Outbreak: The New Nightmare for Xbox One review — a total disappointment

I was excited when I saw that a game inspired by Resident Evil: Outbreak was releasing out of Early Access on the Xbox Ane. Words cannot depict how deflated I was when I played it, though, and saw but how terrible this game is. It's painfully obvious that it needed much more than time in development, and because of that, I struggled to find annihilation was worth my time.

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Story: The only thing that's decent

Earlier delving into the myriad of glaring flaws present in Outbreak: The New Nightmare, I desire to acknowledge what it gets (somewhat) correct commencement: the story.

Nothing here is anything special, simply none of it is terrible, either. The background to the game is interesting: a zombie infection breaks out in an isolated boondocks in the central U.S., and you are trapped within the halls of a hospital. Your goal is to survive for as long as possible, discover the outbreak'due south source, and endeavour to escape. It's a tried-and-truthful premise that, while cliché, works well plenty.

The best aspect of the writing is in the backstories of the characters yous tin play equally. Each one has a detailed history that gives contextual information near their lives and makes them people I desire to see survive this apocalypse. Backstories like these can become a long fashion.

Gameplay and performance: Pathetic

This clip from my playthrough should requite yous a good idea of how many problems there are with this game.

The worst thing about this game is the controls. They're clunky, unresponsive, and just neglect to work in general, which got me killed on several occasions. This goes for the camera, too, and the inability to see into rooms I'k entering makes it incommunicable to see an ambush coming.

Then, there's the animations. Everything in Outbreak just looks wrong. A constabulary officeholder kitted upwards in total body armor shouldn't walk like he has a stick up his ass and shouldn't hold his handgun two inches from his face up when he fires it. Half the time, you lot tin't even tell what your character is doing.

Next upwards on the chopping block is the user interface, which is confusing and difficult to utilize. It'southward incommunicable to navigate quickly and easily, which means you'll be spending several minutes just trying to figure out how to switch weapons or take pain pills.The enemies you encounter appear to spawn from thin air shut to your grapheme, unfairly giving you no time to react.

Finally, at that place'southward the piss-poor performance. This game barbarous victim to repeated frame-rate dips and screen hitches from start to terminate.

All of this comes together to create an experience that's difficult to play.

Presentation: Not worthy of praise

I had to brand certain I wasn't playing my dusty Nintendo GameCube when I first booted up Outbreak: The New Nightmare, because it has the graphics quality of a game from one. It would be i thing if the visuals were stylized, but it's clear that the developer wanted to create a grounded setting with this game. The fact the graphics are this lame really leaves no excuse for the performance bug, either.

The red on top is the out-of-place jazzy music that plays in the background, equally if I was taking a stroll through a family park and not trying to survive the zombie apocalypse. It's not fitting at all.

Outbreak: The New Nightmare review conclusion

Outbreak: The New Nightmare is completely devoid of any satisfying experiences other than the backstories of its characters. Betwixt the awful animations, clunky controls, poor camera angles, bad graphics and music, and more, you should avoid this game at all costs — unless you're looking for a cheap source of comedy.

Cons:

Literally everything else.

Outbreak: The New Nightmare is available now on Xbox One and Steam for $eight.99.

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This review was conducted on an Xbox One, using a copy purchased by the reviewer.

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