Hidden Gem
Borrows a lot from old Resident Evil but more puzzles and feels larger. Game play is like RE but story is more supernatural like Silent Hill. There are few cutscenes and the story is told mostly through Files.
It Lets you play fixed camera that moves like Code veronica, over the shoulder or first person. Over shoulder and first person feels like a different game because you can move while aiming which makes things a little easier. The different camera modes are all balanced individually with differeing enemy amounts and some altered areas so you cant switch mid playthrough. It has fully adjustable Fov. Around 70 makes it more like RE4 etc. 120 is useful if you want the advantage of seeing behind you more! The keyboard and mouse controlls are decently re-bindable so if you want to play fixed camera fully with a keyboard with arrow keys old school you can do. The gamepad controlls don't seem to be re-bindable however. The game supports xbox controllers but playstation controllers are usable via ds4win. Controllers also work wirelessly.
There are 4 difficulties. Easy has unlimited saves, hard has no autosaving (Vinyls - like ink ribbons only) and more aggressive enemys that lunge at you and chase you more so its harder to get by them on tight coridoors. Plus you take more damage. When you finish the game you get the professional difficulty where you go down to Danger on a single hit, and a ng+ mode but you cant chose a different difficulty or camera on ng+ which is disapointing. (Though i guess they dont want you blasting your way through professional with an unlimited shotgun you unlocked on Normal!) An inbetween difficulty with the damage values of normal and the agressive enemies of hard would have been great. As someone who loves fixed camera games, I still found the game played best on Over shoulder hard mode at a fov of 70. Normal was a bit too easy so i'm glad i persevered. The more agressive zombies were more fun to deal with and i liked seeing the gory zombies falling apart close up. But that's my opinion. Your mileage may vary. I found Hard mode on this game to be harder than RE remake real survivor and Code Veronica, which i played just before this.
There are 6 different endings, 3 that end the game prematurely but are good if you softlocked yourself by running out of ammo (easy to do on hard mode) 1 good ending, 1 well hidden secret ending that can only be acheived on a second playthrough, and a completely alternative path and 6th ending that can only be found on ng+ There are also unlockable Infinite weapons for finishing the game with top rank etc. Also unlockable costumes.
It's little janky. Puzzles could have done with a bit more refining, like if there is 2 different almost identical items i can put in a slot let me put the one that doesnt work in and give me some indication of why it doesnt work! Also the first puzzle to leave the first room uses a menu mechanic that is never used again... and doors will randomly unlock at certain points..(why not just put a key there!)
Overall really nice game and took me a long time to beat playing blind and figuring it all out myself. (like 30 hours) I got stuck on 1 puzzle for ages! Then i spent even more time beating the game on hard mode and seeing the different endings. There is a lot of game here if you go in blind and lots of replayabiity, and secrets to uncover. An absolute steal on sale but i'd say its worth full price honestly.
5 gamers found this review helpful