Daymare: 1998

I went into this expecting pain, and this was surprisingly engaging. I had way more fun with this than Resident Evil 2 Remake

1. Definitely needs to have ways to open up areas as shortcuts to reduce back tracking. 2. Better Directions for objective locations, especially floors of buildings. 3. Fountain Puzzle compass needs rotated 90 degrees counter clockwise to be correct. 4. Good at that old school Resident Evil style gameplay and atmosphere. I just finished the fountain puzzle at the point this review was requested.

Interesting for an old resident evil saga fan like me, raccomanded

I loved RE3 as a kid. This looked like a good modern follow up. Rather than do a breakdown, for this review I'll detail the first few times I tried to play it. Attempt 1, "Daymare" difficulty : You're a cynical wetwork op going into a known hard target. You carry a pistol, a rifle, and ten spare pistol rounds for this prolonged 'kill everything' op. You deploy without a second rifle mag and the MC refuses to take his mag out to reload it. You can accumulate bricks of ammo and have an empty rifle, as it will not let you reload a weapon directly OR eject your only magazine. Everything is balanced with tight margins at this difficulty, so you're meleeing instead since the rifle is useless. The MC won't hit a prone enemy, and they are immune to melee attacks while standing up. If you're too close when the invisible switch flips from IMMUNE to FIGHTING, you're instantly grappled, even if you're directly behind them. (Not 'quickly'. Instantly. 0 frames between facing away from you and a grappling QTE). Melee takes ages, so you have to try to time it so punches land AFTER the invincibility but BEFORE you get grappled. One hit takes a third of your health. Many hits visibly land but don't register. It's just awful. I quit, my pistol empty, fifty loose unusable rifle rounds in my pockets, when I got to the point that I had to RNG / Jank a half dozen zombies between save points with one hit remaining. Attempt 2 - Second hardest difficulty : A total cakewalk. Two or three shots on average instead of Daymare's six-ish. Hits take less than a tenth of your HP. Got trapped on terrain early in chapter 2, realized I wasn't being challenged or scared, and quit. Attempt 3 - Mercenary Mode : Ammo everywhere. No survival horror, just action, but VERY easy. Lots of jogging down empty identical corridors while overly dramatic music swells. Quit twenty minutes in, bored, weighed down in consumables. Four hours in, I'm cutting my losses.

Came in with low expectations and it kind of blew me away. Excellent level design and atmosphere. Sound design is also very good. Possibly the most derivative game I have ever played, but well executed generally, with only a few minor issues. As of 2025, this game ran perfectly, and controlled just fine on k+m. However, I did have to turn the mouse sensitivity up to solve some sluggish aim issues. I got this game for free, but I would have been happy if I purchased on a sale.