Daymare: 1998 Review

Daymare: 1998 by Invader Studios follows the story of two soldiers trying to extract information from a quarantined laboratory, with nothing but a disturbing distress signal to go off of. The game plays very much like a Resident Evil game, and fans have been pushing for Invader Studios to work with Capcom on a fresh Resident Evil game, but Capcom refused. The result is a game with the freedom to create any story and character set they wish, so the game carved itself into Capcom’s niche, and fans are happy to say it is a welcome addition. If you aren’t a diehard fan of the old Resident Evil games, you might not enjoy this game. Daymare 1998 certainly brings the gameplay of older horror titles back to life, but some of those gameplay mechanics should have been left in the past.

The player controls make the game feel more like a movie, as in I’m only walking around to find the next puzzle to solve, I don’t feel like the things you can do outside of puzzle solving are satisfying. These mechanics were revolutionary when the first Resident Evil games came out, but the whole combat system evolved over time to make sure the game stayed fun. The combat of Daymare doesn’t evoke any feeling and if you are out of ammo you have to punch zombies 10 to 20 times and wait around until they get up. You would think a highly-trained army dude who’s seen this shit before would bring a knife or some kind of weapon that doesn’t run out of ammo, even a tiny knife that could only finish off zombies on the ground would be much better than the monotonous punching and shoving. The puzzles are where the game shines, there could have been a lot more implemented into the combat.

The graphics are definitely close to that of a AAA game, which is impressive for a team of less than 20 people, but there are spots here and there that make it apparent that an Indie Studio created this game. The graphics are very well done and the detail adds to the game, but when zombies attack there should really be more realism, when zombies grab the player the graphics seem to turn down a notch, with a poorly made emitter spraying barf all over the player.

The sound design is well done, it is easy to know when a zombie is around because of the noises they make, and these noises can add intensity to the scenarios you find yourself in throughout the game. If you shoot a zombie, even in the head, it will sometimes fall down and not die, hearing these noises is a good indicator that you need to finish the job. The rest of the sounds and music in the game fill it out and give the game a scarier feel to it, music is usually an essential part in building tension for both movies and videogames.

All in all, Daymare: 1998 is a great game for fans of the old Resident Evil games, but as a horror genre player who feels like those games feel dated, you won’t have much fun with this title. Despite all the advances in capabilities of gaming rigs over the years, this game just does not take advantage of much of them, using simple combat and puzzles that could have been created in the 2000’s. I would certainly recommend this game to fans of the early Resident Evil games but if you aren’t a fan of those games I could see it getting old fast, as most of the “nostalgia” of the game consists of dated mechanics in combat and puzzle solving.