Ground Zero Review

Player(s): 1
Extra Features: Download Content

Ground Zero is a PS1 style retro survival horror developed by Malformation Games. If you’re a fan of old PS1 survival horrors, this game will instantly hook you with its overall look. It plays similar to what you might expect from a modern old-school survival horror comparable to Resident Evil 1-3. Ground Zero takes place during a post apocalypse in South Korea. After a meteor strike, the country is left in ruin and the population has mutated. A Korean operative and her Canadian partner are sent in to investigate.

Visually, this game looks fantastic. It nails the look and overall feel of a PS1 survival horror. The controls are about what you would expect from this type of game. Shoulder buttons are for aiming and shooting and you have to hold down on a button to run. The game has both tank and modern controls. Tank controls are your usual old-school Resident Evil controls and modern controls allow you to move in whatever direction you press. All camera angles are fixed. The game has a decent enough story and voice acting. Voice acting is very similar to an old survival horror – it’s nothing fantastic, but it gets the job done. The voices are sometimes awkward, but that is just part of being an old-school survival horror for me.

I really want to like this game based on what it offers. It’s easily my favorite genre made up to play like the most old-school of that genre. There are many problems that keep me from liking this game however. Naturally, a game like this requires a player to conserve items, which I am all too used to doing with most survival horrors that I play. From the start, it seems like ammo will be plentiful then the game just stops giving you ammo. Item management is a big part. You can only carry so many items and must store items in a chest. The game’s puzzles are decent enough. The combat is nothing amazing but it works. The controls feel pretty good for the most part. Unlike older survival horror games, you can walk while aiming. The aiming feels a bit hard because of the fixed angles, but it’s nice to have free aiming in a fixed angle game.

My main problem with this game is that it forces a player to learn its advanced mechanics right from the start. If you don’t start utilizing blocking, parries, counterattacks, and critical shots early on in the game you will start to waste ammo and get hit a bunch. The worst by far is the critical shot. You can hold down the aim button and then hold down the X button to make your character aim for a “pot shot”. While aiming for a critical shot a left-right timing slider with a target mark will appear and you have to release the X button while the slider is in the middle of the screen. If you fail then you waste ammo. If you go through the beginning areas without utilizing the critical shot, you will run out of ammo fast. This is just like if Capcom forced a player to utilize the RE3 dodge mechanic in order to fight zombies. The RE3 dodge mechanic was spotty and imprecise (but Capcom didn’t force it on you) and so are many of the mechanics in Ground Zero (yet they are forced), so there is a lot of trial and error and resources wasted in trying to learn them. The game has an optional training mode that you can play before starting the main game, but it doesn’t do a good job of explaining some of the mechanics... and also, it’s very boring.

The camera angles in Ground Zero often don’t show good views of the area. It’s so very common to start out in a new area with an enemy that is off screen and coming toward your character. Running toward a corridor that will cause a camera switch will very often show a very nearby enemy that is about to hit you since you can’t see them earlier. Resident Evil did this at times, but Ground Zero does it with nearly every fixed angle. The game also doesn’t feel like the modern controls were tested that much before release. It’s so very common to be running toward a camera angle and then activate a camera switch that will have you running back to the past angle. The game needs some sort of grace period where your character will stay moving in the last direction when the camera switches while modern controls are being used (sort of like old-school DMC controls for its fixed angles). The camera angles mess up the combat very often. It’s hard to try to get a critical shot on an enemy that is far off in the distance (and you can’t see it) or an enemy that is nearly right up on you because you couldn’t see it beforehand thanks to the camera angle.

The developers of the game seem to be already updating the game based on player feedback, which is great to see! At the time of writing this review, they have added tutorial messages that remind you of some of the technical mechanics and they have also added an auto-aim. The game seems to have passion put into it, but it just doesn’t appeal to me with the forced technical mechanics. Literally, if you want an old school RE feel for a game, then you have it in Ground Zero, but if you play the game just like a normal old-school RE, you MUST learn the technical mechanics in order to survive and the game doesn’t allow you to learn them easily.

The Good:
+ Overall good look for a modern PS1 style survival horror

The Bad:
- Fixed camera angles often don’t show a good environment view
- Technical mechanics that are forced on players
- Modern controls are very hard to use when moving fast
- Critical hits require good timing or else you waste ammo