A Gruesome Zombie Checkpoint Sim
Quarantine Zone: The Last Check is a first person simulation game that puts you in charge of a grim but strangely fascinating job. You stand at a military checkpoint in the middle of a zombie apocalypse, screening survivors to decide who gets into the safe zone, who gets quarantined, and who gets marched off for execution.
On paper it is a brilliant pitch. Imagine a grisly version of Papers Please mixed with medical inspection and base management. Survivors arrive one by one, each with a unique combination of symptoms, attitude, and secrets they are trying to hide. Your task is to figure out whether they are infected, just sick, or simply covered in regular grime and bruises from surviving in a ruined world.
The review was played on a solid mid range gaming PC with an Intel i7 9700K, RTX 4070 Ti and 16 GB of RAM. Performance is not the focus of the discussion but it is worth noting that it runs well on typical modern gaming hardware and is also listed as playable on Steam Deck.
Gameplay: Medical Exams Meet Moral Choices
Most of your time in Quarantine Zone is spent examining people in first person. The process starts out tense and interesting. You check their eyes to see if they are clear, bloodshot, or suspiciously zombie like. You examine their skin for rashes, bruises, cuts, or that dreaded bite mark that confirms infection. You test their reflexes with a hammer, listen to their lungs, and take their temperature and pulse.
The game gives you a growing set of tools so you can dig deeper into each case. One device lets you see through clothing to inspect skin for signs of the virus and the occasional amusing tattoo. Another hand held scanner lets you peer under the skin to look directly at internal organs for bleeding, necrosis, or smuggled contraband. This is where the game leans into dark humor, as you frequently find items like hand grenades hidden in the most improbable places.
Your decisions have serious consequences. Based on what you find, you choose one of three main outcomes:
- If the person seems healthy, you send them to the survivor camp, where they will be shipped away at the end of the week.
- If they clearly have the zombie virus, you send them to be liquidated by the military in a grim cargo container.
- If they are sick but not obviously infected, you place them in quarantine and monitor their symptoms over multiple days to see if they recover or turn and wipe out the rest of the ward.
What makes this compelling early on is the uncertainty. Many symptoms overlap. Is that ragged breathing just a chest cold or early zombification. Are those blotches a mundane rash or the start of something lethal. Even the way a character looks at you might be simple anger at the humiliating exam or the onset of uncontrollable zombie rage.
When the systems are fresh, it feels like a tense matching puzzle. You compare what you see to the symptom references in your menu, trying to spot subtle differences. You will even discover new symptoms as you go, which adds a bit of progression to your medical knowledge.
Base Management, Side Activities, and Repetition
Outside the exam room, Quarantine Zone includes light base management. You are responsible for keeping essential supplies stocked such as food, fuel for the generator, and medical kits. You also spend money to upgrade your tools, expand survivor capacity, and improve defenses.
Earlier versions of the game had you physically pushing supply carts around to restock different parts of the base. In the final version this has been stripped down to simple menu clicks. While that does cut down on busywork, it also removes some of the physical immersion. As a result, base management becomes something you can handle in seconds, and you are quickly pushed back into another run of exams.
There are a couple of short minigames that try to break up the routine. One is a lab sequence where you use a laser to remove organs from a living subject in order to analyze unknown symptoms. Another occasionally has you pilot a drone when zombies assault the perimeter, letting you rain down bullets, bombs, and airstrikes. These moments are brief and entertaining, but they end just as they start to get interesting and you are soon back to staring at rashes and listening to coughs.
The biggest issue is variety. There are only so many symptom types and visual cues to work with. After a few hours you will have seen the same eyes, rashes, and breathing problems many times. The tension of diagnosing people fades as patterns become obvious. What begins as a stressful mix of science and judgment slowly turns into routine box ticking.
That lack of depth also extends to the broader systems. The base management feels too shallow to make strategic planning satisfying. The examinations themselves never get significantly more complex beyond what you see in the early game. The campaign can be finished in under 12 hours, and the review notes that the sense of novelty wears out before the ending arrives.
Despite all this, the core idea of Quarantine Zone is strong. There is something undeniably compelling about standing at a checkpoint in a dying world, deciding who lives inside the walls and who does not. The body horror details, the dark humor, and the morally uncomfortable choices all shine in the first few hours. With deeper management, more varied symptoms, and a wider pool of patient scenarios, it could have grown into a standout simulation.
As it stands, Quarantine Zone: The Last Check is an interesting but limited experience. It offers a memorable premise and some genuinely tense moments, but it struggles to keep things fresh across a full campaign. For players who enjoy unusual sims and do not mind repetition, it may still be worth a look, especially given its modest price. Just do not expect its clever concept to fully survive the long haul.
Original article and image: https://www.pcgamer.com/games/sim/quarantine-zone-the-last-check-review/
