Daymare: 1998

I would say this game is worth it on a heavy sale. Like no more than $10. RE2 Remake this is not. The game is pretty janky and the voice acting is straight up awful for the most part, and the cutscenes look terrible. The story is passable and the gameplay is pretty fun. Good for a one time playthrough on sale.

I always happy to support whenever some indie devs able to make a game and got a recognition of it from most gamers community around.
It's a living proof that sometimes an underdog can surpass the big ones by making a breakthrough.
I bought this one, because of my respect to Paul Haddad. And the other reason why, is because this game was his final role as one of the incredible voice actors most of us knew and recognized through all these years.
If you loved Biohazard/Resident Evil game series with the earliest original concept mechanism, then Daymare can provide you that feeling. Though it's also perfect for new generations who prefers modern mechanism and not a fan of tank-ish movement, the game setting has both of those preferences. Old school or modern. We can choose the one we like the most, and even more stuff to adjust it just the way you like to play.
The longer I played Daymare. The more I felt that it's a familiar game with a touch of old school survival horror but somewhat also got the modern feeling at the same time.
Still, most important thing is, it's fun to play plus the retro horror factors are quite spot on! Call it a homage or even a love letter to the most well known original survival horror games out there.
And yes, I won't make a comparison with other similar games, it will be unfair so to say. Because no creations are ultimately perfect, each has their own flaws.
You may or may not like it. But I appreciate and enjoy Daymare, from the very beginning to the end.
Thank you, Paul Haddad.
The original Leon Scott Kennedy from Biohazard 2/Resident Evil 2 back in 1998.

This is one game that could have been alot better with a little bit more a budget. The gameplay and graphics are on point however everything else suffers especially cutscene quality and character models just look cartoony with their awkward animations. The gunplay is excellent however with a reload system I think other games should implement.

The game is mostly ok I guess? Although it does have issues but if you can overlook it, this game is alright.
This game was originally going to be a fan made Resident Evil 2 remake, but Capcom I think contacted this developer and told them to stop making it. So instead of this being a RE2 remake the developers decided to turn that project into an original one and so it became Daymare 1988. Also fun fact this game has the original voice actor for Leon from RE2 Paul Haddad, this was his last project he worked on before he sadly passed away.
I really did not care for this games story, and I thought the characters and their dialogue was kind of bad and edgy. Gameplay is sort of similar to the RE2 Remake, but a bit more linear and fairly easy. The first enemy I thought that was kind of a pain was the zombie that the game calls "Correct Form". Which the ideal way of killing it I think is with the shotgun which knocks it on its ass, and usually I wait for it to come back up and then I keep knocking it down until it won't come back. The only real dangerous enemy in this whole game imo was its RE3 Nemesis knock off. The sewer section is terrible, the game really likes placing zombies around corners to instantly ambush you which I find a bit unfair, similar to how Call of Duty has those campers that just sit in a corner of a map and just wait for people to walk by to kill. There was this one point in the sewers where I was trying to aim and shoot a zombie in front of me, and then suddenly the game spawned a zombie behind me that wasn't there before.
The game sort of has a "unique" way of reloading your ammo, which you may or may not like. I've played some first person shooters where if you reloaded your gun, your character would reload the entire magazine and the remaining ammo in the gun that got replaced would be gone entirely. The way this game handles reloading is a bit more "realistic" than your average survival horror game. During the game you can find ammo boxes, now to use these ammo boxes you need to combine them with magazines you have in your inventory and then you need to combine that magazine with your gun. It's a bit tedious because the game doesn't allow you to use your mouse to navigate the inventory screen, you have to tap your keyboard. The game has two different types of reloads a "fast" reload where if you tap the reload key the character will reload the gun quickly but drop its old magazine on the floor which he needs to pick up. And then there is the "slow" reload where if you hold the reload key the character does a slower reload animation and does not drop his old mag. The mechanic doesn't really add much imo, the way I got around that was by going into the inventory and then combining the ammo boxes into the gun every time I fought a enemy, the only times I used fast or slow reload is when I ran out of ammo in the gun during a fight which I don't think was often? The game does give an alternative option if you don't like its reload mechanic which is its "Modern-Take" mode which has a simple reload system. The game also gives an option if you don't want to see your ammo count on the hud for immersion which is a good option for horror games.
Game is a few years old apparently as I am righting this now, it's still kind of buggy. I tried playing this game with a controller and I ran into a bug where I couldn't close my inventory screen for some reason, so I played through the entire game with mouse and keyboard. The other bug I ran into is when I got to the boss battle in chapter 3 where I was supposed to run into 2 zombie monsters. When the battle for that started it only spawned one of them, after I killed it I had to restart to the last checkpoint because the game would not progress cause I couldn't kill the last boss that was supposed to spawn. I also had a weird audio glitch where for some reason the game would not play sounds for cutscenes, I restarted the game and it worked fine after that.
After you finish the main campaign the game has an additional game mode called "H.A.D.E.S. Dead End". It's similar to some of Resident Evils additional game modes specifically the one where you play through one of the levels in the campaign, but they give you objectives to complete in it and you try to finish it as fast as possible for a high score.
This game also likes its references to various games/movies/tv shows even though some of them aren't from the horror genre for some reason. Ranging from stuff like TMNT, Back to the Future, Lord of the Rings, Half life 3, Resident Evil, Metal Gear Solid, and the sitcom Friends and the devs even modeled their studio office into the game. You can see screenshots below in this link of the references they added that I found, but be warned you will encounter the only scary thing that this game has, and its a Super Nintendo Console with a abnormally large SNES controller.
This game has a sequel (prequel I think?) I am curious what that game is like

This game is a love letter to Resident Evil and I love any game that reminds me of RE both new and old. I'm not sure if it's on purpose but some of the cheesy dialogue delivery reminds me of the terrible VAs from the PS2 era, which I think only makes the game better. I had a blast and got all the achievements and in the future, I'll purchase the sequel.

This was really good, i came in with low expectations, but the game really shines as a survival horror title, it ticks all the boxes, combat feels good, level design is very competent and the difficulty feels well-balanced.
The games music is also very enjoyable and the trade system was a nice touch, i did however only really use it to trade for ammo since i was never lacking syringes. ( i never quite understood what the stamina shots did and i didn't really find any situations to use the mental shots either)

The only real issues i had with the game was the bossfights in the final chapter, mutated ****'s second and third encounters felt rather boring, the tunnel chase made me feel like i was misunderstanding how the encounter was made to play out, but it seems that's the way the devs intended the encounter to be solved.

The final encounter was just a bit boring, it was basically the same as the first encounter minus a single environmental element to damage the boss with, and he is very spongy, atleast in higher difficulty.

All in all i highly recommend this game and hope to see a sequel.

+ Strong points:
- Although stiff, the gameplay is not bad
- Puzzles better thought than in any Resident Evil
- Some ideas (like Samuel's hallucinations) are interesting
- Some detailed environments
- Weak points:
- Never really manages to free itself from its models
- Narration sometimes talkative and often very average
- Badly placed checkpoints
- Limited bestiary
- Only four weapons are available
- Artistically inconsistent
Summary: Daymare 1998 is a continuation of Resident Evil 2, Invader Studios recites their lesson to the letter by offering everything that one would expect from such a game. Unfortunately, if the Italians thought to check all the boxes of the mirror game (within the limits of the allocated budget), they forgot a little to add enough new features and this pinch of originality so that the result does not lock itself into its status of simply referential work. Interesting therefore for those who would wait for news of the next remake of Capcom but quickly forgettable in the end.
12/20