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When I first got to play the preview build of Ground Zero earlier this year, I was already addicted to the game’s classic survival horror feel that paid homage to the classics of the genre. It stayed authentic to the survival horror heyday but had some small touches that made it feel just a little more approachable and accessible to modern audiences in all the best ways. This is while keeping the complexity and quality from the formative games that defined the genre.
A few months later, now that the full game is out, I’ve gotten a chance to explore everything it has to offer and see how the rest of the game fared past the first few chapters I got to experience back in February.
Since I had already laid a lot of the basics out in my preview, I’ll cover more of the in-depth and overall impressions from the game as a whole here and impart some final thoughts.
Narrative
Starting with the narrative elements, the writing and dialogue are surprisingly well-written and well-performed by the voice actors. Instead of trying to pay homage to the corny voice acting that most retro survival horror titles go for, Ground Zero actually takes its story pretty seriously, and this works well for immersion. It can feel a little strange at times, as far as the audio quality, since the characters are speaking through facemasks the whole time, but it’s far from a problem and does fit in with a lot of classic survival horror voice acting in that regard.
Seo-Yeon being bilingual and switching between English and Korean on-the-fly depending who she’s talking to is a nice touch that you don’t see very often in games, especially games in this sub-genre. The cutscenes are also cinematic and add to the immersion in the story, which is a nice touch compared to what most of this sub-genre typically provides. The animations are accurately somewhat blocky and awkward sometimes, which fits the visual style and is adequate in telling the story.
One of the only major downsides of the story is its length, as in a few hours, it started to overstay its welcome just a little bit, but never got truly boring or felt like a chore necessarily. Some may love the longer length, but it’s a little bit tiresome for this type of game, which, at least in its heyday, would typically range from around 6-8 hours on a first playthrough. But Ground Zero seems to average around 10 hours as a minimum, but may be higher for some players who like to take their time.
It’s not that the gameplay gets any less fun, but the story starts to run out of steam and you start to repeat some of the same types of objectives over and over, adding just a little fatigue in the pacing toward the end. The branching paths that can lead to entirely different narrative sections are also a nice touch and could definitely add some variety to the experience if you do choose to do more than one playthrough, but the length will be pretty similar overall regardless of your path choices.
Gameplay
As far as the gameplay, there’s a lot to cover here, starting with the variety of options of how you’d like the experience to feel. Before you start playing, you’re presented with a host of options, which include choosing tank controls or more modern 3D controls, and also some visual options, including the option to downscale the game to look more authentic to a PS1-era game, or keep the resolution higher to have some added sharpness and clarity. Even in full resolution, Ground Zero is still built to look like a PS2-era game, but being able to tweak these options is a nice touch, even though it’s a pretty common option for this sub-genre nowadays.
Being able to fine-tune your aim with an analog stick in all directions after drawing your weapon, similar to something like Carrier or Cold Fear, is a very nice touch that adds some strategy and technique to most of the encounters, with a lot more control than something like the first few Resident Evil games, for instance. There’s also a dodge mechanic that’s straight out of Resident Evil 3, along with parry and counter-attack maneuvers, but unfortunately, these moves aren’t very intuitive and feel just slightly out of place for a game of this style. But they can work to your advantage if you feel like getting close enough to your enemies to use them.
Besides the various movement and dodging mechanics, there’s also a critical hit system where headshots and weak point shots do more damage, and even a “critical shot” mechanic. This is where completing a charge-up animation and timing your shot just right can get you higher damage, or even break locks or obstacles that stand in your way, similar to Resident Evil 2 Remake’s lesser-known critical shot system.
While holding true to a lot of the hallmarks of the classic survival horror genre, Ground Zero also has a handful of quality-of-life improvements throughout, adding just a little bit more accessibility and smoothness in the experience, and you can choose between several difficulty levels, including separate difficulty levels for the combat and puzzles. On the Normal difficulty, combat and resource management felt well-balanced and reminiscent of the classics, where you’ll have to be mindful of how you use all your resources and stay sharp in your combat skills to make it through. The puzzles on the Normal setting all felt relatively simple enough aside from one or two of them that required some extra digging or investigation, but still felt very in line with what you’d get from a classic game in the genre.
Every area you’ll traverse feels unique and yet familiar to something you may have played in an older game, and even though they’re all technically rendered in low-poly 3D and have the occasional sweeping camera shot ala Silent Hill or Resident Evil: CODE Veronica, they nearly perfectly recall the feel of the 2D backgrounds of old. Unfortunately, some of the areas are far too dark to be able to see what you’re looking at very well, even with your flashlight turned on, in which case the map comes in handy to more clearly see what paths are available to you or what items you may have missed.
Extras/Performance
There’s tons of unlockable items, difficulties, and costumes, as well as some scattered collectibles and an unlockable mode that’s a combination of the Mercenaries modes from Resident Evil 3 and 4. This mode features 8 stages with 6 characters, presenting a huge level of challenge as you race the clock with limited resources to reach your goal, and will add a lot of replay value for players who are up for the challenge.
On a more technical and performance level, the game generally runs well across the platforms, but there were still a decent amount of buggy issues from time to time when it came to the audio, camera, and animations. While none of it was bothersome enough to ruin the game, it was a bit of a nuisance every once in a while.
Conclusion
Ground Zero often evokes the unique experience of making you feel like you’re playing a “lost” classic survival horror game from the late PS1 to early PS2 era for the first time, which is not a claim that too many games can make anymore outside of a select few. For the low price tag, this is definitely one of the best classic survival horror experiences you can get in modern times, and it stands neck-in-neck with some of the genre’s greats, so if that’s the kind of experience you’re looking for, this will be one you don’t want to miss.
(9 / 10)
Amazing
(9 / 10)Rely on Horror Review Score Guide
Review codes were provided for Steam and Xbox Series consoles by the publisher.
