Once there was horror
Just as we had already noticed from previous builds shown in the press, the new playable part of Daymare: 1998it shows what good has been seen before, but ingranging the fifth under a whole range of circumstantial aspects far more important than it thinks.
The game, for those who did not know, inherited the survival horror mechanics with a strong component of puzzle-solving typical of the late 90’s / early 2000 games, but with a clearly modern and dynamic third-person game view that we all we learned to know too well after leaving the seminal fourth chapter of the Biohazard saga.
The demo starts in the harsh meanders of the Aegis Laboratories, a mysterious Pacific based military research center. As a HADES team agent, we will have to try to stem a ‘ infection that transforms human beings into revolting and seriously dangerous creatures (has anybody said BOW?).
The setting will turn us back for at least 20 years, a time when horror video games offered zombie-infested labs and other monstrosities, made even more fascinating now thanks to the wise use of the Unreal Engine 4 – we will not tire never to repeat it – make the product in development at Invader’s Roman studios a visual spectacle worthy of the great international development houses (despite the lack of case files, as well as the absence of a HUD screen and other marginal details): animations the protagonist, the enemies, and the various environmental effects of the outline (whether they were fire or water) drifted into a truly astonishing setting,
However, Daymare: 1998it is not the usual example of illegitimate son without art or part, since the similarities with the highest members of the industry of the last century also touch on the side of the gameplay, perhaps the most full of times when it comes to “independent” titles from a ridge of the Resident Evil saga.
This is primarily due to the fact that Invader Studios militates people who have survived horror, and so many. But beware: this is not a mere copy attempt to paste other people’s ideas, but a meltdown of everything that worked together with an equally wise “what we would like to see in such a game but we have never seen it before?”. It comes from itself, therefore, that the product produced and developed by Michele Giannone and associates is based on playful and conceptual bases. And just for this reason, you have to be deeply grateful.
Where will I put my hex key?
First, to play in this yet another playable demo is the new method of recharging our firearms: by pressing a simple button, we can drop our loader (maybe not out of stock) and replace it with one containing one the maximum possible ammunition, with the possibility of recovering from the ground the fall that intentionally dropped previously.
No more “infinite refills”, but a logical sense of conservation of the (few) bullets available, so as not to push a bullet to ammunition. But not only: the inventory is full of hands from the classic “slot” system of the first chapters of the Resident Evil saga, with a handful of panels to handle with weapons, cures and objects of various kinds.
Caution: being on a digital device located on the protagonist’s arm, inspecting the inventory will not automatically pause the game, which will generate moments of panic in case you choose the wrong time to pick up a particular item from your personal baggage.
This welcome point of realism has been strengthened by the two short sections of gameplay we’ve been able to test, culminating no less than with a boss fight that winked at a well-known Bio-Organic Weapons recurring in the first Resident Evil (it really serves tell you who we are talking about?). We start from a mysterious room of the Aegis labs, with the primary goal of lifting an elevator: to do this we will have to solve a first environmental puzzle, restarting the current by disabling some terminals that have shortened the system.
Of course, raising the hoist will not be easy, as we will soon be attacked by a bunch of walking monstrosities ready to make our skin (whose number has seriously put us tough). We could hit the various enemies in various parts of the body (the target system still needed various corrections) and the feedback returned is no doubt that of an excellent TPS, albeit extremely traditional.
