Outbreak: Endless Nightmares Review for Steam

I reviewed Outbreak: Endless Nightmares by developer and publisher Dead Drop Studios, on PC via Steam, a co-op survival horror roguelike game. 

Gameplay 

Gameplay of Outbreak: Endless Nightmares entails going through anomalies, each with various stages, while collecting pages to understand the story. Players must find their way to the end of each stage through zombies and traps. There is a time limit for each stage, which is marked by the air turning red.  

Weapons 

Each weapon has a “durability” feature, which means how many shots the weapon can shoot. Players must balance  ammunition and durability to get the best use of each weapon. Players can repair weapons to gain more durability, but that requires additional resource management.

Combat 

Combat in Outbreak: Endless Nightmares requires a little getting use to. First off, players cannot move and shoot simultaneously, they must choose one. This choice emphasizes the horror aspect of the game.  

Combat has aim-assist to help target zombies. Players don’t have to worry about precision or accuracy.  

During combat, players cannot run backwards. Instead, they can turn around and run away. One interesting experience was having weapons break in the middle of fighting zombies. Players would have to equip another weapon or be forced to run away. There are unique zombies that the player must aim up or down to shoot. But due to the limitations of being able to aim at certain angles, these zombies can only be dealt with if they are close.

Player Perspective 

Outbreak: Endless Nightmares allows players to switch between first person, third person, and fixed camera. The fixed camera position is like older Resident Evil games, with the camera being locked in each part of the map. Controls get confusing when moving between rooms and it is very easy to make mistakes when changing rooms.  

The first thing to notice in first-person and third-person is the inability to look up or down. Players also cannot walk to the side. 

Inventory 

The inventory system is slot based. Players can only hold a maximum of 8 different items on their characters. They can store as many as they want in their storage chest, which does not have a limit.

Crafting 

The crafting system is not explained, and players must learn it while playing. Some crafting recipes are explained in basic item descriptions, but the whole craft experience is lackluster. 

Tactical Camera 

Outbreak: Endless Nightmares features a “tactical camera,” which allows the user to pause the game and explore the map. When using the tactical camera, the player can explore the map without any worry about zombies attacking them. They can use this time to scope out the level, both for collectibles and what kind of enemies are in the level.

Map 

The map marks everything in the stage. There is no real sense of exploration because the map shows everything. A player could go through a whole stage by only looking at the map.  

Replaying past levels 

On standard difficulty, players must restart anomalies from stage 1. Unfortunately, each stage seems to be selected at random from premade levels.  

Pros: 

I enjoyed the combat system. Ammunition is already a limited resource but adding weapon durability added complexity to seasoned players. When fighting, I either had to fight zombies or run away. A few times, I ran out of ammo or my weapon broke, and I was forced to run away to come up with a new plan.  

Cons: 

The tactical camera feels lazy and only serves to fix the problems of the current camera systems. Fixed camera does not show all the collectibles, first-person and third-person do not show obstacles at your feet. For a few stages, I abused the tactical camera’s innate pause feature to explore the stage and plan my movements. There were no consequences to me using the tactical camera. The tactical camera also let me explore parts of the map that I could not access (this could be viewed as a Pro). 

Movement feels wonky. I was getting annoyed at how limited I was in traversing the map. Turning was set to a certain speed, which roots me in place and takes me out of the immersion on the game’s world. 

Personal Opinion: 

A lot of features of Outbreak: Endless Nightmares are reminiscent of older horror games with fixed cameras, limited movement, and archaic inventory. But those old features do not hold up well in today’s generation of games. They add unnecessary challenges and allow players to exploit them. I used the tactical camera to pause the game and had plenty of time to plan out the stage. These features pull me out of the horror atmosphere of the game and allowed me to explore the map.  

I enjoyed the limitation on movement during combat. I was forced to choose to fight the zombies or run away. It was a great experience running out of ammo or having my weapon break in the middle of a fight and panicking for my next move. 

I had more headache and confusion than enjoying Outbreak: Endless Nightmares. I can see where it would be very enjoyable to older players who have nostalgia with older games with the same features, but it was too difficult for me to stay invested. 

Check Out the Outbreak: Endless Nightmares Trailer:

Outbreak: Endless Nightmares will be released on multiple platforms this week, Wednesday, May 19, for $19.99. Pre-orders are now available for Nintendo Switch and Xbox. You can also wishlist it for PC via Steam.

Outbreak Complete Collection will also be available May 19 (PlayStation and Xbox only) for $79.99.

For more information, please visit: http://www.deaddropstudios.com

Steven Wang

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Each game is a mastery of its own. They're worth playing through. My current go-to games are Dota 2 and Hollow Knight. I have Overwatch, Titanfall 2, and Apex Legends as social games.

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