Icarus is a session-based PvE survival game for up to eight co-op players or solo. It is developed by Dean Hall (of DayZ fame) with Rocketwerkz. The survival game was initially released on 4th December 2021.
However, from the launch date till now, the developers have been working hard to bring patches for the game to fix the various glitches and crashes. The ride hasn’t been smooth as everyone expected it to be.
Icarus story
The main summary of the co-op survival game is “From their orbital station, prospectors drop to the planet surface for limited time sessions, where they learn to endure the alien environment, complete faction missions and search for valuable exotic materials. Those that survive return to orbit as seasoned veterans, converting their exotics into advanced technology, and taking on ever more challenging drops with newfound knowledge. Those that get left behind… are lost forever.”
A press release revealed by PC Gamer read: “RocketWerkz has a multi-year plan for Icarus, adding chapters with additional playable content and lore. The first chapter, The First Cohort, begins in Icarus’ most Earth-like biomes before the game expands to more alien and threatening zones.”
You’ll be dropped from an orbital station and given the task to survive on the planet. The three basic things which you’ll need to survive is oxygen, water and food. For food, you’ll need to pick berries and you can drink water from the nearby lakes and rivers. You’ll have to collect the bluish ores called Oxite for your oxygen supply.
You should pick up sticks, stones, etc to build various weapons and things, required for survival. Later on, you’ll also have to construct a shelter to live.
The main obstructions to your survival in the very first mission will be climatic conditions and wild animals. If you’re caught in a storm, it can reduce your health or destroy your shelter as well.
You’ll have to have to gain experience and level up to unlock special skills and abilities which will help you to survive on the planet.
In a recently released patch, Icarus’ developers have added three new prospects for those who have completed any or all of the missions in Icarus. In Fire Walk, players must recover a bio-weapon that was dropped on the planet’s surface, in Wet Work, you must eliminate yet another large predator, and in Solid Metal, you must gather resources, process them, and load them into drop pods for extraction into space.
Icarus benchmark
Although the game hasn’t been a smooth ride for all, the graphics aren’t that bad. It is quite a graphic intensive game. I played this game with an Intel Core i7 10700k processor paired with NVIDIA RTX 3060Ti GPU.
NVIDIA released a Game Ready driver that included day-0 optimizations for ICARUS, the new co-op survival game by Dean Hall and RocketWerkz, and only GeForce RTX gamers got launch day support for NVIDIA DLSS and ray tracing.
I have shown here the most commonly used resolution, 1920×1080. As Icarus is a graphics-intensive game, getting 65+ FPS on high graphics was quite good.
I also tried playing in 4k mode and was quite happy with the performance. I was constantly getting 60+ fps in Medium-High graphics. So you can easily play the game in 4k using Medium or High graphics. The Epic graphics setting was a bit too much for my GPU, but if you have a more powerful GPU than mine, then you can definitely play in Epic Graphics.
Icarus review
The concept of the game was quite good and created a lot of hype when it was announced back in the PC Gaming Show in 2020. However, I feel Icarus hasn’t been able to live up to the hype.
While playing, I experienced many glitches. For instance, I was once stuck in a bushy area. I wasn’t able to move around. Although while jumping the stamina was reducing, there were no signs of moving. My character was struck without any obstacle blocking it. I had to restart the game to get out of the glitch.
There have been reports of crashes as well and many other types of glitches have been prevalent throughout the game. If the developers manage to patch all the glitches, then it may become a quite enjoyable co-op game, but as for now, it was’t very much exciting or enjoyable.
Additional info
The first chapter of Icarus, “First Cohort” has been released. Two additional chapters called New Frontier and Dangerous Horizon will also be released later on.
