Outbreak: The New Nightmare (PlayStation 4) Review

When Outbreak: The New Nightmare begins, there is an awesome wave of dread and regret that washes over the screen. The Unity Engine logo pops up, and then there are extremely muddy looking stock images of rock formations with long paragraphs that explain the story. There are no interesting visuals to handle the narration, or any animations, and the writing that glows off the screen is the least interesting combination of words imaginable. Skipping this desperately in order to hopefully get to the gameplay, will only lead to a sorry menu screen, with an extremely confusing layout.

Selecting 'Story' would logically begin the main game. Unfortunately, this is not what the designer was going for, and all this does is present the same rock formations with the same text to read again. To play the game proper, users have to select 'Missions,' and then it is realized that this is not going to be a completed game, but rather one developer's attempt to assemble a bunch of ideas into a single package, where none of them are properly connected. Imagine playing Resident Evil HD Remaster, but instead of one long seamless experience of playing through the story, each area was sectioned off into a menu. No items or equipment carries over, and there is no sense of progression other than the pointless RPG mechanics for each of the stock characters.

Quality survival-horror relies on atmosphere. To build it, artists rely on light, shadow, sound design and design. Outbreak: The New Nightmare does not use any of this at all. Most of the assets are seemingly stock models bought off the Unity store, and placement of objects is haphazard. Even the monsters are sloppily implemented, and will clip through each other, often with their animations almost synchronized. It gets really ugly when just walking around since screen tearing is constant as the frame rate sputters along.

Gameplay consists of very brief survival-horror scenarios of solving a puzzle, or getting a thing to put into the thing while blasting, or casually jogging past diseased boys. The level ends by just standing on the exit marker, but make sure all the threats in the area are dead, or else the mission won't end. It is not just impressively broken and unfinished, but it is hilariously easy. The main selling point of Outbreak: The New Nightmare is that it meshes classic survival-horror gameplay with Zombies Ate My Neighbours-style couch co-op. This is something that is rarely attempted and the developer should be commended for having some guts to actually put it off. Unfortunately, the core game is an unmitigated disaster that it is only recommended to bring to an enemy instead of a friend.

There is no drive to keep going in Outbreak: The New Nightmare. The only progression is a grind for abilities and junk that do not make the game more enjoyable. It is extremely rough and buggy beyond what should be legal in a product. At the very least, the developer did put the effort to include actual tank-controls, and offered a lot of accessibility options.