Dawn of Fear for PlayStation 4 Reviews
As a fan of the old-school, tank-control/fixed-perspective, survival-horror games, I *really* wanted to like this game. It certainly has theAs 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
Dawn of Fear Reviews — OpenCritic
Gammera Nest SL
Feb 3, 2020 — PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5
OpenCritic Rating
Top Critic Average
Critics Recommend
Metro GameCentral
3 / 10
Hobby Consolas
64 / 100
God is a Geek
3 / 10
Game Rant
Unscored
Push Square
5 / 10
PlayStation Universe
2 / 10
Spaziogames
4.8 / 10
GameSpew
2 / 10
View All 12 Critic Reviews
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Dawn of Fear Trailers
Dawn of Fear — Gameplay Trailer | PS4
Dawn of Fear — Announce Trailer | PS4
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Dawn of Fear Screenshots
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Critic Reviews for Dawn of Fear
Metro GameCentral
Unknown Author
3 / 10
The developer’s love for Resident Evil and old school survival horror is obvious but this poorly made homage does nobody any favours.
Read full review
Hobby Consolas
Daniel Quesada
64 / 100
This effort to relive the roots of survival horror has its heart in the right place, but too many glitches and an uneven balance in the gameplay lessen the experience.
Review in Spanish | Read full review
God is a Geek
Chris White
3 / 10.0
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.
Read full review
Game Rant
Dalton Cooper
Unscored
PS4 exclusive Dawn of Fear is a completely and utterly broken game that attempts to mimic old-school Resident Evil to disastrous results.
Read full review
Push Square
Liam Croft
5 / 10
Dawn of Fear is not what you would typically consider a good video game and it most definitely does not perform like one.
However, when it works, there hasn’t been anything else quite like it for the best part of two decades. Dawn of Fear is the best and worst tribute to Resident Evil at the same time, and we can’t think anything more intriguing than that.
Read full review
PlayStation Universe
Garri Bagdasarov
2 / 10.0
Dawn of Fear tries to bring back the nostalgia of classic survival horror but fails in almost every way. The poor controls lead to most of its problems and a lack of necessary mechanics creates problems that shouldn’t exist in this day and age from the simplest of games.
Read full review
Spaziogames
Domenico Musicò
4.8 / 10.0
Dawn of Fear in a true old school survival horror, but is literally devastated by too many technical flaws.
Review in Italian | Read full review
GameSpew
Richard Seagrave
2 / 10.
0
Unless Dawn of Fear gets heavily patched after launch, steer well clear of it unless you’re a glutton for punishment or have the patience of a saint.
Read full review
View All Critic Reviews (12)
How to solve the Dawn of Fear puzzle with chess pieces — Game Advisor
Guides
AuthorShaktill
New old-school style horror game Dawn of Fear is out on PS4, bringing with it fixed camera survival horror nostalgia, reminiscent of the good old Resident Evil, Eternal Darkness, and Silent Hill games. There are many challenging puzzles in this PlayStation exclusive, and one of them is the chess puzzle at the beginning of the game. nine0003
The location of the first king.
The puzzle with chess pieces is located at the very beginning of the game, even before the Dawn of Fear the first boss.
The chessboard in the main corridor is «something missing», according to the game, so players will have to look for two king pieces to fill the board. The first one is easy to find: there is a golden king on the dining table waiting for Alex to pick it up.
Location of the Second King
Now comes the hardest part of this old school fixed camera horror game. nine0011 Dawn of Fear : Fight off the undead. The silver king is not as easy to find as the golden one. First, Alex will have to open several doors and find a corridor with a door to the office. There is a purple emblem on the office door, so it should be pretty easy to spot.
At the very end of the corridor is a blood-soaked room with a zombie that will come to life as soon as Alex enters it. After that, players will see a message stating that there was a loud noise in the main hall. Go back to the front door and Ethan will be dead (while Dawn of Fear may not be one of the best horror games, but this scene is pretty creepy).
Take his pistol. Return to the bloodied room and shoot the zombies. It will take about three shots. Once the room is secure, check the table for the silver king.
Return to the corridor
The chessboard is next to the front door.
Players need to approach the chess board, then click on the two chess pieces in their inventory. Once both pieces are in inventory, the game will zoom in on the chessboard. This is where the most difficult thing will be if the player has no experience in playing chess. nine0003
The meaning of this Dawn of Fear is to checkmate the golden side of the board. Move the left knight (the head piece of the knight) two spaces to the back wall and one space to the right, placing it directly in front of the golden pawn. Checkmate! As soon as the horse is in place, a scene will appear showing a secret passage to the library. This should help those who are not familiar with chess to overcome this difficult puzzle. Now it’s time to enter the secret passage and continue the game Dawn of Fear experience.
Sources: YouTube, walkthrough guide
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