Release Date: May 18, 2021
Publisher/Developer: Dead Drop Studios LLC
Platform: PlayStation 5 (reviewed), PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Steam, Nintendo Switch
Price: $19.99

There are several games in the Outbreak series since it’s inception in 2017. Given the solo game developer’s apparent love of Resident Evil and other classic horror games, the series has dabbled in a few different camera angles and general genre tropes. Outbreak: Endless Nightmares attempts the triple play by offering the ability to change between oldschool static third-person camera, behind the back, and first-person gameplay on the fly, but squeezing in the roguelike/lite into such a game does put a damper on the overall atmosphere, and whilst the camera changes, the controls don’t really, which really shows where improvements have come through the years since the classic days of the original Resident Evil.

Upon booting up the game, I sadly had difficulty getting things set up for comfortable play. The menus are mildly unintuitive, with similar colors between what is being selected and what is not. You are able to choose a character out of a set of several, but the first text box describing the story had the default character’s name in it. I started out trying the classic third-person static cameras but soon had to change, as the first screen is pitch black, looking away from the building you are supposed to go into. I was also confused as a first-time player of the series that there are strange hooded spirits that look deadly, but they’re really there to give you tips! I wasted ammo on those things! The third person perspective sometimes messed with me realizing there was a path to go down thanks to the angle. That third person perspective was helpful in looking around corners sometimes too, though. Despite it saying you could play your way and choose what you wanted, I simply found myself rotating through them to find the perspective that best worked for the situation.

There’s a main hub world, but once you find certain entryways, you go into semi-procedurally generated zones. The problem is “procedurally generated” and “survival horror” are a tough mix. Well-crafted survival horror gives you just enough ammo to make it to the next safe space, and allows particular enemies around certain corners or to bust through walls. Once you put a basic randomizer on this, you throw all that out the window. Enemies are usually just kind of standing in a room until you attack, and you may go into an area thinking you are stocked up only to run out of ammo, or worse, have weapons break. I had guns break before they ran out of the clip that was in them when I found them at times too...and adding in the traditional Resident Evil limited inventory slots mean you can’t really hold on to everything you need. I’d have to run around a room, dropping and juggling items to pick up, then run back through the rooms to pick up something if I ran out of ammo. It didn’t help to have inexplicable lasers that hurt you but don’t affect zombies.

The game begins with a major disclaimer about scenes of violence and gore. Whether it be laser or zombie bite, you seem to have a few hundred feet of small intestine to launch out of your head when damaged. Whether a zombie bit me in the chest or my ankle got lasered, I saw the same blast of blood.

There may be fans of this series, and reading into it, the series has done fairly well for a solo developer, and I applaud them for that. Hardcore fans of the series may be interested in the minimal addition to the lore and story, but everything I see here simply points to the fact that Survival Horror of the Resident Evil style and Procedural Generation just don’t splice well together.

Pros:
-The 3D rendered rooms do look like oldschool RE in the fixed camera perspective, despite them not being static images.
-Randomization brings about new gameplay variants every time, and the ones with good chance of victory are fine.
-Multiplayer is a welcome addition to the genre

Cons:
-Tank controls are classic, but do not belong in the “behind the back” or “first person” perspective and become clunky.
-Three full menu buttons to get mixed up (map, inventory, and game)
-Roguelike does not leave room for survival horror to do it’s job.

Thanks to Dead Drop Studios for providing a code for review.

Outbreak: Endless Nightmares (PS5) Review