Normally my reviews are very in-depth and usually at least somewhat positive, I review games that I like.
But like, hey, remember when this game was good?

...okay I have to say something more than that.
SCP: Pandemic (AKA SCP: 5K) has fallen off hard. It tried to be too many things: a tactical shooter, a horror game, a puzzle game, a multiplayer FPS game, a story-based co-op linear story game, an "open world" exploration game with backtracking and gameplay elements that only make sense after further progression...I could go on but do I need to? SCP: 5K should always have been about the linear story co-op experience. Horror elements make sense, and I think some light puzzling could work too, kinda like SOMA...but the execution is just not there. You'd think all of these gameplay gimmicks trying to fight for your attention would be overwhelming, but it's actually more of a painful walking simulator with occasional combat interruptions. The puzzle elements are either all fetch quests or confusing and non-intuitive "find the lever in this random room that's behind a door that looks exactly identical to every other basic office door of which 50% of them are locked and thus completely useless." The horror parts at the beginning were actually pretty awesome, but that atmosphere died out pretty quickly past the 15-minute mark: walking in circles aimlessly is actually bad for immersion, funny enough.
Also the optimization is TERRIBLE: I was consistently lagging at key choke points where reaction time was the most important, and my PC isn't low-end by any stretch of the imagination (Radeon 7900 XTX GPU and Ryzen 7950x3D CPU). Some of the lighting effects made SCP: 5K look great, but play terribly. Personally I think it makes more sense to polish the visual presentation AFTER core gameplay optimizations are introduced, so that at no time is the player forced to endure 30 FPS or less when fighting a horde of zombies that WILL take advantage of your weakness and 4-shot you in 3 seconds.
I think the part of writing this review that bugs me the most is that there was a build of this game that I played about a year ago that was actually pretty spot-on. It had it's quirks too, but I remember a more streamlined and consistently engaging experience than this version. I can see some improvements from that older model in the new version, like the intro, the menu, and...well obviously the length of content. But apart from those aspects, this is a completely needless DOWNGRADE.

But hey, it's an alpha. The developers clearly know how to make a good SCP game (because they did it before in a previous alpha that was significantly superior in a lot of ways). I have faith they will iron out the kinks and make SCP: 5K into something really cool and special for the SCP community to enjoy. It's just...not that right now, and that's ok. Wouldn't really recommend in it's current state, though. 4/10

is gud

what the ♥♥♥♥ killed me through a door