Ground Zero review: Busan has had a very bad quarter

The big picture

A meteor hits South Korea, the air becomes breathable again, and somebody decides two operatives should go investigate. This is an impressively economical response to an event that has rearranged the local food chain. Ground Zero sends Seo-Yeon and her Canadian partner into the remains of Busan, where the wildlife has acquired several unauthorized features and the briefing could reasonably have been replaced with a resignation form.

Malformation Games builds its survival horror around fixed cameras, pre-rendered environments, and a soldier who can do more than backpedal while expressing concern. The combination has a clear appeal: an old-fashioned nightmare with enough combat options to make survival feel like a skill rather than an especially unpleasant raffle. Its full release arrived on April 16, 2026, for Windows, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S. The earlier public demo was a preview, rather than an Early Access launch.

A professional with an unprofessional assignment

Seo-Yeon's toolkit includes shooting, stabbing, kicking, and countering. These options make her training part of the game's design rather than a line in a biography that becomes mysteriously irrelevant when a door needs opening. A capable lead can still belong in horror. In fact, giving someone several ways to defend herself makes a sufficiently awful situation more interesting: the problem has to justify all that preparation.

The Genome Point incentive adds another consideration to those choices. A reward for cleaner combat encourages attention to execution, even when panic would prefer to take the wheel and hold down every button. That doesn't automatically make aggression the best answer to every encounter. It does give the player a reason to think about how a fight ends, rather than treating every surviving encounter as an identical box ticked.

The trade-off is a question of taste. Players who want their horror protagonist to remain almost helpless may prefer a narrower set of defenses. Ground Zero's premise offers trained resistance against mutated enemies, with gear improvement woven into the struggle. It belongs on the side of horror where you can fight back, although the monsters have apparently read the same brochure.

The camera is also employed by the nightmare

Fixed viewpoints give the environment a say in how much information you receive. That suits a game built around examining devastated places and dealing with threats inside them. A camera positioned by the designer can turn an ordinary route into a composition, keeping architecture and empty space involved in the mood instead of leaving everything to the nearest collection of teeth.

There is a corresponding commitment from the player. Anyone used to freely spinning a camera should expect a different relationship with space. The appeal is partly in accepting the frame and reading what it presents. Ground Zero wears that preference openly, alongside puzzles and pre-rendered scenery. It is inviting a specific audience back to a familiar kind of discomfort, not pretending everyone was secretly asking for 1998 to supervise their evening.

Custom difficulty and optional tank controls help separate the atmosphere from the strictest version of the old rules. You can appreciate a carefully arranged shot without believing every historical inconvenience deserves preservation in a museum, let alone your living room.

Reasons to return to the disaster zone

Alternate outfits, extra modes, and hidden endings give curious players more to pursue beyond the basic investigation. These are sensible companions to a system that rewards cleaner combat: one offers new goals, while the other supplies a reason to refine the approach. Whether that prospect sounds enticing depends on how much you enjoy learning a horror game's structure after the initial uncertainty fades.

The strongest case for Ground Zero is the way its pieces point toward the same audience. A distinctive ruined city, deliberate camera framing, armed problem-solving, and a reward for doing the ugly work neatly form a coherent retro-horror pitch. If that sounds like your sort of dreadful business trip, Busan has an opening. The benefits package appears to be Genome Points and the continued use of your legs.