Currently Playing: Vultures: Scavengers of Death [Almost a Review]

After reaching about the halfway point of the new release Vultures: Scavengers of Death, I decided to make an appreciation post in favor of the game. The reason: It’s a pretty good indie game, and it’s probably the best iteration for anyone looking for the classic Resident Evil feeling, where mood and atmosphere have been captured splendidly—and it’s not even in the same gameplay genre! So, read this article from someone who is currently knee-high in zombies—meaning, don’t take it as a full review. Here goes. 

Differences
The main difference between Vultures and the original trilogy of Resident Evil is that this is a top-down, turn-based experience, which is a far cry from the real-time, third-person zombie massacring in those legendary games. However, it’s a great fit for the survival-horror genre—who knew? When you are not engaged with monsters, it’s free-roaming with no restrictions, but as soon as something reaches out for your brain in ravenous hunger—it becomes turn-based. In this mode you get a few Action Points for action and movement, but they are separated—making it very easy to check how far you can run and how much you can do without having to penny-pinch every AP. The rules are simple to follow, but regardless of its ease of use, there are many actions that require thinking to avoid getting your flesh torn.

For example, you can push zombies into walls to stun them, which is an excellent tool to use when you want to avoid fighting the flesh-eating hordes. This opens up more and more depending on the equipment you find—with sexy agent Amber having a rope-gun that can be used to dodge the mutants, or, why not, to pull a few to their doom (30 meters down to the asphalt). All in all, I find the combat very engaging, but it has to be said: if you play carefully—spending the majority of the time sneaking and conserving resources—Vultures can become easy-going by survival-horror standards. No, I can’t be sure it won’t pull a fast one on me suddenly by making it impossibly hard—it wouldn’t be the first time that happens—but so far, the game has been lenient. 

Explore everything
One thing I really like about Vultures is how much of its focus is on exploration, letting you bypass additional lore, equipment, and weapons depending on how meticulous (or not) you are. In my first run—the demo run—I never found the room key for the shotgun, which had me continuing the campaign without this awesome tool of destruction. I love that the game has no problem kicking your lazy ass to the curb if you fail at this aspect. Yet I did notice that actually being thorough—picking up everything not nailed down contributes to the game feeling easy at points. You just have too many goodies in the form of ammo! 

Beyond collecting equipment, you will also collect tapes and discs, which you can sell between missions to buy useful upgrades. One of the most crucial upgrades for me was making the knife a one-stab kill weapon on unsuspecting zombies. Before the upgrade, it just cut the enemy as usual, even from stealth—but now it was making shish kebab out of them. Very useful indeed. 

VHS visuals
With the story being set in the 90s, the visual style is very PlayStation 2, with a cozy VHS filter encompassing everything—and frankly, it looks great, perfectly fitting for the genre. The presentation overall—including music, grunts, and zombie-mutants growls—is on point and feels consistent throughout the adventure. It’s clear this is a passion project, but sadly, not everything is in top-notch condition. There are bugs, like animations suddenly stopping at random, with zombies moon‑walking toward you (hee‑hee). I also had a hilarious bug when I decided to retire my helmet. I didn’t just hand in the helmet for the mission—I gave the quartermaster my whole head! There seem to be a few performance issues too, which had the game drop frames—surprisingly enough, considering the graphics and its minimal level of simulations. Beyond these issues, it ran fine.

Conclusion
So far, Vultures: Scavengers of Death has been a nice survival-horror title with a gritty visual style that should feel at home for anyone who likes the old Sony aesthetics. It’s unfortunately not a hit through and through due to being very easy (so far) if you actually play the game and explore every nook and cranny. It has made every encounter with some kind of boss a ten-second obstacle, compared to the normal five-second one. A difficulty setting could prove to be great for the longevity of the game. Other than that, I recommend Vultures to anyone looking for a new, unique survival-horror experience—so go get it! 

– Review copy provided by publisher –