Tetchure

Edit: I changed my score to an 8 even though technically I'd like it to have a 7.5. As mentioned in my review the game has a serviceable story. UNTIL the end. It's a shame that all the story happens in the last couple scenes, but it's very interesting and sets up a sequel very well. Hopefully the next daymare game does a better job at spreading story throughout because the stage set is genuinely interesting. Daymare 1998 is a very hard game to review. The atmosphere and tension the game NAILS. If you're a fan of old school resident evil you'll love this aspect of it. I am and almost immediately fell in love with this aspect of the game. This game oozes passion. You can clearly see the devs love this style of game and pour their hearts and souls into it. You're probably wondering "with praise like that why only a 7?" That's because on a technical level this game is very mediocre. I mentioned almost immediately you can feel the tension and atmosphere. Well you can also immediately tell this game is kinda clunky. The controls work, and you get used to them, but it still feels a little off. Imagine more fluid then classic RE but less fluid them modern RE **** shooting in particular is very hit and miss. Literally. Some shots 100% I felt I should have missed but they counted as hits, and likewise shots that should have been right on the money for a headshot missed. It feels like maybe the game uses an aim assist sometimes but it does a poor job. This is particularly a problem for a game of this nature, and especially in higher difficulties ammo can be very scarce. Losing a bullet or 2 every few encounters can have huge ramifications. I found medium distance my shots tended to count as hits the most often so i tried to keep in that sweet spot. Even so, the atmosphere and the passion was so palpable I still was happy to keep playing. The graphics and voice acting. Graphics are very hit and miss as well. Some of the character models look rough. Not terrible terrible but definitely less then average. This is from a small studio so this gets a little wiggle room from me. Especially with some of areas in the game looking absolutely fantastic. The voice acting ranges from passable to super cheesy. I can't honestly say it's bad because to me it kinda feels like it's trying to emulate the classic cheesy dialogue from classic resident evil so i admit rather then loathing it i usually ended up getting a chuckle from it. Glitches. Here's where daymare takes a big hit that I can't defend. I got very lucky in my playthrough, some of this is I'm sure related to the patches that have come post launch, but I only had 1 decent glitch. A zombie clipped into a wall and i couldn't see it until it was attacking me. I lost health due to an enemy i couldn't even see. After reading online I've seen glitches ranging from this, to doors not opening blocking progression forcing a reload, to some even having to restart the game because reloading wouldn't fix the issue. As much as I like this game overall, despite it's faults, I can't defend this side of it. Again I only encountered the one glitch, and I'm guessing since I played so far after launch most of these issues have been patched, but I have to mention them since they can be so gamebreaking. The story is serviceable. Without getting into spoilers it's not bad. Not great, not bad, just decent. It's clear the devs set this up for more entries (even in an interview they mentioned they envisioned it as a trilogy) and I hope they flesh out the lore and story a bit more. There's so many places they could go with it but as of now they barely touched it. I will say some of the documents expanding on the lore are genuinely interesting. My final verdict, right now amazon has this game for 20 bucks. Granted I milked it a little for collectibles but I got around 13ish hours for my first playthrough. For that price I can genuinely say this is worth it, but only if you're a fan of classic survival horror. Most likely I'll do another playthrough in a couple months because i enjoyed it that much. Despite all it's faults the passion makes this product a great experience for fans of the genre. I just wish I could give it a higher score. If passion alone equaled quality this game would be a 10 out of 10.