Daymare 1998

Review

The Aegis Medical Laboratory is built into one of the cliffs of the Northfall Islands. The helipad seems calm as usual, but inside the facility, the code blue has been activated by one of the doctors.  In her last radio contact, she talked about a mishap with some sort of gas, which wiped out all the personnel inside the complex, having been inhaled and mutated inside their bodies.  Since then, the radio has been silent. The highly trained H.A.D.E.S unit is sent to the facility to investigate, retrieve the gas cylinders and eliminate any of the survivors. But it’s only the start of the nightmare that will be unleashed on that day in 1998!

Daymare 1998 is a third person survival/horror game developed by invaders Studios and published by Destructive Creations on the 17^th of September on Steam. The game is also available on PS4 and Xbox One.

The game consists of 5 chapters where you, the player, will be swapping between three characters all the way through this fabulous story. First, you’ll be playing a badass H.A.D.E.S agent named Liev, who must investigate the Medical Laboratory and secure the viral gas. Then you’ll portray a Keen Sight citizen named Samuel, who suffers from extreme hallucinations if he doesn’t take his medicinal pills, which he loses in an extraordinary fashion. Raven is the co-pilot of the H.A.D.E.S unit chopper who has the death of one of his colleagues on his conscience.  Sandman, the major and helicopter pilot, is another character who is very involved in this story, but you won’t be playing him.

As you launch your first playthrough, you’ll have to decide which level of difficulty you want to play, Easy, Normal or Daymare. In Daymare, the ammunition will be very limited and the enemies very tough to eliminate, while in the Easy difficulty, you’ll find more ammunition and the enemies are not so hard to dispose of. Then you’ll enjoy the first of many cut-scenes during your gameplay.

The levels are very well-designed and quite challenging. Both H.A.D.E.S.’ characters will be armed with a gun first, while Samuel’s first weapon will be a shotgun. You’ll find two other weapons for each of your characters as you progress during the game. Liev and Raven will have a D.I.D (Data Interchange Device) on the inside of the right forearm, which is an apparatus that allows you to check where you are on the level, check your health status, read the files and listen to the tapes you collected, and most importantly, to see what you have in your inventory. The inventory consists of 3 slots for your weapons and 12 slots for your ammunition, plus health food and hypodermic syringes. You can also find secret rooms. Samuel will not have this device at first but will acquire it as the story progress. You’ll use this device frequently as you will need to put your bullets into your weapons clips and also combine health and armour syringes. 

I really like the spooky atmosphere, and I must say that I jumped a few times when these Zombies were jumping and crabbing my characters when hiding in corners and vomiting this green toxic vomit on them. Thankfully, they can be pushed away and eradicated with your weapon. I personally like the shotgun as it is more likely that the zombies stay down after the first shot. It also depends on which types of zombies are in your vicinity, and it can be tricky to figure out whether or not they were executed properly. The only sure sign is if one of their arms or head is blown off. Mind you, some zombies will be a lot harder to kill, and they will even chase you everywhere you go until they are put down.

The shotgun will be very effective as a short-range weapon, and it is more likely that you’ll hit your target, even if you are blind-folded.  The pistol was a different experience; I found the aiming quite odd.  Let’s say the easy zombies are moving towards you at a certain pace (sometimes faster than others) from an average distance, wobbling from right to left. Aiming for a headshot is quite interesting; on a few occasions when I was aiming straight at the head, my bullet didn’t hit the target, while it succeeded in hitting it when I shot further to the right or left of the head. 

The levels are well-designed and fun to go through. You’ll come across puzzles to solve in order to get to the next areas, and they are quite descent puzzles, I must say. I did experience a few black screens, which annoyed me a bit, as you need to find a Hexacore terminal or pass a certain section for the game to be automatically saved. It’s not a big deal but it is annoying. Oh, and by the way, you can relieve yourself of your inventory at these terminals by storing items you find within the level, or you can even trade them if you want. There are puppet deer hidden within each of the levels which you need to shoot to collect. You can’t miss them (well actually, you probably will), but your D.I.D will start making crackling sounds when you’re near them. Good hunting!

The graphics are very good, the atmosphere is fabulous as are the sound effects. Plenty of options, including key binding, and the game has been translated in eight different languages. I really enjoyed the game; as a matter of fact, I restarted the game twice as I was short on health in my first playthrough, and then stuck at one location because of poor health. My second playthrough was far better and I am about to face the big nasty boss for the second time around. But the glitches I experienced have taken a few points from my rating.