Outbreak Reviews

Hey I got to hand it to you this game is really fun. Especially Co-op. I recommend buying this if you want a good surviver 2d horror.

Bad controlls, no fun at all (not even with friends), full price is a joke. Better take your time and play something else.

This game is really a lot of fun! It is pretty much a hardcore rogue like game that you can play with your friends. On the easiest difficulty there's plenty of ammo and healing to go around and after learning the game's spawning algorithm it really just comes down to exploring the map and finding where everything is located, once you have a better feel for the map and where things spawn you can pick up the pace in the harder difficulties and rely less on having an ample amount of ammo and healing supplies. All in all this game is a load of fun, I would definitely recommend playing with friends, but if that isn't an option the single player AI is actually not half bad.

Old style survivor horror at its finest with puzzles to solve and zombies to kill. Single player AI is not bad at all, just incase you cant find a match for multiplayer. Optional new control schemes, and camera angles makes it easy for a console or pc experience. The atmosphere that this game has is very convincing, It feels like a completed game and there is always a real challenge no matter the difficulty setting. Overall you are getting your money's worth with or without the sales. The flashlight and laser bundle is basically the only dlc you will need for this game.

Game has most of the elements of resident evil outbreak which makes it great but the current bugs, glitches and other issues make it unenjoyable at this state. Controls were also quite difficult to deal with. If the game gets updates and patches to fix all the problems ill probably come back and give it a good review. But as of now its a no for me.

Decent little game, especially for the price, sort of like the older RE games as opposed to the newer ones, in a top down shooter format. Had no tech issues, bought it and one of the flashlights, was quite fun, and saw no big issues that bothered me. I think a lot of foilks expect it to be more run and gun, it's not, there is enough of that but it's more investagotory and RPG like, as I said, more like the originals. Recommended for those who want a little more of the original RE flavor. (I love all the news one too, i'm fine with both formats).

Neat little game. The developer is very active with the community - already implementing many features requested by the fans (for free) including: Optional new control schemes, as the original control schemes were quite unforgiving. Additional characters More balanced difficulty if you enjoyed the RE: Outbreak series and don't mind the perspective then I'd definitely recommend it.

What do you get when you cross a love of the Resident Evil franchise (the good ones) and a developer that is fanatically obsessed with making things the best they can be? You get Outbreak, a carefully crafted homage to the original recipe of survival horror. Graphically speaking, this is not a AAA title. But what it lacks in stunning visuals it certainly makes up for in an atmosphere oozing with character. Your hearbeat races as enemies appear in your field of view, vents creak as someone (or something) lurks in the shadows, wind and rain can be heard outside and the satisfying *thud* of bullets striking flesh keeps you immersed during every playthrough. You are given a number of options with respect to how you would like to play. Be it single player with AI or multiplayer with 3 of your friends. There are also different modes to play such as Onslaught which pits you against an increasingly more difficult wave of enemies with ammo and confidence dwindling after each enemy falls. I personally enjoy the Nightmares, which is a deliberately slower paced ode to true survival horror. For a game that doesn't rely on flashy presentation to garner attention, it truly deserves a playthrough just for the overall design and frantic multiplayer. The sense of tension is palpable and no matter how good you think you're doing, things can go south just as fast. Top that off with a developer that is more active in the community than I've ever seen, this is an easy recommendation. This is a solo dev's labor of love, so go ahead and share that love. Buy a few copies. Your friends will thank you.

Let me start off by saying that I understand the developer was going for heavy amounts of homage when they made this game. That being said, at some point you have to decide if you want your homage to be so strict that it detracts from enjoyable gameplay, or even puts people off from buying the game. Outbreak looks interesting enough; control a single character while exploring different locations in a zombie apocalypse. Weapons, ammunition, and other supplies are scarce - it is the end of the world, after all. The atmosphere is dark and foreboding, and there are bits and pieces of people who couldn't escape or survive all over the place, reminding you just how close you are ending up the same way. At first glance, this sounds great - but then some of the issues start to crop up. In the normal game, zombies will continue to respawn just off-screen as you play, and combat with those zombies is.. to put it nicely, cumbersome. The first ones you see in the tutorial move almost as fast as you do while running, which means you need a lot of distance before you can turn around and take aim. The amount of stun and knockback a weapon does is less than the amount of time required to take another shot. This means that being blindsided by a zombie and not being able to get away will defintitely get your character injured. Combine that with the choice of control scheme.. The original Resident Evil games had what fans call "tank controls," and the developer of Outbreak chose to emulate them. You move directly forward with one key and directly backward with another, but pushing left or right turns which way your character is facing rather than making you step to the side. The reason this worked in Resident Evil is because the scene kept changing; each new room had the camera placed in a different place, sometimes even multiple places in the same location. The control system they used ensured that the player wouldn't mistakenly turn the wrong direction or leave the area by letting the camera determine their movement. In the majority of Outbreak - at least what I had seen by the time I wrote this review - the placement of the camera is directly overhead, centered on the player. There are times where the camera shifts to focus on the entirety of a small room, but that was very rare. Even with the inclusion of "the player always faces the mouse pointer"-style movement, they kept the tank-style controls. W moves you toward the cursor, S moves you away, but now A and D are entirely useless. There are four characters to choose from in the game, and each of them is almost the exact same. They have one particular skill that differentiates them, and a few pages of a personal backstory as to what happened before they were caught up in the zombie apocalypse, but that's basically it. The game's story is found by reading articles and memos found across the game, but the only way to hear the full story is to play through at the hardest difficulty the game has to offer, which would likely require a dedicated group of friends to play through it cooperatively. Not having friends that I play games with means I'll likely never get to find out the majority of what's going on in the game. It honestly feels like the developer was determined to keep his vision for this game alive and pure, and wasn't willing to compromise for any reason. Having the story gated behind coop-required higher difficulties, having a control scheme that doesn't make sense for a top-down action game, endlessly spawning streams of zombies that are far more annoying to deal with than they are unsettling or scary.. it's just too much. I bought the game for $3.99 during Steam Summer Sale 2017, and that still feels like too much for the amount of frustrating gameplay I would be allowed to experience while playing solo. Regardless, take any recommendation for or against a game with a grain of salt. Do your own research, and take a look at the game's demo before you decide what to do with your money.

[b]EDIT:[/b] Special thanks to Drop Dead Studios for responding to this review. Don't solely take my word for it if you're thinking about playing this game. I haven't spent a lot of time playing it to be honest, but I'm going to fix that. Pleasepleasepleaseplease[i]please[/i] look at the comments on this review, because the developer really does care about their game and improving upon it. So glad DDS is reaching out to players for feedback. [b]EDIT #2:[/b] I have had a chance to try the "Outbreak" scenario after a recent update added an AI partner in single-player & plan to sample Multiplayer's new scaling system. The AI is servicable (i played as the new character Nora on normal & got Quies as an AI partner), but players may find themselves slowed down or in a pickle sometimes if they want their computer companion to make it out alive, as it appears to have a set-in stone response to situations (follow the player, shoot enemies who are in a close enough proximity that the AI is almost guaranteed to take damage, engage enemies the player faces in a combat stance at a certain range, etc). I almost tanked the "Outbreak" finale because a spider was gnawing on my friend while a boss focused on me, haha. I sort of wish I could give a "half-thumb" rating instead of a negative one, because I do like the game a little. [b]I cannot recommend the game in its current state to people looking for multiplayer, as the problems to be mentioned shortly make it a frustrating experience. I am still very interested in this game, so I will keep tabs on it and adjust this review accordingly. I've still got a soft spot for a game that revives the Resident Evil spin-off series. <3[/b] This game is unfortunately too clunky right now, even for one featuring tank controls. I know what game it's trying to emulate (Resident Evil Outbreak) but the time taken to ready a gun or melee weapon & fire it is much slower and can get the player damaged in circumstances where, say, the camera is extremely zoomed in and you cannot notice an enemy until they hit you. Speaking of enemies, they move rather fast. Going further with individualizing characters by giving them a special move (i.e. a duck or kick) similar to Resident Evil Outbreak's cast would also be greatly appreciated. Melee weapons break very, very easily in this game; 2-3 enemy encounters on normal difficulty was enough for an axe, climbing pick or knife to break. This is a glaring issue due to the fact that enemies never stop spawning. Multiplayer itself is way too hard right now, scaling itself rather high if you have just 2 players in a game; "Normal" becomes like "Very hard on Nightmare" in comparison to Single Player, which I had much less difficulties dealing with enemies. Enemies spawn more frequently and do much more damage. This wasn't such a problem in Outbreak because most enemies spawned a fair distance away, at a modest interval--they also had to get through doors first most times, which cease to exist if & after they are unlocked. Also worth mentioning is how meddlesome narrow hallways happen to be in coop, because you cannot shoot through somebody. Some hallways are simply too thin for multple players to engage enemies together while traversing through them. [b][NOTICE]: There has been a recent update which increases player health & healing effectiveness if games don't have full people--the less survivors, the better the benefits. I haven't had a chance to try multiplayer since this update, but will update when I do.[/b] That being said, I am grateful that someone has attempted to make their own version of a game which is almost impossible to play nowadays. $15.00 is a bit much at the moment, given these issues & the lack of server popularity to try enjoying the game with other people. . The ability to personalize yourself with flashlight/laser/character colors is a nice way to differentiate yourself more, and the character designs themselves are refreshing after getting to know RE:O's characters so well. Earning & using one-time items to help boost survival is also an interesting concept. I'll continue watching this game in anticipation to see what the future holds. Hopefully this feedback helps!