Grounded First Impressions

After finally firing up Grounded on my Xbox One X via Xbox Game Pass, I quickly realized I had one major complaint – that the game didn’t launch at 12:01 AM Eastern, instead launching at 1:00 PM Eastern. There are few games I ever pre-load onto my Xbox console, but Grounded was one of them. Since it was announced, I’ve been excited and hyped for the experience. The question is – did it live up to my wild expectations?

As someone who played the crap out of ARK: Survival Evolved – yes, even the crap version on Nintendo Switch because, you know, it’s portable – I’ve been looking for a new survival experience to play with friends. While many have attempted to enter the space with limited success, I’ve tried just about everything – unfortunately, nothing seemed to stick.

When first seeing the reveal trailer for Grounded a number of months back, I instantly noticed the many similarities to my current favourite survival game, ARK, which made the idea if playing Grounded enticing. On top of that all, the game had this awesome, “Honey I Shrunk the Kids” vibe that I was really digging. The problem leading into today’s launch was that I had built Grounded up so much in my head, that it couldn’t possibly live up to expectations. And then it did.

I don’t love everything about Grounded – like carrying grass blades to build walls – but even through those moments I didn’t enjoy, the game sparkles. Gorgeous visuals, tons to explore and uncover, randomly getting mauled by a wolf spider at night. It was all fun, if not a bit scary at times. Not for me, mind you, but my kids have jumped and screamed a handful of times already!

The backyard backdrop for the game works really well, and it’s awesome to see larger than life, everday objects scattered around the world. That giant baseball you see early on, for example, is fantastic, and really provides some scale to the world. You can quickly forget you are in someones backyard as you play, but these constant reminders bring you back to the setting the development team so beautifully crafted.

So far, only a few hours in, I don’t have many complaints. Analyzing items is a great way to learn new crafting options, and I was always giddy to get new items back to my base to experiment with them. Early on, you unlock enough new items to keep you very busy – you’ll have that moment where you decide where to advance the story or advance your character and his abilities. I obviously went for character and crafting advancements, and left the story for later. These games are about exploration, after all.

I’m sure as I play, more and more things will pop up that I don’t enjoy, but for right now, this has been an A+ survival experience. Now lets get it on Nintendo Switch…