Outbreak: The New Nightmare Review
4 min read
I can remember it like it was yesterday.
The New Resident Evil dropped, I bought it, came home, and played it for hours on end. This game was a first of its kind. A survival horror game that put you through the paces of jump scares, mildly intense puzzles and a wild new camera system that made it seem like threats were waiting at each turn. That was in 1996, and since then survival horror games have evolved into nearly cinematic masterpieces. With each new game becoming more and more realistic, I found myself becoming more nostalgic for the days of old. Where a survival horror game not only made me think, but it made me feel like every choice I made was either life or death.
Then, it happened. One day while checking my email, I saw an opportunity to review a game that would play like an homage to the OG Resident Evil games. I was immediately in love, or so I thought, so I pounced at the chance to check it out. That game is called Outbreak: The New Nightmare, and this is my review.
After redeeming my review code and downloading Outbreak, I was immediately met with that joyous feeling of nostalgia. Everything about this game screamed classic Resident Evil and had Classic RE vibes. The very first thing you experience is a very dark, monotone voice saying “Outbreak” in the same speaking cadence as the guy that said “Resident Evil” at the start of that game. I was sold. The game presents you with three different game modes, (four if you count the tutorial) and they are all aimed at giving gamers a different experience. There’s a Campaign Mode, an Experimental Mode, and then there’s Onslaught. I played through each game type, and each one gave me a different feeling of disappointment. Let’s start with the campaign mode.
In Campaign mode, players are dropped into a warehouse as any one of the 6 characters you can choose from the beginning of the game and are tasked with fighting your way through it. The level itself is gorgeously designed and gives off the vibe of being stuck in the Raccoon City Police Department all over again. The sad part here is that’s essentially where the good stuff ends. The campaign mode fails to deliver any real story, and there’s no real rhyme or reason behind completing objectives. The gameplay comes across as really uninspiring, and honestly, I was pretty bored about an hour into the mix. Zombies would spawn randomly into the level and sometimes they would show up at times to where they felt out of place. Not only that but sometimes when they appeared the framerate of the game would drop so quickly, that my character would stop responding to any controller commands.
Speaking of which…
The controls in this game felt like an absolute nightmare. You can choose between the classic (tank) controls or modern controls that are aimed at being more accurate. I chose the latter, but only because the former had me feeling like I was going to eventually launch my controller into my screen. But let me be perfectly clear: Neither set is good and combined with the fixed camera angles, they ensure that you will get trapped by zombies, and die. A LOT. In some places, Outbreak feels like an incomplete title. Walking past doors that are locked would sometimes spoil the zombie surprise hiding on the other side because you could see their arms through the door as you walked by. The difficulty levels range from Normal to Biohazard and the difference between them is so maddeningly opposite, you’ll want to throw your controller through the screen. Sense a theme here?
Experimental mode actually has the most promise of all three modes, but still managed to not keep me entertained long enough to want to continuously play it. This mode dropped players in levels of varying degrees of difficulty, and random obstacles to overcome(collecting car parts to clear the level). I enjoyed this mode, but I wish there was a bit more variety to it.
Onslaught plays just like any other survival mode wherein the goal is to simply survive. Here, you’ll face waves of zombies with each wave getting more intense than the last. Another piece of the game that could’ve benefitted from more layers, but ultimately ends up being a letdown.
Thankfully, we live in an era where games can be made better by way of patches and updates, and here’s hoping the developer adds in a few tweaks to fix the controls, and add a bit more depth to this game. This game has a ton of potential and promise and it can definitely be improved upon. The one thing that can’t happen is playing on the nostalgia of a classic franchise, and not making your game at least as good as those games were.
All in all, Outbreak was developed to be like a love letter to fans of the Resident Evil franchise, that ultimately doesn’t live up to the hype.
