If there’s one trend I’ve been loving lately, it’s the comeback of PS1-style horror games. There’s something special about those chunky, retro visuals paired with modern design sensibilities and quality of life improvements that just works. Games like Crow Country, Alisa, and Signalis have already proven how effective that mix can be, capturing the spirit of classic survival horror without feeling stuck in the past. And now, Ground Zero steps up to join that lineup.

Seo-Yeon was way more likeable than I could have imagined.

In Ground Zero, the Korean city of Busan has been swallowed up by some kind of mysterious growth. Communication in and out of the city has gone completely dark, and a task force is sent in to figure out what went wrong. You play as Seo-Yeon, deployed alongside a Canadian special forces operative to investigate, collect data, and report back. Naturally, things spiral out of control pretty quickly, as it becomes clear the outbreak is far bigger than anyone expected.

What really surprised me about Ground Zero is that it’s not content with just being “another Resident Evil throwback.” It plays around with its structure in some pretty interesting ways. At key points, you’re asked to choose which path to take, and those decisions aren’t cosmetic. They send you down entirely different routes, each with their own resources, bosses, and even weapons. They could have easily crammed everything into one playthrough, but splitting it up like this keeps the pacing in check, especially when the game starts to drag a bit in the later sections. It also gives you a solid excuse to jump back in and see what you missed, rather than feeling like you’ve already seen everything the first time around.

Fixed camera angles and old-school survival horror gameplay all make a comeback.

When it comes to combat, there are a few interesting tweaks. Aiming your weapon locks onto the nearest enemy by default, but you can fine tune your aim or snap between targets with the press of the shoulder bumpers. It mostly works how you’d expect, and yes, it’s still got that familiar clunkiness the genre is known for. The biggest addition, though, is the critical hit system. It’s clearly inspired by the Resident Evil 2 remake, where holding your aim boosts the damage dealt. In Ground Zero, you hold the button to steady your shot, time it right, and land a critical hit that can drop most standard enemies in one go. It turns every encounter into a simple risk and reward choice. Nail the timing, and you save ammo. Mess it up, and you’re probably eating a hit for your trouble.

Seo-Yeon also has a couple of defensive options. You can dodge enemy attacks, which is especially handy if you whiff a critical hit at point blank range and need a quick escape. There’s also a parry system that lets you block melee attacks and follow up with a counter. To be fair, though, I barely used it. Outside of a brief prompt near the beginning, the game doesn’t really push you to engage with it, and it ends up feeling a bit out of place compared to everything else.

This is what the Resident Evil 3 remake should have been.

I’d recommend bumping the difficulty up a notch or two from whatever you usually go with. The default setting leans a bit too easy, to the point where I was hoarding an excessive amount of health and ammo. One nice touch is that Ground Zero separates combat difficulty from puzzle difficulty. It’s a small feature, but it makes a difference, and honestly, I wish more games would do it. It works just as well here as it does in Silent Hill 2 and Silent Hill f, letting you tweak the experience to your liking without compromise. There are also the usual post-game unlocks, with extra difficulties, costumes, and other bonuses to mess around with.

Unfortunately, the game never quite reaches its full potential, and a few elements feel a bit undercooked. Enemy designs, while visually distinct and genuinely cool, all tend to behave the same way. You’ve got your standard zombie types, some dogs, and the occasional ranged enemy, but beyond that, there’s not a whole lot of variety in how they behave. Boss fights don’t show up as often as you’d hope, and when they do, they usually boil down to shooting environmental weak points for big damage. It’s not exactly groundbreaking, but to be fair, they’re still fun. They bring a bit of spectacle and offer a nice change of pace from dealing with the regular zombie crowd.

Busan has many horrors hidden around the corner

As mentioned earlier, this is very much a PS1-inspired horror game, and a lot of care has clearly gone into nailing that look. The low-poly character models are surprisingly expressive, with animations that sell the tension far better than you might expect. The pre-rendered backgrounds, meanwhile, do a great job recapturing that classic atmosphere, to the point where it genuinely feels like something pulled straight out of the late 90s. The sound design leans into that nostalgia too. Dialogue is delivered with just the right amount of cheese, landing squarely in that “so bad it’s good” territory that fans of older survival horror will probably find weirdly charming.

Ground Zero is pretty much everything I wanted it to be. It’s a strong throwback horror game with excellent level design that had me checking every corner, a story that knows not to take itself too seriously, and that classic, slightly clunky gameplay the genre is built on. It’s not perfect, but it absolutely understands what makes this style of horror work, and that goes a long way. I can only hope we end up seeing a lot more of it in the future.

 Ground Zero is available now on PC.

Reviewed on PC with an RTX 4070, Ryzen 7 7800X3D and 32GB RAM. 

A copy of Ground Zero was provided by the publisher.