- Just like the DLC for Grand Theft
Auto IV, the new single-player story is practically an entirely
brand-new game in itself
- New Undead Overrun multiplayer mode is just as enjoyably good
as similar forays in Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty: World at
War
- Too many zombies attacking at
once leads to some confusing camera moments
- Zombie close-up kill cut-scenes are somewhat disruptive of
gameplay flow
- When aiming for that zombie headshot kill, inconsistent and
difficult targeting can be frustrating
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Red
Dead Redemption DLC: Undead Nightmare
Score: 10 / 10
In the first two downloadable content
packs, Rockstar brought gamers a lot of multiplayer nuances that help
improved what is considered one of the greatest Western-themed
videogames, Red Dead Redemption. With the third installment, however,
Rockstar is infusing its stellar Western with another popular gaming
genre –zombies – and the result is a rowdy living-dead romp through the
Wild, Wild
As already mentioned, the previous two Red Dead Redemption DLCs were
focused primarily on multiplayer upgrading. But Undead Nightmare
presents a fresh single-player storyline that plays almost as long
(about a dozen hours) as many full-priced games. The story’s not very
original: something sinister is
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causing the dead to leave their graves and walk the Western landscape,
attacking all those unfortunate to cross paths with these zombie hordes.
When John Marston, the Red Dead Redemption anti-hero (the timeline is
three months before Marston’s untimely demise in the main game), finds
that his beloved wife and son have succumbed to the zombie affliction
after being bitten, he ties them up and sets off on an adventure to find
the mystery behind the undead outbreak in a desperate effort to save
them.
Not too imaginative, but there’s plenty to distract gamers from paying
too much attention to the plot, most notably attack waves of zombies
that appear no matter where the gamer is throughout the landscape.
Undead Nightmare keeps gamers on edge all the time, waiting for that
next zombie attack, as missions are being completed. Missions include
rescuing missing persons trapped outside the few safe zones, or
assisting those survivors, either in towns or settlements, under the
duress of zombie attack.
Attacking will be a variety of different zombies, too. There’s the usual
basic zombie, the Undead, wandering the landscape. These zombies present
little difficulty in battling, unless of course if they attack in a
group. Then there’s fast-running Bolters, who leap at gamers, but are
easier to defeat than the Undead. Bruisers are the large zombies that
charge at gamers and knock them down. And finally, the vomit-spewing
Retchers with toxic bile and exploding bodies after death are the most
damaging zombies.
Other missions involve cleansing the undead from five graveyards, each
with a graveyard boss battle. Of course, there’s some new
zombie-fighting specialty weapons added to gamers’ arsenals: holy water
projectiles that set zombies afire in a blue blaze; Boom and Zombie Bait
(used to lure zombies to collect in one spot); and the Blunderbuss, the
powerful gun that uses collected zombie parts to fire one-shot
zombie-exploding devastation.
One challenging weaponry aspect is that since the townspeople have
either become zombies or fled in terror, there’s no ammo to buy, so
gamers must learn to do with a limited supply that’s only replenished
through assisting towns in fighting off the zombies and scavenging
around for ammo caches hidden throughout. Making that lack of ammo even
more of a difficulty is that the zombies must be killed only with
headshots. But the targeting system is inconsistent and oftentimes
frustrating because ammo is being needlessly wasted. The camera also
gets confusingly lost when too many zombies are attacking at one time
and the close-up zombie kill cut-scenes can be gameplay-disruptive.
Zombie fighting is the main focus here, of course, but there are two fun
ambient side missions that introduce mythical creatures to Red Dead
Redemption. An early mission has gamers hunting down the six remaining
Sasquatches that are roaming around, mistakenly blamed for the zombie
plague. And what would a zombie Judgment Day be without the four horses
of the apocalypse that gamers can lasso and tame for use. Famine and
Pestilence don’t do any damage, but they both have unlimited stamina,
and are zombie-proof from damage. When running into zombies, Death
explodes their heads, making it easy to stay on horseback and battle the
zombies instead of the much riskier on-foot fighting. And the most
impressive-looking horse, the flaming War, sets zombies on fire when
contacting them.
It’s not only the human population that succumbs to the zombie disease,
either. The frontier’s many creatures are zombies, too, the most
dangerous being the grizzly bears and cougars. There’s even a zombie
horse that gamers can ride if their steed gets killed, which somehow has
more stamina in its zombie state but with the trade-off of being very
difficult to control.
As good as the single-player Undead Nightmare addition is, it’s made
even better with a great new multiplayer mode that borrows from similar
modes in Gears of War 2 and Call of Duty: World at War. Undead Overrun
gathers gamers together, with wave after wave of increasingly tougher
zombies attacking. There’s no hope of survival; the goal is to endure as
many waves as possible before being overrun.
Undead Nightmare, as a single-player upgrade, is an exceptional bargain
for the amount of new gameplay that it provides. But including the
highly entertaining Undead Overrun multiplayer mayhem makes this a
cannot-miss DLC purchase for Red Dead Redemption gamers.
