Dawn of Fear

 PlayStation 4
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

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  1. egoBorder
    Jun 13, 2020
    0
    Don't be like me and allow your nostalgia to spend any money on this. It's truly awful. Skip it!
  2. Martyate
    Mar 19, 2021
    0
    It's shame... I don't know how but this is low quality product. I won't pay for this
  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
  4. 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 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 willAs 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.    … Expand
  5. gamestarm
    Mar 11, 2020
    4
    Is it for the PlayStation four ? Or a PlayStation 2 ? Shouldn " t the game be better ? It has to be offered free . I am highly critical of this game . Developers have to launch a new version of the game . I hope the game will be improved . Thank you.
  6. terleira
    Feb 21, 2021
    0
    this is the WORST F*CKING GAME IN HUMAN HISTORY FFS
    YOU NEED TO GET PAYED TO PLAY THIS PIECE OF SH*T
    don't buy
  7. 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.
  8. NigdyPS
    Jun 22, 2020
    0
    An affront to all the fans, mixed their mediocre ideology making one of the most shameful games of all time.

    Fully purchased positive reviews, these reviewers are a disgrace and do players a disservice by deceiving and selling an illusion that we only discover the truth after spending money on such crap.
  9. inmh
    Jun 1, 2023
    1
    Buggy, and just absolutely ridiculously bad when it comes to the control system. You blow through all your bullets because you can't actually tell if you're pointing at the zombie or not, and with a few exceptions, you can't actually KILL them. So you waste most of your bullets TRYING to down them, only to then have to waste more once they get up and start walking again.

    I never played    Buggy, and just absolutely ridiculously bad when it comes to the control system. You blow through all your bullets because you can't actually tell if you're pointing at the zombie or not, and with a few exceptions, you can't actually KILL them. So you waste most of your bullets TRYING to down them, only to then have to waste more once they get up and start walking again.

    I never played the original RE games but there's no way they could have been like this game, or they would never have become the classics that they are now.    … Expand
  10. Eyes_Grim
    Mar 7, 2021
    3
    1.A short and rushed game
    2.A poor attempt for a Resident Evil wannabe
    3.Lack of variety in regards to enemies and bosses
    4.Archaic controls
    5.Crashes
    6.Hardware unfriendly. Can't figure how such a rough game is able to overload the console that much.
  11. PRODIGYwest
    Apr 5, 2020
    1
    This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. i have a question , this game is exclusive for PS4? ok imagine this game was be released 20 years ago , and this game still bad & bad . no one can say it's good game… Expand
  12. difr03
    Sep 30, 2022
    0
    Horrible,buggy and overall not fun, 100% worst game i have played,don't go through the pain of playing this

Critic Reviews

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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. 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.
    Read full review
  2. 4P.de
    Feb 11, 2020
    32
    Quotation forthcoming.
    Read full review
  3. 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.
    Read full review
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