Outbreak Epidemic is hands down the worst Nintendo Switch game that has ever come across my desk. It’s the kind of Early Access trash that makes you wonder if Nintendo has any sort of quality control with regards to releases. Nothing about the game works in its favor, is original, or features any level of polish. All these issues and more make the entire process of playing the game feel like punishment for past life indiscretions.
On the surface, Outbreak Epidemic is a Resident Evil clone. I’m not talking about clone in gameplay only but also in lifting enemies right from that much better series. Be ready to face janky Tyrant’s and Hunters at every turn. Apparently, Outbreak Epidemic is part of a series, something which hurts my heart. This is the sort of game that would leave you feeling ripped off even if it were free of which it was for us. Please, for the love of whatever deity you believe in, do not spend money buying this game as for $15 you can do loads better.
Look, the game is so broken in terms of design that I didn’t even know how to start an actual game. The main menu looks like some Lewis Carol poem and is filled with walls of text that is a shock to the system. I initially thought the game was broken as I couldn’t move around the menus using the D-pad on my Pro Controller. Either that or there is so much text that I couldn’t track my selection. Outbreak Epidemic is a joystick only game, which I could live with, but imagine a Resident Evil clone where you can’t use the D-pad even in the menu and inventory. Disgusting.
You can’t simply start a game like in every other video game the world has ever created. The first of several menus has an option for “Story & Lore” which is never a good sign. This isn’t 1992, and if you can’t tell me the story of your game through design and in-game elements, then maybe you shouldn’t be making games. Once in the main main menu, you must choose your character which each represent a class that barely matters, then the gameplay type which includes Campaign, Onslaught, and Experiments modes.
Here is the first major misstep the game makes in terms of design. Instead of the game simply starting, something I thought would happen, you must then select a scenario to play. The problem is that the Campaign Mode brings up Tutorial Scenario (1/5) which made me think clicking on that would run through a tutorial –this is not the case. There aren’t five tutorials, but instead those are parts of the game.
You select which scenarios you want to run through like this is some kind of Mega Man game. The Tutorial is scenario 1 of 5 and each tells bit of the story. Running through the forest, a military base safe-house, tunnels to hell, and the blowing up of Raccoon City the city. When you begin, after an agonizing load time, you jump into a generic map and are presented with every weapon in the game and given an idiotic mission to start an Apache attack helicopter that is hanging out on the footpath of some random forest.
Within two-minutes of playing I already had a Rocket Launcher and a maxed inventory of supplies. Other stages aren’t much different in this regard, almost as if it rains ammo and weapons. Oh, and the god damn rain — it kills the game in its track. Every few seconds the game will stutter, or at least it seems that way. I can’t tell if the game stutters or if the rain animation clips and restarts. I fear it probably is a bit of both as the framerate of Outbreak Epidemic runs at a consistent rate bettwen jack and shit. Most of the game is a single FPS experience, and this is on top of a game that is already slow in terms of gameplay.
Enemies seemingly have no AI and will simply rush you straight on. They damage you but the game gives you no information on what or how it happens. You don’t say a word (or I can’t hear it over the noise), there is no impact from attacks, and lining up a target is a nightmare. Well, it usually is unless an enemy gets stuck in the environment and just sits there. The one fun bit I had playing was watching a bunch of zombies stack up behind a Hunter that got stuck on some stairs. This is jank city, population broken ass game.
Graphics are atrocious even for the Nintendo Switch. Seriously, they are worse than the bottom of the barrel PS2 shovelware games released 20 years ago. You look like a mannequin dipped into reflective plastic and I question the consistency of the design bible the game used as enemies don’t look like the player characters, or at least not like they are from the same asset pack. The game also has a hard time keeping your feet from being sucked into the ground. I can’t tell how bad the game actually looks as I’m not sure if the textures are broken and don’t load right or if they are scaled for the Nintendo 64.
Levels also seem to be cut and paste packs with cars, objects, and items repeated over and over in very short spaces making it easy to get lost. It’s and ugly game that doesn’t even run well. I know that graphics don’t mean everything, just look at all the PS1-inspired releases over the past year or so that are killing it on the indie scene, but this is bad. Outbreak Epidemic is garbage and I don’t like saying that as someone did put work into this. Crates and barrels will disappear and phase out of existence when you are standing right next to them. Weapons are all stock and have no impact and feel like junk as they have no weight.
The inventory system is pulled right from Resident Evil, right down to the heart monitor and the healing items. There also seems to be a mechanic where bullets have different impact depending on the character you pick. The weightlifter can down an enemy in two shots with a pistol while the lady reporter in heels in like five, because that’s totally how bullets work. The audio also stinks with repeated sound effects playing and music cutting in and out randomly. You can set your watch by the lighting strike loop. And all of this is wrapped up in the worst loading times on the Nintendo Switch to date. During my first experience I thought the game locked up as it sat on 1% for almost a minute before anything happened.
Alongside the slow gameplay that’s made slower by the sub 10 frame-per-second experience are the “puzzles” that all seem to happen in levels that seem to only span about the size of a small suburban block. You need to collect keys, all of which look like house keys, even for cars, as well as entering codes you find along the game. Not sure why people are writing pages of journals in the middle of the woods as zombies eat their familes, but who am I to judge. Finding a random code which leads you to finding another note that says to only use the odd numbers of the first code to open a work locker holding a needed part is painfully stupid.
These “puzzles” only serve to have you slowly walk from one end of the small map to the other end of the small map in the dark. Thankfully, you do have a flashlight, except not really as your light is tied to each weapon you ready. Your light comes from the muzzle of every weapon because that’s just how this world works and modeling a flashllight taped to a muzzle is hard work and probably not included in the weapons asset pack. Outbreak Epidemic isn’t a hard game as it is but it’s made tedious running around in the dark as the level design making little logical sense. This leaves you simply running along the side of fences and walls since you have no map or distinct markers to track most of the time.
The magic of Resident Evil is that is leads the player to where they need to go next in a natural way without them knowing. You don’t even feel like you are being funneled along like some ride at Disneyland, even though that is what happens. Enemies are placed intentionally and with reason, not only to hinder progress but to guide you as well. Outbreak Epidemic simply teleports you into a random start point and tells you to go fuck yourself in a dull world filled with ripped off enemies all wrapped around a story that makes no sense, with enemies just pooping out from the dark without reason.
The sad thing about all of this is the fact that there is potential here, something that can be seen with so many Resident Evil-inspired games that have come out recently. And, to be fair, the game does have moments where it looks okay, mostly when indoors in smaller places without the added strain of environmental and particle effects. But this also means you get a better look at yourself and if you play as the reporter in heels you look like that Big Foot footage from the 1960s when lumbering around. You can also hear your damage too which sounds like you are more annoyed than taking damage on top of your incessant crying.
My Mom: We have Resident Evil at home
I really hate shitting all over a game, especially one made by a single person, but this is 2020 and there are amazing titles releasing by small teams, or even one single person when you have things like Stardew Valley and Cave Story. I can name a dozen such titles, so the days where a game being kinda shit is forgivable because its created by a single person are behind us. Outbreak Epidemic is nothing more than a cheap Steam Early Access game that wasn’t ready to be released and someone got ported to the Nintendo Switch in hopes no one would notice.
Well, I noticed and the fact that I won’t ever be able to remove the Outbreak Epidemic icon from my Switch dashboard makes me want to die inside. I just hope I never have to explain what the game is to someone that comes over to play. At least the game can take some solace in knowing that it isn’t the worst game ever released and that it’s almost impossible to score a 1 out of 5 on this website as long as your game actually mostly works and isn’t a scam. That said, it is probably the worst game I’ll ever have the pleasure of playing on the Nintendo Switch platform.
Pro:
+ Umm…
Cons:
– Frame-rate issues
– Bad RE clone
– Dated visuals
– Barely functions at times
– It’s just not fun
Final Score:
*The publisher provided a copy for use in this review*
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