Recent reviews by illethP

One of the most passionate and phenomenal works I've ever played. Despite me being an absolute FPS-head, this fixed-camera survival horror game has turned me into a fixed-attention fanatic. Overall, huge kudos to Malformation Games for this piece of art and congratulations on your first release! From the original soundtrack and scoring, to the level design, world building, and to the gameplay itself, everything about this game is awesome.

As of this review, yes; there are some optimization bugs and GPU utilization issues (that were quickly addressed and being worked on), but nothing on my end that took away from enjoying the game. I just wanted to put it out there that I'm not ignoring this but also that it isn't a dealbreaker whatsoever. Oh, and for the love of god, this is a fixed-camera game; DO NOT USE MODERN CONTROLS. These games are built with tank controls in mind and it only takes a little bit of gameplay to get used to. Using "Modern" controls in a game built to be retro makes no sense but is there as an option.

Ground Zero, despite being a "Resident Evil clone" as it's primary inspiration alongside Silent Hill does a wonderful job establishing its own identity and world. The environments are grandiose and dilapidated yet full of life (a very invasive life that is, haha) and the camera angles exemplify the immense amount of love poured into it all. There's a huge variety of weapons, a large amount of replayability via different story routes/decisions and challenges, a proper roster of enemies to face, and overall just a fresh take on the genre. This game is hard, by the way. Don't come in expecting a cakewalk but also don't expect artificial or unfair difficulty either. This game really engages you and makes you think outside the box.

My only real gripes with the game is that the combat feels a bit lackluster, primarily with melee (to which I have no constructive criticism for as I have no idea what would make it feel better) and the "critical shot" system. There's hardly any punishment for the use of critical shots except wasting 1 ammo and if you do get it, any gun will 1-shot kill anything except bosses even if it isn't a headshot. For the sake of ammo economy, you should be doing this at all times and personally, I find that a bit cheesy as it effectively makes every enemy feel like fodder. Otherwise, it is up to the player to make self-imposed rules to not use an overpowered mechanic in the game. Even without critical shots, the game provides you with a generous amount of ammo on the base difficulties (Easy/Normal/Hard) and you're only really required to pick your fights on the higher difficulties. As it stands right now, critical hits are purely RNG with headshots and specific weapons having higher rates. I think critical shots should not be an instakill, but instead be 3x damage and procurable upon deliberate headshot or something, giving it more skill expression and less excessive value. Aside from this, I have 0 other qualms with the game aside from some nitpicky things about the UI and UX, but nothing has overshadowed how much I enjoy Ground Zero.

Well done, Malformation Games. You made a certified classic. <3 Here's to hoping for some cool updates in the future!

I dabbled in survival horror a decade or two ago back when my dad would play the original Resident Evil titles on the PSX for us, but I never really dug my feet into them. Over the years, I primarily watched gameplay of the genre, as it wasn't fully my cup of tea. I'm more an FPS-head, and very biased to that genre. I've played some survival horror games since, but I could count them on one hand and it was mainly because they were all first-person (RE7/8, Cry of Fear, and probably another 1 or 2). Going back to the classic style of survival horror with tank controls was definitely a challenge, but I got the hang of it very quickly and boy, GZ was such a wonderful experience. I don't normally write reviews, but this project is clearly quite an undertaking and one of immense passion and I love it.

I originally had a much more verbose review detailing how much I loved all the gameplay, music/sound design, graphics, aesthetics, and level design, but it was way too long and I'll instead just keep the bits about what I thought hurt my experience, as I could go on for eons about how thoroughly zooted and eager this game made me.

GZ is a survival horror game. Typically, you don't feel very powerful and almost all enemies have very threatening presences. For preface, I only played Hard and Very Hard. On Hard, I took the beach route and ended up amassing almost 100 rounds of .50 AE and despite getting shafted in CQC as I was learning, resources felt too plentiful. The common humanoid "infected" is woefully predictable and easy to parry, even when multiple are present. I do like how well Seo-Yeon can defend herself, but these enemies felt more like time-sinks than threats. Even on Very Hard, I primarily used my knife/CQC and most of my deaths were because of dogs or I was greeding too hard with the knife and not actually utilizing my guns because they felt too strong. Later on, I realized that dodging was just insanely powerful due to the i-frames (time spent invulnerable to damage) and distance-creation it provides. It's not that I think dodging should be removed, but it trivializes combat because of how often you can use it. Even with that out of the picture, you can get through the entire demo rather easily even when using the knife 95% of the time. I want to focus on each mechanic or difficulty aspect separately.

Again; I love parry mechanics, but I feel the window to do it needs some adjustment; it's just a bit too forgiving. IIRC, you're given 500ms to do it. Even in a frantic FPS like KF2, your window is only 400ms. I know that seems like a negligible amount, but I think it's a great reference point or at least worth notice. Notably, the common zombie infecteds' grab attack is painstakingly predictable (which is reasonable to a degree), but then they also have a quick swing attack that I think feels unreasonably random and hard to react to. Dogs have a similar problem, where their stand-up charge-and-grab attack is even easier to counter but then also have a weird charging animation attack they do when they're right in front of you or elsewise just immediately bite, making CQC with them really inconsistent-feeling. Overall, parrying is in a good place, but the combat can feel very "XD random" with certain attack animations and parrying could be a bit harder with how much it already rewards you.

Dodging, on top of already having great uses for speedrunning, is absurdly overpowered. It uses no resource (such as stamina, as far as I'm aware), has decently quick cooldown, and it feels like you're immune to damage for the entirety of the animation. I was having trouble dealing with the spitter infected in CQC, so I tried dodging instead of parrying and man, it made the fights a joke. It's a worthy mechanic, but it needs to be tuned down. Give it limited use via stamina or so or less i-frames. You can literally dodge into projectiles and nullify them.

It's my favorite weapon, but I wasn't a fan of how quickly you swing with it. I think for the sake of the survival horror aspect, Seo-Yeon should swing it slower for more damage. As of right now, it felt too easy to greed up to 4 hits after a counter-attack and then go right into a parry. Think of it as "preserve the damage-per-second, but lower the opportunities to deal damage". I don't think it should be drastically slower, but it's a little too good at stagger-locking enemies with the "random crits" and it looks kinda goofy just wailing away at mach-5 with it.

Enemies are kind of pushovers in one-on-one scenarios and I feel that is mainly due to their attack cooldowns. On Very Hard, I noticed the change in AI, but it still didn't feel like I was as pressured as I should have been. Most combat scenarios are just dealing with two at once, and at rare times 3, and while that is fine, they're just hardly a threat when alone. This doesn't really encapsulate survival horror well to me, and I think all the difficulties should provide that. If there’s a way to fine-tune the attack animations to make them more consistent, game-sense intensive, and readable, I think it'd be well-worth to make the enemies individually stronger as well. It ups the ante and reverence from the player, making it feel more like a risk to engage in combat. Dogs and spitters felt like the only real challenge, with dogs being difficult due to janky animations and spitters being difficult to engage in CQC.

There's just too much of everything, I think. Very Hard was at least mildly reasonable but even that felt like it could notch down on how much was given. I was genuinely surprised at how much the game felt like it was coddling the player on Hard, and I didn't play Normal long enough after my playthroughs to see just how much I would've gotten but damn, there was already a lot there. If inventory space is the only thing holding the player back, they'll just take the time to backtrack and pick up the leftover abundance of resources behind them. I think forcing the player to be more efficient with their resources, be it ammunition, safe-cracking devices, or serums is very much due if GZ is to feel more desperate and stressful. Most players are going to play Normal and well, feel normal with how much they're given (I'm hilarious I know), and I don't think that'd bode well for the intended impression GZ wants to give off.

I still had a blast playing Ground Zero. This was such a wonderfully refreshing experience for me and I'm just itching to get more. The game is so well-polished already (aside from some performance, likely due to my outdated hardware) and I cannot overstate how much I enjoyed playing the demo. I explored all I could when I played through the beach route on Hard, then again on the Amusement Park on Very Hard, then did two "speedruns" on Very Hard to get the S+ ranking with the other to see if I could get a 10 minute run. In an industry plagued with publisher-ruined development, GZ is truly a diamond in the rough and I want nothing but the best for it. Immense kudos to Malformation Games for this wonderful work of art and passion and a hopeful kiss on the forehead to Kwalee for supporting them and letting them cook.

i think i like it