Daymare: 1998

Daymare: 1998 is a third person survival horror game. It feels very much like early Resident Evil, but the gameplay is clunky, buggy, and despite that, it has a good vibe and atmosphere. Combat gets repetitive quickly since there are only 2–3 enemy types, and the story feels unnecessarily dragged out. If you're a Resident Evil fan, it might be worth a try, you could enjoy parts of it (I personally didn’t). 4.5/10

Shift + Space makes me run faster? Cool cool cool, love finding that out TEN HOURS IN by accident. This game just doesn't give a f*** about you. 7/10, tho

A pretty decent over the shoulder camera survival horror game that plays like Resident Evil 2 Remake. I like that this game let's you play to your own play style. There's a mode that has you carry magazines to reload your guns while carrying ammo boxes. This mode takes up more item inventory space or you can play without magazines and just reload your guns from the ammo boxes freeing up more inventory space. The game has puzzles but if you can't figure out puzzles or not interested in puzzles. The game can let you skip them. I like the amount of options of play style there is for this game. The animations for the zombies and their ragdoll death physics are actually pretty good for a small indie team. Probably from an asset store but it works. The game is actually a long game. Roughly around over 9 hours worth for a small indie team game. The game does have a decent story for a small indie team to make but the execution of the story in the cutscenes were not good. There's 2 character stories happening because you switch between playing 2 different characters. 1 character is a revenge story for the murder of his wife. We never really get to know much about his wife. She's just there as a motivator to push the story forward. There's nothing to care about her. The character is chasing the murderer during a zombie outbreak is his goal. The other character is an extract, search and rescue while trying to escape. Paul Haddad (Resident Evil 2 Leon Kennedy) did a few voice cameos. The graphics are actually pretty decent. There are noticeable areas that the team had trouble figuring out to cover up the bad looking areas but I expect that in an indie game. For a game made in Unreal Engine it was playing really smooth through most of my playthrough. I didn't really notice any stuttering. Especially the bad stuttering I see in Unreal Engine 5 games. The game must have been on Unreal Engine 4 instead of 5. Unfortunately this is where any praises end. The faces on the 3d models and facial animations looked quite bad. The character voice and body performances were bad. I didn't like the switching between 2 characters happening too often. The 2 characters never interact with each other until the very end of the game. I would have like to stick with the 1 character Sam on revenge through most of the game. Then switch to the other soldier character once, maybe twice for a short period of the game. The controls are a bit sluggish compared to Resident Evil 2 Remake. One big problem the game has is there are enemies placed right around corners so the enemies grab me unfairly with no time to react. What makes it even more unfair to cause damage is the sluggish controls. The controls has a strafing control instead of the run to any direction like in Resident Evil 2 Remake. I even had a moment were the camera couldn't even show me what was happening. It just kept telling me to hit the spacebar to break out of a grab from around a corner. The 2 biggest issues I had about the game that really needs a fix is the controls have some weird 1 full second delay before making any other action. The reload speeds and the time to take out you guns is great but after the animations are done there is a full 1 second delay. It's so annoying. I was also having trouble trying to aim after I had stopped running. There were strange delays of not aiming the gun after trying to stop from running. The other big issue is the melee combat. Never use the melee. It's pretty much pointless and will get you killed. The melee is like the melee in Dead Space but you'll be grabbed before using it. There's a bug that the melee can't hit an enemy getting up during an animation. The enemy has to be standing but it's pointless using the melee when the enemy is up because they will just grab you. Overall it is a decent game.

This feels like it was made in 1998. I'm sure this is for someone, but its definitely not for me. The cut scene animations are not great and the dialogue is even worse. I love the Resident Evil games and thought this would be a fun play but when the game made me run from a watch tower down to a parking lot and then wanted me to turn around and go back to the watch tower that I just ran from, I was out. I'm sure the game might get better as you go but that's a no from me.

For the price and the fact its a game not only made by a dedicated studio but a game that doesn't try to pull more money out of your wallet i give it an A+. I've played through the game twice and would say it feels like a faster paced Resident Evil 4, not necessarily scary but still interesting i will admit you will need to read quite a bit in order to grasp the lore. Only thing i could say could need room for improvement is the voice acting. If the game is on your wish list, buy it when its on sale play it for an hour and by that time you should know without a doubt if its a game for you. If not you can return it after that hour.

While this game absolutely captures the atmosphere of older survival horror games, including the cheesy dialogue, the story leaves much to be desired. Story Spoilers: [spoiler] Samuel's entire plot can be summarized as Career-Driven woman ignores obvious warning signs of impending doom, leading to her demise and a man seeking revenge. She was literally warned in advance what was going to happen, but assumed due to the primary motivator[Sandman's Daughter] of said event happening dying, it wouldn't happen and thus continued on like nothing was going to happen. The other half follows the rookie simply trying to get to Sandman and escape alive. That's it. The after credits scene reveals The supposed villain was actually the good guy, and Sandman the actual traitor all along. It also dumps ALL the info on Sam's wife all at once. She worked for the evil biochem company all along and so her love for Sam, which IS supposed to be genuine, somehow didn't interrupt her work. Nothing makes any sense here. [/spoiler] With the terrible story aside, as others have said there are only 3 standard enemy types, a mini-boss, and the proper boss. The reveal of the final boss' identity was interesting but also so out of the blue it made no sense at all. I played through on the mode where you needed to make use of Magazines to reload. DO NOT RECOMMEND THIS MODE. Half your inventory will be taken up by Magazines and Ammo alone, and with Storage Boxes often out of your way and few and far between, just do yourself a favor and stick to the other mode. All this aside, I still enjoyed the game for what it was. The last two chapters drag on, and having to access half the files on a real website kind of kills lore hunting, but what is here worked with no issue for me. The maps don't require too much backtracking outside the hospital section, and are mostly linear, so for those who loathe backtracking, but like the RE formula, this might be more your style. A solid 6/10 game.