Flesh Made Fear Review – Fear Made Sandwich

Tainted Pact’s Flesh Made Fear is a PlayStation 1-style survival horror game that’s heavily inspired by the original Resident Evil games.

While many games revolving around some form of outbreak that’s wiped out a town and infested it with monsters usually center the meat of its plot around finding out how and why the outbreak occurred, Flesh Made Fear throws out this process and tells you exactly what’s happened in the opening monologue.

Set in 1982, Flesh Made Fear opens with the story of Victor Ripper, who was once a CIA scientist who specialized in psychological manipulation and mind control. Obsessed with unlocking the “ultimate mind control” he (you guessed it) tested his own compounds on himself which unsurprisingly drove him insane (shocker). With pagan rituals and the occult then becoming his next obsession, Victor vanished, taking his compounds and research with him. When people in the town of Rotwood started to go missing, special response unit R.I.P. sent Agent Cole to investigate before he too went missing. Believing this to be the work of Victor Ripper, the R.I.P. sends a squad to Rotwood to locate Agent Cole and stop Ripper. When they arrive, they find the whole town infested with monsters, the result of Ripper’s experiments.

Similar to Resident Evil, we have a choice between one of two characters to play in each run: Jack ‘Bones’ Richards or Natalie ‘Nix’ Lewis. Jack has more health and starting ammo on normal difficulty whereas Natalie has more inventory space and healing items on normal difficulty. Remembering how much more useful Jill’s extra inventory space was in Resident Evil in comparison to any of Chris’ skills, I chose Natalie and played on normal difficulty. I think Natalie is by far the best choice for a first run as, just like in Resident Evil, managing the limited inventory capacity in Flesh Made Fear became my greatest enemy towards the end of the game. The differing characters enhance the replayability experience by quite a lot; not only do Jack and Natalie have differing locations in the first third of the game, but they’re also accompanied by different partners during a few missions.

Flesh Made Fear wears its inspiration on its sleeve with its tank controls and fixed camera. Both work really well with the gameplay and I rarely ran into any issues with the fixed camera switching too much or impacting my visibility. The tank controls feel smooth and reactive while also maintaining the retro feel that the developer was aiming for. All guns use a laser sight when aimed which helps a great deal in showing the player character’s line of sight when shooting at enemies, something that a lot of similar retro-style games have tried to work around. When aiming, it’s easy to adjust your line of sight on the spot too.

New variants of enemies are introduced progressively throughout Flesh Made Fear, as well as new weaponry to keep things fresh and interesting. That being said, Flesh Made Fear maybe has too much of a generous difficulty curve to begin with; I didn’t die until nearly a third way through the game during the first major boss fight. Up until that point I was mainly bored; enemies came one at a time in large, open environments and I constantly had my pockets stuffed to the brim with ammo. While Flesh Made Fear has limited saves (similar to Resident Evil) by having the player need to collect and use wax in order to save their progress, there was only one instance in the entire game where I actually ran out of wax. As a result, by the time I reached the latter parts of the game where it opens up into the town of Rotwood and truly (and finally) feels like a challenge, Flesh Made Fear felt like it was outstaying its welcome.

I also feel like the plot had a lot to do with my lack of drive to get through Flesh Made Fear. It’s very cliched and corny, with Victor Ripper offering no more than a generic cackling villain whose motive is revealed within the first couple of minutes (he’s even shown giggling maniacally as he watches the player character walk away to the next location from afar). While the Resident Evil series itself is incredibly corny and doesn’t offer much more than this, there was still that intrigue of moving through the Spencer Mansion or Raccoon City Police Station to find out how the outbreak happened, reading logs and notes from the various people affected by it, and inevitably uncovering whatever underground lab Umbrella has set up this time. In Flesh Made Fear there’s none of that intrigue because we already know what’s happened and Victor Ripper’s notes have nothing more to add than rambling speeches. Flesh Made Fear’s story would have been far more interesting without that prologue, instead opening with the squad team responding to Agent Cole’s disappearance and the missing townspeople with the reveal of Victor Ripper and his experiments happening later. It doesn’t help that all of the puzzles included in the game are also ridiculously easy. The solutions were often within the same room and rarely amounted to much more than “here’s a riddle to tell you what order to arrange some items in”.

Flesh Made Fear looks exactly how you would expect and hope from a retro-style horror game. It’s blocky, PlayStation 1-style graphics suit the vibes immaculately and there’s some really great enemy designs too. It can be a little too dark in places, the blotchy fog affect could look ugly at times, and some of the flashing lights were also a little too harsh on my eyes, but other than that it looked really great and there was a really nice mix of camera angles.

Audio-wise, some boss tracks in the soundtrack were great for tension building, but a lot of the general exploration tracks were incredibly repetitive and annoying, relying on the same few piano notes over and over. The voice acting is very over-the-top, but this fits in well with the corny storyline and vibes. I also liked how when we’re first introduced to the squad, the voice actors are displayed in the corner of the first few lines of each character’s dialogue which I thought was a great way to give them credit.

Flesh Made Fear is fine if you’re looking for another retro-style survival horror game. It took me around eight hours to complete my first run and while I didn’t find that it stands out in any particular way in comparison to similar games within the genre, it was a fun time towards the end and does serve a satisfying (and funny) conclusion. While its storyline isn’t anything special, its gameplay is well designed and entertaining once the difficulty picks up. But there’s nothing about Flesh Made Fear that makes it particularly remarkable to note.

Jess reviewed Flesh Made Fear on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing and our score will not be changed.