Playstation 3 Reviews

Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare Review

Published

November 7, 2010

I’m sure I’m not the only one who has been praying to the gaming god for Rockstar to do an open-world zombie game with the Eurphoria engine and now the gods have listened and give us Undead Nightmare which is not only an open-world zombie game, but an open-world zombie game in the wild west.

Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare
Developer: Rockstar San Diego/Rockstar North
Price: $10.00
Platform: PS3 (reviewed) & 360

Undead Nightmare begins during the Homestead missions in the original game with a brilliant introduction that takes influence from 70’s horror films. After some family bonding Abigal mentions how Uncle has been gone for far too long which of course isn’t a good sign since he comes stumbling into the house and soon converts Jack and Abigal to the zombie horde the only way he knows: chewing the tasty flesh off their necks. Suddenly John ends up with a tied up zombie Jack and Abigal in his room and he’s off to go save the day from this zombie infestation, but not before giving Jack and Abigal a stern lecture about chewing the face off of people.

Of course it wouldn’t be a zombie game without some new weapons designed for taking out brain eaters. As you complete story missions you’ll unlock some of these new weapons like zombie bait used for luring zombies together to blow them all up in one shot or simply as a quick distraction so you can run off. Phosphorus will set zombies on fire with any gun you use for a limited time. Holy Water will set any undead creature ablaze in a fiery blue blaze, the torch is a handy melee weapon that will set fire to anything on the receiving end of it, and finally the Blunderbuss. This killing machine will disintegrate anything in it’s path but there’s a catch: it uses zombie pieces you acquire from looting zombies as ammo. This gives each engagement a layer of strategy as you decide whether you blow away the zombies with your dynamite/blunderbuss, or do you use your limited ammo in your guns so you can scavenge ammo for your blunderbuss.

You heard me right when I said ‘limited ammo’ because this game is more survival horror than most recent survival horror games. There aren’t any shops in Undead Nightmare so the only way to acquire ammo is to pray for a zombie to contain a few bullets when you loot them or by saving towns which also contain chests with ammo. Each town has become overrun by the undead and when you arrive you’ll be given the choice of helping out the survivors or let them die. The catch is that if you leave a town for too long then the survivors will begin to die off and unless a town is saved you can’t save your game there (saving at a campsite has been removed, hell the campsite itself was removed because who camps in the wilderness with zombies?). Each zombie kill fills up a meter and depending on the town you’ll have to fill it up multiple times. Once you fill it up completely you simply have to kill the rest of the zombies and the town becomes saved, but that only means that there won’t be as much zombies roaming the streets so don’t be surprised if you see one or two shuffling around. These encounters can go much faster if you choose to donate some of your ammo to the survivors, but the chests scattered around the area usually has the ammo they require so your only choice is whether to keep it for yourself or give it to them. Of course for those like me who want a place to have fun with the zombies and let places (sorry Blackwater) get overrun completely, Rockstar included 2 locations (Fort Mercer and El Presidio) that are permanent safe zones. While roaming the world you’ll also encounter some new and humorous random events from a man at a camp talking to his tied up zombie wife to a few men having a last stand against a horde. Since ammo is scarce you also have the choice of firing upon survivors to scavenge a few extra bullets from their bodies. There is no honor so the are no consequences with doing it with survivors out in the environment (killing a survivor in a town will permanently kill that survivor and will make saving it harder) except for the fact that you’re an asshole for doing it. Besides the story and stranger missions, you can also go to various graveyards to ‘cleanse’ the area. Your task is to burn all the coffins with each coffin burned summoning more undead so you have to choose whether to quickly rush and burn them all and hold off the larger horde, or burn coffins one at a time while dealing with the undead.

You’ll have 5 new challenges to work at in Undead Nightmare but each challenge on goes up to Rank 5 which I won’t complain about since it is just DLC. Bounties in the original game have been replaced with Missing People. Fort Mercer and El Presidio are the only true “safe zones” where you can acquire these missions that will send you to various locations to find a person hiding/fighting off a horde of zombies. You’ll have to clear out most of them before the person hopes on your horse where you’ll then escort them to the safe zone. These start out fun but once you rescue the person it’s just a calm ride back since you don’t have anyone chasing you like gang members did in bounties so each mission starts out exciting but quickly drops to being anticlimactic. Did I mention there are 3 new outfits to acquire (well only 2 to acquire, the other is a story outfit and becomes inaccessible after completing UN)? The Undead Hunter outfit gives you a holy relic that helpfully replenishes ammo for all your weapons once a day and it looks just like Ash’s outfit from Army of Darkness to boot. The other is the Legend of the Apocalypse outfit and it increases the duration of phosphorus bullets.

Lets get down to the fiends you’ll be running from in the game. Undead Nightmare brings along your traditional zombie that will shuffle around the place that will clumsily run at you if you’re near, but you better watch out because in packs these guys can get deadly. The three special zombies are basically ripped from Left 4 Dead and I’m sure Rockstar wasn’t trying to hide it since you’ve got the big muscular zombie called the Bruiser who will charge at you if it gets too close, the Retcher which spits a green goo at you, and the Bolter who gets on all fours and sprints similarly to those kids in The Grudge. The Bruiser and Retcher aren’t much trouble, it’s the Bolters you have to watch out for because they’ll have you tossing your controllers while playing Undead Overrun and you have 10+ Bolters chasing you down. Just make sure to shoot it in the head because they won’t go down so easily. It seems in the wild west humans aren’t the only ones to suffer from this plague since all the animals in the game have been given a zombie makeover. Nothing is more terrifying than wandering Tall Trees with a horde of zombies following you and suddenly having zombie bears, cougars, wolves, and boars trying to get a taste of your brain. Besides all of the zombies shuffling around there are also mythical creatures to find. The 4 Horses of the Apocalypse make an appearance as some of the mythical creatures you can expect to encounter in Undead Nightmare. The game gives you a handy notice when one of them is in your area and marks it on your map for you, but you’ll have to lasso and break the horse yourself. Each one has a special ability with War setting enemies ablaze, Death causing cranial explosions when you run into enemies, Famine has infinite stamina (although I’m positive all of them do), and Pestilence is nearly invulnerable. When I say nearly I mean you can sit on it and have a bear/cougar/wolf whack away at it and it’ll take ages to die, while jumping off a cliff or shooting it in the head with a pistol will kill it instantly. You can also expect 3 more mythical creatures but I won’t spoil those for you, but let’s just say one of them is ride-able and has rainbows shooting out of its ass.

We can’t forget about the multiplayer now can we? Undead Nightmare will give you a handful of humorous zombie skins and two new game modes. The first is Undead Overrun and is basically Red Dead Redemption’s horde mode. You and 3 buddies have a certain amount of time to wipe out a wave of zombies with each wave having more and more zombies. This can get pretty hectic if you don’t work together especially when you have that one asshole who runs ahead of the group to burn the coffin to get ammo or the guy who runs off by themselves to pick up the next weapon dropped on the field. The second game mode is integrated right in Free Roam and is called Land Grab. Simply walk into a town with the Land Grab icon, claim the land as your own, and every player in the game will be alerted that you currently own that land. Each kill raises the amount of cash in the ‘pot’ and whoever has the claim over the land when the timer is up gets it all. It’s nothing special but it’s nice of Rockstar to include it anyway.