Unreal Engine - Project Extermination: Operation GroundZeroes [Phase 2 - 2023-07-16] [MATEYDEV]

It definitely exceeded what I expected from a proof of concept. The systems work all well together, and there seems to be some systems in place which don’t have an effect yet. For example, after defeat there’s a symbol and percentage which appears on the HUD that slowly counts down. Not sure what that’ll signify in game.

Character design looks good for both the protagonist and the initial creatures, be interesting to see the other creature designs. In both cases the animation is very fluid and the starting zone has some interactable objects to showcase some of the planned environmental interactivity.

Combat is simple but enjoyable and has some real punchy moments. In melee RMB locks you to the head of a target and lets you keep focused on them. The melee balance feels geared towards 1 on 1 (maybe 2 on 1), and attacks from behind ruin your day. It feels intentional though as ranged combat provides crowd control. A nice touch in the ranged combat is the laser dot changing colour to give you a visual clue of how much ammo you have in the mag.

Currently defeat leads to a scene in a darkened room where you’re surrounded by assailants. To explain the change of scenery, the protagonist gets her head slammed into the ground. It actually made me wince. Persona preference, and idea but I’d like to see an animation where the creature rips the armour off; I don’t know if that’s feasible though. While there’s multiple angles and positions it’s a perfectly functional demo of what’s planned. The perspective camera needs looking at, as they seem to be too low positioned within the body. After defeat you wake up having lost access to your inventory including weapons and armour. To regain it you simply need to reach the spot where you fell.

Due to the plain grey-white test environment the UI feels a little blurry due to its transparency and the plain environment of the demo, I expect that stop once the environment gets some details. It’s perfectly functional otherwise and does what you want it to; letting you manage your inventory and slots.

Both aspects of the game have gone beyond what I expected. It shows a lot of potential but very early days. The combat meshes excellently with the NSFW content and with regular updates over the coming year, it looks as though it’ll evolve into a high-quality game.

Work in progress, of course, but it's very promising. Though you may not be able to tell from the current game version, there's a lot of core systems work that's been established. Even just simple things like the infection meter (which currently has no effect), no purpose interactables, etc provide the code structure for all the future systems that will be used.
At the minute, it's got good character models (for the player character and enemies both), good sex animations, and a pretty decent combat system. Plus, it's got a lot more scope and scale than most porn-related games do, and it's intended to a be a game, not just a porn simulator like many games are.. While that's personal preference, I like H-games that are more than their porn content
It does have flaws, of course. The movement system and controls need some tweaking and fine-tuning, and yes, some things don't work as intended or at all. But it's got a hell of a lot of potential.

Ignore some of the other reviews (like the person who couldn't work out basic gameplay stuff, such as picking up the weapon on the floor in front of you, assigning items to quick-bind, using the sex camera (which literally has the control buttons there for you on-screen) etc, or complaining about early access having "interactables with no purpose" like dude it's literally an early version of the game of course there's gonna be stuff that's not done). People sometimes have an unrealistic expectation of games that are very early in development.

Look, what I'm trying to say is that it's a very promising game, give it a chance. Development isn't an exact science, and furthermore it's generally slow. The progress the dev is making is very fast compared to many others, but it's not instantaneous, and he's made good progress given that he's had to build everything but the engine from the ground-up in a few months.

So why 2 stars?

1. No physics at all. Come on, we all know MateyDev has very smooth hair, butt, and breast physics in their other titles, so why not here too?

2. Some containers have an interact key and others do not. Sometimes it is because the crate looks lootable but isn't, but other times had lootable crates that could be interacted with but had no interaction symbol. Very confusing.

3. The sex camera is absolutely atrocious. It is so hard to control and couldn't figure it out.

4. There is no unarmed or melee attack. So once out of ammo, you are screwed... literally. The HowToControl.txt implies there is a melee attack but I never could do it. Unless you need a weapon equipped to do it...

5. You cannot do the Quick Item Menu. I collected like 7 medkits, but couldn't figure out how to use them.

6. You do not start with a gun and couldn't actually figure out where to find one.

7. There is a lot of interactables with no purpose.

8. You take massive falling damage with only slight drops.

9. You cannot jump manually, only jump off a ledge. But for reasons unknown you can crouch, not that it makes you stealthier or makes your shots more accurate.

10. You gain XP by jumping off ledges. And you can keep repeating this action over and over again.

11. When raped, you lose all your equipment and your dress. I couldn't figure out how to get a new dress or retrieve my equipment.

12. When raped, the insemination meter goes down over time, rather than goes up. But there is no cum drippage or belly expansion so... yeah...

13. You run without shift. But you must hold space to walk. But... space is used for dodging too, so if you try walking in combat, you'll dodge instead.

14. Hold E to interact, is used way too often and done a ton in menus for reasons.

15. Decent enemy character models, but the enemies lack eyes or noses. So how do they detect me?

16. Decent player character model, but not a fan of the glasses or the color of the hair or the bun the hair is in. Personal preference.

17. Finally, and this caused it to lose a star (would have rated a 3), is that when you die, you have to ALT+F4. The game isn't frozen, but there is no way to exit out of the death screen. I had wanted to try it again, but having to ALT+F4 to get out of it kinda turned me off.

If this one gets updates, I'll update my review, but for now, its a pass.

It's great this is shared here and it was enjoyable to try out these unique animations and gameplay. It's entertaining and different, the texture quality on everything is great. In fact I like everything about this game, except only one single thing.
The sex scenes/animations in general just don't feel the same quality the rest of the game has. It's difficult to put it any other way. The games animations are very fluid and smooth, life like. Then you get to a sex scene and not only from the looks, but the animations, it feels like you just started playing a different game. I feel they could easily be improved and perhaps this was already going to be done.
My review is only coming from a players perspective I have no other point of view.
If dev reads, keep up the good work and enjoy yourself, that's what it's about!

Lets rate the demo.

Graphics/Animations: For animations it's pretty great. I know unreal has lots of tricks for you to use but I think the work here is legit 5/5. How it's put to use to move supplies to boxes is a different thing.
The character can use some detail (and some better shading), maybe use meta human as baseline? Sadly I'm not the expert on Character art.

Combat: Shooting is pretty great, I like how you have sway when you aim so you need to shoot when the laser hits the enemy. I like this since accuracy is dependent on you, not some random value. This works in survival horror games.
The melee combat however requires either a redesign or it's just place holder like the stick we use. I don't like it but melee in a third-person shooter is very difficult in general, certainly if you go slow-phased. Ever did RE4-5 with the knife? Yeah it sucks balls.

UI: Going for a dead space UI that is diegetic is a huge + in my book. Obviously it needs polish but it's proof of concept first release. Getting it to work smooth will take time for different resolutions and just camera placements.

H Content: Really in the end we want to jerk off and the game goes for defeat scenario's where you are moved around the map in some building and gang banged. Pretty great for what we have now, just adding more would be enough.

As a tech demo, this game is amazing!
Looking forward to the full game, I hope the developer can complete it with Patreon and not turn into the 2nd Eromancer.
A couple of points to correct if the developers are reading:
0) Standard hairstyle seems too flat, add some polygons and volume but keep the same style.
1) When in the hand of a suitcase, any action other than shooting causes this case to be injured, the problem is that the case cannot be lifted later.
2) Animations at the end are too fast, you need to make it smoother. And always the 2nd animation after the defeat is a blowjob, it's better to add a random in the 2nd scene.
3) Close combat is heavily dodged, for some reason it restores stamina, you can literally destroy the crowd with a wand simply by pressing a combination (LMB and dodge to the side, LMB and dodge to the side, repeat until you defeat the horde)
For this game, it seems to me that melee should be resorted to last for 1-2 opponents. The game is positioned as horror, not Hack and slash

One of the strongest starts to a project I've seen in a long time. The foundation is there for a really good game, much less a porn game.

The gameplay: Perfect for it's atmosphere. It feels clunky at first, but it's supposed to since this is supposed to be a semi-horror game. Don't worry, you'll get used to it.

The "content": Pretty good. I had a weird bug where if it was one of the scenes where the main character was leaning over a box, the animation would be facing the wrong direction making her lean on air, but that's something that I'm sure can be fixed pretty quick.

The Setting/Environment: Unfinished for now. But the crunchy sfx from what's already there and the bits of particle effects you can see do give me hope.

This review is addressed towards the pre proof of concept version, which is the latest version posted in this site.

Considering this is a pre proof of concept, it makes sense that the version is just so to give us an idea of what to expect but.. there are WAY too many things that could improve if the game keeps being developed

Let me start with the only positive thing, which isn't really all that positive.. the animations

The animations are mostly decent, they are a little clunky, at least the movements of them.. and while I do appreciate the different cameras so we could shift it to our own viewing pleasure, it didn't work the greatest in my opinion. The transitions between the getting fucked scene and the blowjob scene (should've been done in the opposite way in my opinion, first the blowjob and then getting fucked) is also clunky, and it's not very smooth.. takes a little bit to transition between scenes and the black screen while it transitions kind of ruins the scene.

Now, onto the more harsh aspects of this game, starting off by the menu.

The menu, while it looks simplistic, doesn't really work all that well. It takes a few clicks for your input to actually register when you're trying to select an option, making it a little bothersome to traverse through. Another thing is, the sliders.. you can technically control the sliders with A/D and while this in itself isn't all that bad, I think a better idea would be having the possibility to control the sliders with your mouse, as a mouse is much more precise than the keys on the keyboard and it makes for a much more precise range that you can set up to your liking.

The menu also lacks a few important options, such as having the possibility to remap keybindings, because I have to be honest.. the default key bindings are BAD.

Another problem in regards to the menus, and this time in-game, is the fact that you don't exactly have a binding to open your inventory.. you have to press ESCAPE + Click on Inventory for the inventory to open, which makes you lose time and time is of the essence in these sorts of games, you need to be able to act quick

And speaking of the inventory, you don't have much maneuverability when it comes to the inventory. What I refer by this is the fact that, you have to put each gun in a quick item slot yourself, which again, makes you lose a little bit of time if you do not do it in a safe area. Hell, I didn't even know I possessed a gun or how to even access it, so an indication for that would be nice to have. It also would be way more comfortable, as a player that has played many shooters before, to be able to access the guns by pressing 1 2 3 and such on the keyboard, even have the option to remap that to your personal preference as well would be cool.

And in those, you could maybe add healing items as well.. because it's also kind of bothersome to use them.

Now, in-game movement itself/combat. It's okay but there are certain things which are not really working properly

The special action button, which is bound to key V, does not work. I have tried pressing it several times and it didn't really do anything most of the time, the quick equip button also didn't really work, although that could be a me thing since I always had my weapons ready all of the time (after I discovered how to use them XD)

There's also a bug (I think it is a bug at least) where if you climbed up a surface once via holding E, if you want to climb that same surface up again you won't really be able to, the game won't allow it to. In my opinion, it would be a better idea if instead of holding E to climb, you could just jump and the character latches onto the surface, and you need to press space or up again to climb as it happens in shooters commonly.. it's more intuitive and smooth.

Combat itself is decent, except for the melee weapon.. The melee weapon is absolutely horrendous to use, mostly because of the auto-targeting system where if you aim at a zombie even once with it, you just can't un-aim.. it makes for a really frustrating experience in my opinion

UI is kind of okay-ish, although it would be appreciated if there was an indicator for which slider meant what.. there's a SUPER SMALL slider in the bottom left screen which is for stamina, you don't really know where your health bar is until you find out it is in your suit, Dead Space style.

Ammunition for the pistols is very lackluster and the aiming system is weird, the bullets don't exactly go where you're aiming, they go where the laser is being aimed at the moment

The dodge is.. bad, in my opinion.. I can see how the developer took inspiration from Resident Evil 3 Remake for the dodge but it's not very effective in this game. It could be polished some more to make it more satisfying and kind of time based as it is in Resident Evil 3 Remake, where it felt a little bit like playing Dark Souls especially during the final boss fight.

Either way, I digress.

Another thing that didn't really work that I forgot to mention during the menu, there seems to be character presets.. which adds a layer of customization to the game but, there was nothing really there? Probably a feature that might come into the future but it's a little bit of a tease to have a character tab where you expect at least minimum customization and then you have absolutely nothing.

I can't remember if there is one at the moment but another useful tool we could have in the menu is a sensitivity slider, because although the sensitivity wasn't exhuberantly fast, I still would've preferred to customize it more to my liking.

There's also the fact that the way the zombies's grab works to try and trigger the lewd scenes is MUCH too permissive at the moment.. you can pretty much escape all the time if you continuously click E, since the time it takes for the zombie to actually be able to tackle you down and start a scene is very high.. you can notice this by the heartbeat sound that is played in this scenario.

On an end note, I didn't really want to be too harsh on this review considering it's a pre proof of concept version but, there are way too many things that caught my attention and could be modified for the better. Hope the constructive criticism helps the dev improve his WIP game