While many fans appreciate the conveniences of modern survival-horror games, others long for the days of fixed camera angles and tank controls found in the PS1-era Resident Evil titles. Various indie developers have attempted to emulate the classic survival-horror style of gameplay to varying degrees of success, with the latest effort being the PS4-exclusive Dawn of Fear. Dawn of Fear does a decent enough job of looking and playing like an old-school survival-horror game, but unfortunately, it is completely and utterly broken in its current state.

Full disclosure, we were unable to finish Dawn of Fear because of its bugs. We restarted the game three separate times, and each time ran into a game-breaking bug that made it literally impossible to continue. Resetting the game or loading an old save did nothing to alleviate the issues, with the only course of action being to start completely over from the beginning.

The first game-breaking bug we ran when into when trying to complete Dawn of Fear was a bizarre one where the room's textures wouldn't load. Everything was just a black abyss - the camera stuck in position, enemies invisible, and other sections of the game world visible in the distance. This was a consistent issue in the game, though it would usually correct itself after waiting a few moments. However, there was one time where it never did, and made it impossible to properly navigate the room and progress the story.

The second game-breaking bug that we encountered in Dawn of Fear was when an item needed for a puzzle didn't spawn. We knew that we needed the item because we had already completed that puzzle in the previous playthrough attempt, and so there was literally nothing that could be done to continue the game.

The third game-breaking bug in Dawn of Fear came when encountering a door blocked by chains. Players are supposed to use shears to cut the chains and get through the door, but the chains stayed firmly in place when we used the shears. After a few more attempts, the shears eventually just disappeared from the inventory menu, with the chains still blocking the door and forcing us to restart from the beginning yet again.

Dawn of Fear is in such a broken state that it's incredible that it even made it on the PlayStation Store at all. Sony has been criticized in recent years of being a bit more lax when it comes to the quality of games it's allowing on the PlayStation Store, but Dawn of Fear is especially egregious.

Looking past the game-breaking bugs, Dawn of Fear has plenty of other issues to take note of as well. Namely, it runs very poorly. The frame rate can be so bad that it looks like the player character Alex is teleporting around the room, and when he's not doing that, he's just freezing in place. When exploring the greenhouse's basement area, the frame rate dipped so much that it was like playing the game in slow motion. These are pretty glaring flaws, and it's clear from them that Dawn of Fear is just not a finished product.

It's a shame, too, because there's not a lot of games like Dawn of Fear available. The game successfully recreates the feeling of playing an old-school Resident Evil or Silent Hill game thanks to its puzzle-solving and exploration elements, it's just that the game surrounding these things is so broken that it's impossible to properly enjoy them.

But even if Dawn of Fear didn't have its serious technical issues, the game's combat would still keep it from being all that great. The game uses the classic Resident Evil style of combat, meaning players are rooted to the spot instead of being able to move and shoot. The classic Resident Evil games made this work by having weapons snap to the nearest enemy when aimed, but Dawn of Fear fumbles this, with weapons not even necessarily pointing in the direction Alex is facing. Players can prepare themselves to shoot down an incoming horde of zombies, only to aim their weapon and have Alex do a complete 180.

Ammo is scarce and enemies are deadly if they can get a hold of the player. There are some definite inconsistencies when it comes to damage dealt to Alex, though. For example, there was one instance where Alex was bit by zombies just twice and dropped dead, but another time when they tanked four zombie bites in a row. Players can manually check their health by opening their notebook, but that's not always practical when trying to survive against the game's enemies.

When players are hurt, the notebook gets covered in blood. It's an interesting way to display health, but when health seems to be inaccurate anyway, it doesn't really matter. Sometimes Alex will offer a visual representation of being hurt by limping, though that animation was inconsistent as well. The notebook, meanwhile, is where players manage their items. However, item images in the notebook blend in with its white background, making it hard to see what one has without some eye strain.

Dawn of Fear's menus are poorly implemented in general. Not only is the notebook hard to look at, but players will also find that they can't use the Options button on the DualShock 4 to un-pause the game. Instead there is a dedicated "Back" selection in the menu to use, which seems like a nitpick, but it's a good example of how unpolished this game is. Players can't unpause it by pressing the pause button like they would be able to do in virtually any other video game ever made. The menus also are unresponsive most of the time, with the save menu taking upwards of 10 or more clicks of the X button it reads what the player is trying to do. There's also some misspellings in the menus, with one of the most obvious being "candle" spelled "candel" (candles are save points in Dawn of Fear, so players come across the mistake a lot). It's possible this was done intentionally, but it's hard to see why that would be.

Even if players are able to stick with the game and push through all this, they will also have to contend with its frustrating boss fights. The first boss in Dawn of Fear, for example, can hurt the player without ever actually hitting their character. Alex will just start dying for no reason, and there are no hit animations or anything to let the player know that they've taken damage. The boss's hit box, meanwhile, is big enough that players are able to hit it without even really doing so. This boss is pathetically easy when players figure out how to cheese the fight, but until then they're left dealing with invisible attacks and ridiculous hitboxes.

Dawn of Fear is too broken in its current state to recommend it to anyone. Those desperate for an old-school survival-horror experience may want to hold out hope that other upcoming Resident Evil and Silent Hill-inspired games turn out to be a bit better because Dawn of Fear is a mess.

Dawn of Fear is out now, exclusively on PS4. Game Rant was provided a code for this review.