Dawn of Fear

 PlayStation 4
Metascore
33

Generally unfavorable reviews - based on 12 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 0 out of 12
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 12
  3. Negative: 10 out of 12
  1. Hobby Consolas
    Feb 5, 2020
    64
    This effort to relive the roots of survival horror has its heart in the right place, but too many glitches and an uneven balance in the gameplay lessen the experience.
  2. Push Square
    Feb 3, 2020
    50
    Dawn of Fear is not what you would typically consider a good video game and it most definitely does not perform like one. However, when it works, there hasn’t been anything else quite like it for the best part of two decades. Dawn of Fear is the best and worst tribute to Resident Evil at the same time, and we can't think anything more intriguing than that.
  3. SpazioGames
    Feb 5, 2020
    48
    Dawn of Fear in a true old school survival horror, but is literally devastated by too many technical flaws.
  5. PlayStation Country
    Feb 10, 2020
    40
    At a short runtime, Dawn of Fear feels like a shell of something far grander. Every good aspect feels somewhat cut short in a rush that seems to hamstring any chance of expansion. Whilst the passion for the genre is very evident, the lack of execution and style results in something flat, hollow and just not all that interesting.
  6. Carole Quintaine
    Feb 7, 2020
    40
    The intention of Bok3nsit is laudable, Dawn of Fear is a nice tribute to the games of the late 90s and in particular Resident Evil. But the game would have deserved more care... It suffers from too many bugs and an obvious lack of personality: whether in environments or enigmas, everything seems hollow. Old fashioned technically and in the way is it played, it could have been saved by an atmosphere but the music and the script fail to retain attention. And it's definitively not scary...A big disappointment.
  7. 4P.de
    Feb 11, 2020
    32
    Quotation forthcoming.
  8. God is a Geek
    Feb 11, 2020
    30
    Dawn of Fear is a poor attempt to recreate the magic of a survival horror classic, with too many problems to gain any sense of enjoyment. Brok3nsite has tried to create a nostalgic tribute to Resident Evil, but in the process they’ve somehow made it worse than the original. Perhaps its biggest omission and ultimate failure is its scare factor, creating predictable moments of terror that never hit as they should.
  9. Metro GameCentral
    Feb 7, 2020
    30
    The developer’s love for Resident Evil and old school survival horror is obvious but this poorly made homage does nobody any favours.
  10. BaziCenter
    Mar 3, 2020
    25
    Nostalgia always works, right? All the drama and all the emotions hit the right spot in the brain and suddenly you are in love with something. Dawn of Fear is here to prove this theory wrong. It seem that the only thing the developers worked on was the nostalgia aspect, and nothing else. Quite simply, stay away from this game.
  11. PlayStation Universe
    Feb 10, 2020
    20
    Dawn of Fear tries to bring back the nostalgia of classic survival horror but fails in almost every way. The poor controls lead to most of its problems and a lack of necessary mechanics creates problems that shouldn't exist in this day and age from the simplest of games.
  12. GameSpew
    Feb 6, 2020
    20
    Unless Dawn of Fear gets heavily patched after launch, steer well clear of it unless you’re a glutton for punishment or have the patience of a saint.
  13. Game Rant
    Feb 11, 2020
    0
    Dawn of Fear is too broken in its current state to recommend it to anyone. Those desperate for an old-school survival-horror experience may want to hold out hope that other upcoming Resident Evil and Silent Hill-inspired games turn out to be a bit better because Dawn of Fear is a mess.

User Reviews

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User Score
3.9

Generally unfavorable reviews- based on 41 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 15 out of 41
  2. Mixed: 0 out of 41
  3. Negative: 26 out of 41
  1. Slynch
    Feb 3, 2020
    3
    As a fan of the old-school, tank-control/fixed-perspective, survival-horror games, I *really* wanted to like this game. It certainly has theAs a fan of the old-school, tank-control/fixed-perspective, survival-horror games, I *really* wanted to like this game. It certainly has the potential to be the game that fans of the genre would want it to be, but is plagued by bugs, poor storytelling, sub-par animations, unsatisfying puzzles and combat, unwieldy control of the player and camera, and nonsensical game balance. I will explain these more-or-less in their respective order.

    I played Dawn of Fear for approximately two hours, and in that time encountered many issues/bugs that would just never make it past any quality-assurance, leading me to believe that this game had none. The first enemy you encounter that isn't a zombie has a tendency to walk into walls and get stuck. Going through a door- Resident Evil-style- is not a guarantee that what is on the other side is loaded fully; I saw hidden items in rooms I had not been to yet, because I entered an area that had not loaded (and did not load until I had gone two rooms away, and come back). Performance, even on a PS4 Pro, is laughable for a game that looks as simple as Dawn of Fear; the worst moments are when the camera ceases to be fixed-perspective and follows the player, painfully reminding you of the framerate dips. Furthermore, the games English localization was evidently not done by a native speaker, as it is very simplistic, and often with spelling errors. Similar to Resident Evil, the player can save a limited number of times at certain areas with "candels". Sometimes, there's only "one candels" left.

    Regarding storytelling/progression flow, it is extremely two-dimensional, and highly predictable. I will avoid spoilers in this review, but I can say this; whatever you think is going to happen next while you're playing, will most likely happen. The game only caught me off-guard once or twice during the two hours of gameplay. The progression is largely similar to that of the classic Resident Evil titles, whereby progression is slowed by locked doors requiring certain keys. However, the problems here are two-fold; very few doors are marked with a certain key requirement, meaning that the player must interact with every door to find out if a key works. This isn't an issue, however, because the item description of any key- for no logical reason- tells you exactly which door it opens, and where the door is (non-spoiler example: "Key N: Key of ground floor hallway door"). In addition, the progression very compartmentalized, as in you will only have access to rooms and items relevant to the next puzzle you need to solve, which makes the game feel extremely linear in comparison to the survival-horror games this one is inspired by.

    The poor animations of the game links nicely to the issues with combat and the overall 'jank' of the game. Opening a door to a new area makes the player-character look as though they've thrown their back out or something, and the door opening simply freezes all NPCs in whatever position they're in. The zombies are quite clearly powered by an AI script that simply walks towards the position of the player with very little path-finding, making avoiding them an inconvenience rather than a danger, as well as just looking rather ugly.

    The puzzles are hard to review, both because details would spoil them, but also because different people might have different experiences with them. In my case, each puzzle took under a minute to solve, either because the puzzle was phenomenally easy, or because the puzzle's solution is- as with the keys and the doors- in the description of the relevant item(s). One would expect some puzzle solutions or hints to be included in the various documents scattered around, but having read all I found of them meticulously, this does not seem to be the case.

    The combat, poor camera controls, and terrible game balance all merge into one unsatisfying experience. Your key weaponry in the game is a knife and a pistol, and one would assume that the pistol is the easier solution- with its limited ammunition- and the knife being the backup solution to the zombie problem. Alas, this is not the case, as the zombies are only vulnerable to shots in certain animations, meaning that you could potentially waste bullets shooting at the air. The knife, as it stuns zombies momentarily on hits, is ridiculously strong, and makes dealing with zombies- as stated earlier- an inconvenience as opposed to a real danger. Being that the zombies are the *only* danger, this is fundamentally flawed, and makes the gun- as well as the bullets- relatively useless.

    I close by saying that Dawn of Fear may be a fun romp for die-hard fans of the survival-horror genre, but at €20, you can only be disappointed. It has the potential to be something so much better, with another half-a-year or more of development time and overall polishing, so all we can do is hope that the developers- should they decide to make a sequel- learn from their mistakes with this title.    … Full Review »
  2. GodOfDawn
    Feb 20, 2020
    9
    This game can be really enjoyable at some times, and at other times have a bad job at handling storytelling.
  3. AbsUntermensch
    Mar 22, 2021
    1
    This game is a pathetic clone of Resident Evil. Lots of bugs, management terrible, cost huge for such a raw product
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