012 when it was named "stalker online" and it was not in steam. Its pretty old game.

Free tip for anyone who wants to make a game where you need to "level up in wearing trousers." I can get the value in this, you want to earn power upgrades and not have characters smurfing their accounts with high-end gear, fine, but there _is_ a better way. Have skill levels CAP stats. Just as an example, say starter trousers provide 5 DEF, and better trousers provide 10 DEF, but you aren't intended to use them until you have level 5 in "Wearing Trousers." Fine. Still let people put them on. They do, and they get. . . 5 DEF. Each time they level up "Trouser Wearing," they get +1 DEF out of it, until they reach level 6 in it, where they've already reached 10 DEF and won't get any more from those Trousers. But if they find a pair of 11 DEF Trousers, they will get the full benefit right away. Basically, you can _use_ anything you can find, but it won't make you _stronger_ until you've also _earned_ that benefit.

Love your videos! Have you ever considered talking about the massive flop that was Wildstar?

I remember this one from quite back when it was called Szone. I think this was an attempt at making a S.T.A.L.K.E.R. mmo without actually calling that since the ones who made it didn't have the licence. I think this was actually more of a fan project if anything.

You can look at the name alone and be like "Okay, it's STALKER isn't it?"

17:50 "Commrade...you are barking up the wrong tree if you think you can get past me!"

love your content josh keep up the good work. By the way have you though of reviewing Raid shadow legends

This has quickly become my favourite series on all of youtube

Guess you've never played STALKER because you keep comparing this to Fallout.

Honestly, with games like these, I always feel like it's a new studio or group of people who get into wanting to make an MMO. They spend a good year or two on it, get a good thing going, but then realize that either their team size or team strength is going to require another three years to get a good MMO rolled out. So they either quit out of frustration/lack of patience or they fear that putting in the five plus years just isn't going to be worth it in the end and quit while rolling out what they have in the hopes that maybe someone will spend money somewhere, either through cash shop or donations, and they can recoup at least some of their losses.

A lot of the crashing, not all of them, can be avoided by setting the affinity on the CPU to just one core (assuming you have one with at least 2 or more). The XRay engine was never optimised for multithreading and it creates all kinds of problems for it. Then the rest is just up to bugs and other features and there's not much you can do about them except hitting that quick save button a lot.

Dear God, I played S-Zone and it was crap. So bad!

Am I too early Josh?

Do you plan on ever ranking/comparing all the MMOs you've played for this series?

(opens a steam discussion saying "Servers not working") -Can't be that bad.

Out of all "Worst MMO Ever" videos he's done, he needs to make a video about the king of them all

Just thought I'd point out that the game actually did tell you your ammo count. (you could see it going down in the bottom right above the slots that appeared to be skill slots) The UI element was entirely too small, tho'.

16:30 youtube timing is perfect. Lol. I had an ad pop up right before he said the game crashed.

Hey Josh. I Im a new subber and im loving your channel so much, i always have your vidoes on in back ground. I was wondering tho, Have you ever played King of Kings 3 which used to be on Gamigo and if so what did you think of it ? I Have been looking for a game that captures whats KOK 3 was but no luck

TBC is out for a few days and he still gives us the content we want

Oh my god. I haven't laughed as hard I did at the dog part in a long time. Holy shit.

As soon as I saw the right-click zooming I immediately got resurging Fallout 3 PTSD.

Funny thing is that stalker, as it is right now, is a better mmo than this, which was supposed to be "stalker, but what it would be if they actually finished the MMO part".

It's been my favorite guessing game since I started watching these 'worst MMO ever' but to day I finally I got one. "spawn camped by a dog... out of ten"

I played it a long time ago. It haven't changed at all. Stalker imposter made by amateurs.

I wouldn't be surprised, at all, if the weird names for the hairstyles is because Fallout does a similar thing. One thing I love about these videos, is that he takes a look at a game, from a new player's perspective. And I don't even mean new to that specific game. Like, he considers how hard a game would be to get into, for a completely new MMO player. And it's great. Because a lot of people don't even consider that people can actually be NEW to these kinds of games. So a lot of people ignore issues because THEY'RE used to how things work, they can figure it out well enough based on previous experience. But someone new to MMOs or RPGs or something would come in, get confused and irritated, and just leave. Which is why you HAVE to get the basics right if you're making an MMO. Don't run before you walk. Make a well-crafted BASE for a game, then use that to make the actual game. It's the same for anything. You want to draw something? You start with planning, then sketching, then refining, then inking and coloring, then finishing touches. You don't just jump right into a finished drawing. You can't build a house without a frame. Etc, etc. -- Also, I absolutely love the point he made. "It doesn't matter if you have thousands of hours of content, if no one's going to get past the first hour." That's how I feel too. If a game just...isn't FUN, almost immediately, I have a hard time sticking with it. You throw 3 hours of cutscene at me, you'll be lucky if I even make it to gameplay. You give me an hour long tutorial, I'm probably not finishing it. You make me do nothing but meaningless nothing, with boring combat, I'm probably not gonna keep playing. I absolutely hate when someone tries to tell me "Oh, it gets better after the first couple hours" or "Oh, but the gameplay's amazing...once you get past the 2 hour long prologue." or something. I shouldn't be expected to play a boring, uninteresting, clunky, or broken game for hours before it becomes fun. If you can't be bothered to make MY FIRST EXPERIENCE WITH THE GAME entertaining, I can't be bothered to play your game. The hell happened to first impressions being important? The issue, a lot of your player base comes from NEW players. Yes, you need to keep your active playerbase happy too, but without new players, you're not gonna BUILD a playerbase, you're not gonna have players to even be worth keeping the servers up. An online game REQUIRES new players to join, to keep the game alive. You can't make a "hardcore MMO", with zero REAL tutorial or anything, and expect everyone to just migrate over from their current MMO. And even IF, in the slight offchance you gather some players, this is a different game that the one they were just playing, and they've never played THIS game before. You NEED to teach a new player, whether they're new to this kind of game or not, how to play YOUR game. YOUR game, similar to other games or not, does have it's own menu layout, and item style and crafting style and things. You can't realistically expect someone brand new to the game to come in and know how to play, even if they've been playing MMOs for 20+ years. I mean, someone that's played nothing but Dragon Quest their whole life, is still gonna need time to learn how Persona works, despite them both being RPGs. -- I'm not against losing something when you die. I've always felt like there needs to be a penalty for failing. Otherwise, what's the point when there's no risk of losing. It's not really a game at that point, just...an activity. But, what I don't like, is how this game will even delete WEAPONS when you die. Imagine questing in an MMO for hours to get some super epic loot at the end of a big group raid dungeon. Then that loot just disappears because you die. Yeah no, I'd quit playing. I'd legit uninstall the game. I could tolerate deleting some potions or misc items that aren't super hard to get again, and aren't super important. Or losing a tiny bit of money or XP. Fine. But, don't take my legit loot. That loot is literally my entire reason for playing an MMO. Get loot to kill stronger things to get better loot to kill stronger things. Whole reason for an MMO to exist.

Game seemed pretty familiar from your video and yep I remember playing SZone as I'm a big Stalker fan and thought the game would be basically an online version of it. Quit before even the first hour as iirc the game was still fully in Russian at the time and the lack of ammo was way too bs even for me.