Thursday 4 November 2010

Undead Nightmare

One big cup of OHWHATTHEHELL.
Where to begin with this one?
I would start at the beginning … but that is a spoiler in itself for those who haven’t played this anyway. All I can really say about the beginning is that within the first five to ten minutes, all my theories about how the pack was going to turn out, where swept aside through a tide of awesome.
            The story line is a fairly straightforward one, ‘Kill the zombies while trying to find a cure’, Straightforward yes, simple … not so much. You see, the only way to kill one of these undead bas- beings is with a headshot and while this might sound like an easy task for any experienced dead eye user, trust me it is not.
            I even checked to see if Rockstar had skimped out and done a certain amount of damage to the body before death … they haven’t, and I can’t explain how amazing it feels to unload all six shells of a semi-auto shotgun into a Zombies chest, then finishing it off with one revolver round to the brain.
            Okay, I might not have been telling the truth when I said there was only one way to kill them, there are in fact a few ways. My personal favourite has to be setting them alight with a torch. Yes you did just read that correctly, a torch, like the burning kind they used to hunt Vampires with. The first time I used the torch was against quite a large group or rotters and … well it didn’t go quite to plan, for some reason I thought it would kill them fairly quickly. It didn’t. So for the next twenty – thirty seconds, I found myself being chased by no less than seven burning zombies, and as they say “The only thing worse than a zombie, I a burning zombie”.
            As much as I love zombies, I have to admit that I got a little nervous at the prospect of Redemption having zombies introduced into it, one wrong move and the whole thing could go up in flames. However Rockstar seem to have crafted a fine balance between the Undead and the Wild West.
            The actual story line of Undead Nightmare will take you just about everywhere, from Blackwater where you start, all the way to a brand new location in Mexico. I’m sure all of you will be happy to know that it features almost all the original cast and will take about six-nine hours if you decide to complete all the side missions and all the challenges.
            The game play has stayed pretty similar to Red Dead Redemption with only a few changes, the first and most notable change, is that the whole camping system has disappeared, which oddly works perfectly. Instead of camping to fast travel you now have to liberate towns from the undead menace in order to use them. Once liberated, you can save or fast travel from there, and sadly there are no shops in the game which means you will have to loot corpses and make sure every shot counts.
            Once I actually got over the awesomeness that were zombies, I decided to have a ride around to see what else was out there and I have to tell you, it was eerie. I just couldn’t place my finger on what made the whole experience so damn creepy. It wasn’t the zombies; I love zombies, nothing creepy about them. There was something else … something all together stranger. There was an absolute lack of people, I must have ridden around for a good hour and only heard a few shots in the distance, unless you count those hungry zombies trying to kill me. It really did feel like the world had ended which was an incredibly beautiful experience.
            Aside from the gameplay, Undead Nightmare actually feels a lot like a B-movie Which works very well for the whole experience. I’m not sure who they got to be the narrator for the game, but the did a good job in casting him.
            Once you finally decide to save one of the many ‘helpless’ towns, you are greeted by a number of armed survivors on the rooftops taking pot-shots into the undead horde. There are then two things you can do, you can either run around dispensing ammo to them, or keep all the ammo for yourself and decide to Rambo those zombies asses. Whichever way you decided to handle the situation, you almost always get a new … or old gun out of it, which I think is Rockstars way of saying “sorry there are no shops”.
            Another interesting thing to do once you have obtained some brand new guns, is to go and cleanse a graveyard. What this involves is burning a number of coffins, then holding off against the Undead till the ‘Boss Zombie’ rises, who is usually a character you met once in game. Once you have killed those the Graveyard is clean, rewarding you with new ammo and various other interesting gadgets.
            Before I move onto the multiplayer, I have to talk about the wildlife. OH MY GOD it is pretty damn awesome, never have I experienced true terror before until I was being chased from tall trees by a large mob of zombies (I had ran out of ammo) only to be joined by FIVE zombie bears and three zombie wolves. Infact I don’t think you have lived unless in a situation like that, that is the sheer level of ‘Oh dear god what now?’. Yes, you would be right in thinking that that is in fact a Zombie cougar … Where is your lord now?
            Well I suppose it is time to talk about the multiplayer, which I will be honest am a little disappointed with. Not because it’s bad, I just feel that there could have been more done with it, more game types involving zombies … hell even a zombie free roam, but I’ll stop before I start ranting about how I have the perfect idea for a zombie game, as they did deliver one awesomely fun thing called ‘Undead Onslaught’. The whole idea of U.O is to survive as many rounds as possible, while more and more zombies keep poring in. Sounds simple right? Wrong, you see every wave the Zombies get a little bit more difficult to kill, and you have to kill them all within a certain amount of time and just to add a little salt to that wound, if you don’t pop them all, you are stuck in limbo with a never ending wave of zombies till you die, you don’t even get any new ammo.
   Well, I guess that is all from me for this review. I would tell you more but that really takes the fun away from playing. I hope you have enjoyed reading it, and remember if this has peaked your interest you can just purchase it from your console.
Luke Seddon

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