We really are living in a golden age for survival horror, as both major AAA series and indie entries are releasing at an almost dizzying frequency. Even a die-hard fan of the genre such as myself can barely keep up, and several recent games are still on my backlog. Despite this, Ground Zero stood out in previews and demos as a particularly exciting example and I’m happy to reveal that the full game more than meets my expectations. It isn’t an overstatement to say that it feels like a lost classic survival horror game, able to hold its own against the giants of the PS1 era.
One of the main unique selling points for Ground Zero is its Korean setting. Whilst this is mostly just a background aspect it makes for some novel departures from the genre norms – taking a train to Busan is a neat little Easter Egg for fans of K-Horror too. You play mostly as a female elite Korean operative with occasional sections as their Canadian counterpart, with both controlling similarly but having different weapon loadouts. The sense of international collaboration underpins the whole story as there is also a mysterious Spanish spy, offering a European spin on Ada Wong. The different languages do result in some dodgy voice acting but this is a genre staple by now.
The story sees South Korea ravaged by a meteor strike that unleashes a sinister virus; a virus that transforms all living matter into deadly zombies, of course. At first your encounters are limited to mutated humans and dogs, but as the game develops you’ll face a range of more outlandish and incredible enemies. Each of these monstrous creatures has their own attack patterns and a most efficient ways to be dispatched and mastering these is the key to making the most of your limited ammunition. As the story develops it takes on traditional survival horror topics of corrupt corporations and reckless research and culminates in an epic confrontation straight out of Resident Evil’s most grotesque moments.
The fixed camera perspective is one of the most classic aspects of old-school survival horror and Ground Zero uses this to great effect. Combine this with the PSX-era blocky graphical style and it’s easy to imagine this game being released on original hardware but there is clearly a lot of trickery going on beneath the surface to enable this as it is a hefty 28GB download – that’s well over 40 CDs worth of data! Developers Malformation Games have also learned a lot of lessons from more modern games and the granular difficulty options are a great example of this. Both combat and puzzles have separate difficulty levels to allow you to customise the experience to your tastes.
Taking combat first, the gunplay is satisfying with a large range of weapons from 9mm pistols to rocket launchers and everything in between. Many weapons share ammo types, so there isn’t too much inventory juggling or redundant ammo when you switch to more effective weapons. While inventory space is limited at the start of the game, expansions can be found that enable you to carry several different weapons and still have room for keys and puzzle items. This is particularly welcome as it means that you can keep a flexible arsenal on hand rather than having to rely on one weapon as so often happens. There is a melee option too, with a tricky to pull off but powerful parry, but holding the action button whilst aiming gives the opportunity for a critical shot that can kill most enemies in one hit. I do have one criticism, however, as the lack of a quick switch function means you have to manually change weapons through the inventory.
While combat is frequent, and you’ll be killing or running away from a lot of enemies throughout the game, there is also a lot of time devoted to an assortment of puzzles ranging from simple keys and locks to keypad codes and more complex conundrums. The difficulty setting for these puzzles makes clues increasingly more obtuse at higher settings. I opted for normal for both combat and puzzles in my first playthrough and the challenge was well pitched at this level, with a few roadblocks but no huge spikes.
One of the other key features of classic survival horror is the replayability being built in, with alternative endings, ranking challenges and extra content. Ground Zero also excels in this area with multiple difficulty levels, lots of unlockable rewards and an entirely separate game mode, Apocalypse Crisis, which plays out like the time-based escape challenges of Resident Evil 2. There are also several points where alternative routes are offered that contain unique areas. Given the game’s speedrun achievement requires an 8 hour completion, it’s pretty clear that there is a lot packed in. I’m not sure quite how the completion time is calculated though as the endgame screen displayed about 11 hours, but Steam recorded nearly 18.
