Ground Zero PS5 Review. I never get sick of pre-rendered backgrounds. Hell, that was one of the main reasons why I jumped at the chance to play Ground Zero in the first place. Plus, one of the trailers prior to launch showcased dinosaur creatures. As a fan of Dino Crisis, I felt like this game was meant for me. After playing through Ground Zero, I learned that the final product needs some refinement. It channels the roots of the survival horror genre – to a fault in some cases.
Ground Zero Review (PS5) – An Old-School Survival Horror Game Through and Through
Clear Motivations
A large meteor collided with South Korea. The impact destroyed all means of communications, and the aftermath made the country all but inhabitable. An effort between Canada and Korea sees an agent from each country touch down on Korean soil to determine what caused the problem and find a way to deal with it.
First, I want to specify that the writing in Ground Zero does a nice job. There’s lots of character in the writing itself and lots of organic voice work in there too. With that said, the writing also leans into that oddity that makes games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil so special. The writing in Ground Zero isn’t anywhere near as extremely odd as it is in the aforementioned classics, but it takes notes from them to add more personality. Occasionally, it makes attempts at seriousness, which end up falling flat. All in all, though, it’s a nice touch without going overboard.
The Resident Evil (RE) inspirations for Ground Zero are absolutely clear. Everywhere you go and everything you see, the game reminds you of Capcom’s well-loved survival horror franchise. In my mind, the biggest pull from the first RE games are the pre-rendered backgrounds used throughout the entire game. All of them are gorgeous. And yet, they still appear a hair out of focus to help emulate that olden PS1 aesthetic without getting overly pixelated.
Blurry Rose-Colored Glasses
My one gripe with how Ground Zero handles the pre-rendered backgrounds is that a few of them end up incredibly blurry. These seem to appear when the camera moves. To boot, your character and other enemies all come in clearly, which accentuates the issue. I don’t know if the occasional lack of visual focus is a creative choice or not, but it breaks immersion rather quickly.
There aren’t many areas like this, thankfully. However, these weirdly out-of-focus areas tend to be areas you return to quite often. To make it worse, the areas that see the camera move also reduce the frame rate of the game.
Considering that Ground Zero plays on the PS5, this issue must come down to an optimization issue and not one of hardware limitations. Conversely, this could also have been a creative choice, since old games experienced a bit of this on old hardware. Nonetheless, the experience on new hardware with a new game feels janky every time it happens.
Control Options
Fans of this genre will be happy to know that you can play this game entirely with tank controls if you wish. Conversely, fans of modern controls (like me) will also be happy to know that you can play this game with modern controls. It’s worth mentioning that combining a fixed perspective with modern controls always creates some clunky transitions when the camera changes direction. It’s unavoidable, I’m afraid, but the issue makes itself known often.
Even as a fan of modern controls, I fully respect the added tension that comes with tank controls. With that said, Ground Zero provides several mechanics that create their own levels of tension. You can aim with the Right Joystick, which moves the laser relative to your motions. You can also do this while moving, albeit at a walking pace. This mechanic is naturally clunky due to your fixed perspective. This also creates a risk-reward, where you dispatch enemies much faster by hitting weak points than with body shots, with the tradeoff that this makes hitting the target much harder to do.
An alternative option is to hold Circle to perform an auto-lock on the target. This works as a nice middle ground option, allowing you to let the computer aim at enemy weak points. After that, it’s a matter of timing the shot. You’re still likely to get body shots, but you have a better chance of both hitting weak points this way. You can also create a manual critical hit by holding Cross. A scrolling bar appears and you must time letting go of Cross to when the cursor lands in a red area. Yet another risk-reward element.
Rough Around The Edges
Overall, Ground Zero takes a few hits when it comes to overall pacing. The game starts with the first hour or so playing out on a linear path. Then, you choose a route to take and each route opens into a Resident Evil-like zone where you find keys and unlock different sections by backtracking in order to progress. Then there’s another hour or two of steady linear progress followed by another zone like the aforementioned one.
Even a couple of the exploration areas present themselves in a much more straightforward way. The path to your destinations generally directs you with unnecessary doors being either locked or barricaded, leaving the progressive paths the only way forward. These areas like the lighthouse and the bridge starkly contrast with areas like the police station and the museum, which ask you to run back and forth to find keys and unlock new areas. It’s worth mentioning that there are also the occasional markers on the map to show you where to go, which is a nice touch without going overboard.
This occurs in the survival horror genre all the time, which provides some gameplay variety. However, the downsides to the puzzle solving areas hit me hard due to one boss fight in chapter 3. When I finally completed the area and made it to the parking lot to fight the boss, I didn’t have enough ammo to kill it on Normal Difficulty. To boot, the room before the fight provides a lot of ammunition and resources that still don’t make a difference on their own. There also isn’t an option to lower the difficulty level mid-save. Very old-school survival horror indeed!
Word of Warning
After hours of trying different strategies, I bit the bullet and loaded an old save. Thankfully I got into the habit of making separate manual saves or else I would have needed to start the game over completely. That did the trick. I went into that fight much more prepared than the previous time because I spent the time beforehand skipping fights and running past enemies in order to stockpile resources.
Creating a game that demands this level of resource management is fantastic. These games always have a place in the gaming industry. With that said, people playing the game need to know that this game truly demands that you actually manage your resources, unlike even modern Resident Evil games. Perhaps a warning or hint of this at the difficulty screen would make a difference. Either way, there’s a lot of room for a frustrating first playthrough here.
One oddity that appeared throughout the game is that interacting with doors and key readers, for instance, don’t work the same way. For instance, sometimes you can just have the key in your inventory and it automatically interacts with its door or related object. Other times, you need to open your inventory and manually interact with the key in order to open its related object. It’s not game breaking, but it still makes you trial and error quite often.
A Solid Take on Old-School Survival Horror
Ground Zero plays its cards very early on, showing you exactly what it wants to do from the get-go. It channels its inspiration from old-school survival horror games that made the PS1 so special, even leaning into pre-rendered backgrounds and offering tank controls. Visuals get blurry in certain areas, and frame rate takes a hit in weird places. Then there’s the old-school need to actually conserve your ammunition for boss fights, which can put you in a position where you can’t defeat the boss without enough weaponry. Overall, Ground Zero makes for a good time and has a solid gameplay loop as long as you know what to expect from it.
Review code kindly provided by publisher