[h3] Disclaimers [/h3]
I didn't finish the game before posting this review, but I felt confident enough that this was pretty much going to be the whole experience.
[h1] Review [/h1]
So I was fresh from beating the whole Dying Light trilogy, I must've put about 140 hours across all three games. It did leave me craving some more zombie smashing action so I looked through my library, backlog and wishlist. I already tried Decision: Red Daze before back in July 2023, but it didn't click with me then. I grabbed it since I was actually a fan of the flash game series. I knew what I was buying and I think I'm definitely the intended audience for this game lol.
The premise is your typical zombie apocalypse stuff for the most part. Details unnecessary. This takes place in the "Dustbowl," a region where a strange mist looms over it and in it reside the hordes of infected. This is the titular Red Daze.
The core idea of the gameplay is pretty much liberating the Dustbowl. Clear out and take settlements, defend them, upgrade them by recruiting survivors and looting resources, as well as your own squad of survivors, until you can further repel the Red Daze and defeat enemy bosses that launch periodic attacks on your settlements.
The game has a weird mish mash of genres. It tries to take different things and throw them into a melting pot. I do think it somehow works though, but mostly because each aspect is fairly light and not complex at all.
I mean you have some basic top down action using quick attacks or power attacks, melee or ranged weapons, and you can move around and roll if you really need to. There's very simple looting where all you do is approach a body or box and tap a button to loot it. If there's basic resources inside they get deposited straight into your inventory, otherwise an inventory screen pops up and lets you choose what to take.
Recruitment is similarly very simple, you find a survivor out in the wild, interact with them and if your survivor has high enough charisma they will follow you. Bring them to the nearest settlement where they will settle and join the population. Settlements are preset layouts and structures with a linear upgrade structure. All you really need to do is gather resources, pick upgrades and let an in-game day pass. Not that I'm complaining about this... I'm too stupid for anything more complex, you see.
And so on, you get the idea.
You play as any survivor under your control, and you can group up and form a squad. You do have some streamlined management autoequip and a common squad inventory, but its very simplistic. And yeah, if you played XCOM 2 then you'll understand this game ends up in a similar "A-Team & B-Team" situation where you're gonna stick with these guys to the end or you somehow lose one of them in a terrible expedition and it makes everything that comes next worse.
Combat is as I already described simple, so expective a pretty repetitive loop that's entirely attacking from melee or at range and kiting your enemies. It also doesn't help that light attacks just deal worthless damage so you should always go for a power attack.
The UI is just servicable, but annoying at times. Like when you transfer lots of something like materials or money, it's a weird wheel you have to place your cursor at the end of before pressing transfer. Or how squad commands like dropping off useless items, or adjusting formation is done through the same basic chat menu you use with any NPC in the game.
The graphics are not something that bothers me or that I care about much, but I want to note that they do look like PS3 era graphics. And the models for survivors are pretty funny. They're dwarf-ish if that makes sense. They're short, stout, bulky. It's amusing. Other than that, the sound mixing is awful. Every sound and voiceline in the game outside of that intro cinematic is just awfully low for some reason. I have my laptop's volume at a fairly moderate-high level, and the game's audio is maxed out and yet I can still barely hear anything. I do find it funny they're still some of the same sounds all the way from Decision 1.
I want to give some props to the NPCs in settlements though. It's minimal, but the settlements feel surprisingly alive. They'll man the turrets and stand guard if you have those upgrades, everyone else can be found sitting in places, sleeping, seemingly 'working' or 'looting' and wandering the settlement.
[h2] Conclusion [/h2]
My conclusion is positive. I enjoy this game a lot, and that much is true, but even so it's hard to recommend. I think I just so happen to be the exact kind of person who'd like this kind of game and is also willing to put up with some odd and bad decisions.
So my recommendation is very conditional. On sale, if you have a strong stomach for jank, general unpleasentness and inconvenience, if you're just really super duper curious. Etc...
But I really hope the team learns from this game and make better Decisions in the future. The devs gave little me a lot of hours of fun back on the flash days, and I continue to look forward to more.
[i]Please remember to check other reviews to make a properly informed decision about purchasing this game. I am but one man speaking from my own experience and with my own preferences.[/i]
