Resident Evil Meets Papers Please in a Wild New Xbox Game Pass Offering
In this zombie apocalypse, you’re more NPC than hero
Gamers are typically afforded a certain level of privilege when it comes to the zombie apocalypse. We’re usually cast as the heroes of these stories, empowered to sneak past the terrifying shamblers or take them down with a well-aimed bullet. Quarantine Zone: The Last Check, developed by indie studio Brigada Games and published by Devolver Digital, offers no such pampering. Instead, you’re working at a checkpoint, inspecting jittery survivors for symptoms to determine whether they’re healthy enough to be evacuated. The game’s been out for several months on Steam, and it recently came to Xbox Game Pass. If you’re a fan of survival horror, this unique genre mash-up is absolutely worth checking out.
The core gameplay loop of Quarantine Zone centers around the inspection line. One by one, you’ll wave people forward and check to see if they have any symptoms. At first, these investigations are purely visual; you’ll take a flashlight and check if their eyes are red, or if they’re covered in oozing bites or worrisome scratches. Later, you’ll get more diagnostic tools like a stethoscope, a reflex hammer, and a portable X-ray. You’ll note the symptoms each person has on a tablet, then decide whether to send them to the survivors' block, quarantine, the laboratory, or “liquidation,” which is… exactly what you think it is.
Symptoms range in severity from green (mild), to orange (iffy), to red (definitely infected). Some people have one or two symptoms, others may have none at all, and once in a while you’ll find some fool with dozens of bites hidden under their clothes. Folks with any code-red symptoms go to liquidation — unless they have a new symptom you can potentially track in future survivors, in which case it’s off to the laboratory. After each inspection, you’ll see a pop-up in the top-right corner indicating whether your inspection was excellent, competent, or poor, depending on whether you correctly noted their symptoms and sent them to the right place.
It seems pretty straightforward at first, but things get complicated fast. Is that dirt or scratches? Is that a bruise, or necrosis, or a tattoo? Are those “normal” freckles or “potentially a mild symptom and thus quarantine-worthy” freckles? You’ll have to rely on your instincts, and you’ll consistently be reminded that your instincts suck. As your quarantine space fills and survivor quotas get higher, the more you’ll be tempted to let someone through who’s probably fine, fingers crossed.
While inspections are the meat of Quarantine Zone, the game does integrate a variety of other systems, with varying results. The best of these are the raids, which happen every few days at night. Piloting a drone armed with an array of guns, you’ll take out hordes of zombies attempting to infiltrate your compound. It’s straightforward arcade-style shooting, and a fun shift from the more deliberate pace of inspections that doesn’t overstay its welcome. I haven’t gotten too deep into the base-building elements of the game, but what I've seen is intriguing. You'll need to expand the capacity of your quarantine room and camp, in addition to keeping the generator, canteen, and clinic stocked. There are some enticing upgrades here to unlock, too.
Unfortunately, the laboratory minigame is a bit undercooked, which is frustrating given the importance of cataloging new symptoms as you progress. You must extract the target organ from each subject in a limited amount of time by destroying the surrounding organs, which sounds basic on paper but is confusing in practice. I’m not sure if it’s a holdover of the original keyboard-and-mouse controls not quite working on the Xbox gamepad, or if it’s just that it's not explained very well, but I can't stop killing these poor bastards pretty much instantly. I’ve only managed to discover two new symptoms after several hours of gameplay, which means I’ve sent a lot of folks with bloody noses and acne to die for no reason.
You'll have to balance all of these components over the course of roughly one month. Every five days your camp will have an evacuation, where you’ll release survivors to a medical facility (which grants research points) or a military facility (which gives you money). As for what happens to them after that, I don’t know and I don’t wanna know.
To its credit, even as it makes the task of sending people to their doom a matter of daily tedium, Quarantine Zone doesn’t let you ignore the humanity of the people who pass through your inspection line. A few survivors will beg to be reunited with a family member, or plead with you to keep quiet if you notice anything amiss. Others will lash out violently. Some will speak in languages other than English: I’ve encountered Spanish, French, and what I assume was either Cantonese or Mandarin. But the game doesn’t translate what they’re saying, calling attention to the terrifying life-or-death power you have over these people in their most vulnerable moments — and how easy it would be to abuse that power.
If you’re a fan of series like The Last of Us, The Walking Dead, and Resident Evil, you’ll find a lot to sink your teeth into with Quarantine Zone. It’s available now on Steam and included with the Premium and Ultimate tiers of Xbox Game Pass.