DAYMARE 1998
Should you Capcom and get it?
Visually scratchy, featuring derivative gameplay you actuallyplayed in 1998 and just one original idea (that’s often game-breaking), any admiration you might feel for this shot of nostalgic Resident Evil-ness evaporates the further you play.
A homage to classic Capcom survival horrors from the ’90s, Daymare 19981 demands you escape a town plagued by zombies and mutants. Though split across three characters’ stories, each plays in the same unwieldy way. Combat is slow and functional, solid when facing one or two enemies but against the slew of undead and late-game bosses it becomes unworkable.
That one new idea? Manually loading a gun’s magazine before loading the weapon. It’s laborious and unnecessary. Dropping a clip (easily done given the delays to button inputs) ensures a gun is unusable no matter how much ammo you have squirrelled away. This kind of finicky approach permeates much of the game, and frustration ensues.
The script is terrible. This is the kind of game that subtitles sighs. Characters lack any emotional connection, except anger. Everyone is furious. All the time. Yet for every moment of frustration, or flaky enemy that ignores you, or boss that fails to navigate scenery, there’s a genuinely inventive puzzle that recalls Resident Evil in its prime. If you hanker after the lever-pulling, statue-fiddling brain-teasers Capcom’s series was famed for, this delivers. 2
Is it enough to make you forget you spent ten minutes trying to load a gun, or ignore the way the characters look like they were made in 1998, or forgive a story that delivers the emotional impact of Question Of
Sport repeats? No. Ian Dean