Necrosis: Dawn of Dread

Simple yet fun with plenty of content and regular updates. This game has so much potential, keep it up!!

畫風雖然過時，但實屬有趣難得的多人遊戲，整體而言就是多人版的初代3D惡靈古堡的感覺

[h1]Post-patch Addendum[/h1] Many issues related to combat, Zombie and Teammate AI, and balance of the Manor level that you will see me talk about in this review have been hastily patched afterwards by the dev. I was not able to test everything yet, but the current build is a massive improvement. Thanks again to the dev. [h1]Original Review:[/h1] Necrosis: Dawn of Dread is a very interesting and pretty janky indie co-op zombie shooter inspired by Resident Evil Outbreak among what is likely many other zombie games to which you will find references for throughout your playtime. It's got a decent swath of both highs and lows (mostly highs that are in spite of jank imho so far) that seem to fluctuate from level to level, but within my playtime mostly end up on the positive side. [h1]Combat[/h1] The game's combat is probably the jankiest aspect about it. Don't get me wrong, most of the time it ranges from "it works" to "it works quite well", but on some missions more than others you will encounter things that tend to hold it back a bit. Such as the AI can sometimes tend to get stuck on doors and other level geometry, whether it's the zombies or your bot teammates. I had this occur mostly on the "Manor" mission, while only seeming to occur occasionally on other maps. Your bot teammates can also experience issues such as spotting zombies through walls causing them to loop paths to try to kill them, and bot teammates having a tendency to move in ways that makes it easier for the player to earn friendly fire headshots on them. Seriously, I've tried taking steps forward past the bots to get a cleaner shot at an incoming zombie and the bots will step in the same direction I move, meaning they're still in my line of sight half the time, or sometimes I'll just be standing still shooting zombies and a bot will think it's a perfectly good idea to phase through me and now my gun is clipping into his skull mid-shootout. This won't always happen to you, but when it does, it's glaringly noticeable. The whole "being grabbed by a zombie" mechanic also just feels maybe a bit to stiff or too long for me. I suppose it could designed that way on purpose in order to encourage teamwork and I'm just too used to how being grabbed feels in L4D2 or Dead Space, but it just feels off to me. And one last thing to touch on, if you play through the levels in the order I did, you'll probably start with the Train and then go immediately into the Manor, which the Manor feels like a difficulty spike compared to the PD, the Road, and even the Hotel and that's primarily due to the combat portions. I think Manor feels like a difficulty spike because of the amount of heavy zombies is spawns close together compared to other maps, but I wanted to mention it before i moved on to the next part of the review. [h1]Puzzles[/h1] The Puzzles in Necrosis are the game's greatest strength. Aside from some occasional janky controls here and there, they're genuinely pretty well designed. To the point that while I hate the Manor level I just complained about for it's combat sections actually also has some of the best puzzles I've encountered in the game thus far, including a Morse Code puzzle. When I'm in co-op, my friends and I will sometimes split up to handle puzzles like that so one person is doing inputs while the other reads the notes containing the instructions and riddles. I have a blast doing this. [h1]Other notes[/h1] Some additional notes a new player might wanna know: You can change the bot teammates that accompany you by going over to the difficulty selection board in the lobby, or disable them altogether by turning of squad mode I guess. Running a solo lobby will basically let you play as a solo-exclusive character that is basically just H.U.N.K., and while the game is balanced for co-op, the attempt to accommodate people who want to play solo for one reason or another is appreciated. Lastly, the game does have controller support, but the deadzones for the left stick seem to be almost non-existent? I think? IDK, stick drift seems to be more common in this game though. On top of that, if at any point you trigger a menu mid-walk, the game will swap your left stick to menu navigation and leave your character endlessly walking in the same direction you last moved, which is something that got me killed during the boss of a solo Manor run. It's certainly not a flawless run, and it's still got remnant of what many would call the early access jank, but it's not an overtly terrible time by any means. When it's bugging out, it's glaringly obvious and sometimes very frustrating. When it shines, it shines bright and is very fun.