Surviving the dead: a review of ZombiU

No one seems to be interested in that sale back there.

The thick shadows press down on your field of vision. The flashlight is running out of batteries, and that means that even if you turn it on you'll only have a few seconds of bright relief before being thrown back into the inky blackness. Their heavy breathing can be heard practically all around you and the radar on your Prepper Pad is sounding off multiple targets so quickly that it is almost mimicking your heartbeat.

No more bullets, one medical pack, a candy bar and the trusty cricket bat that was given at the beginning of your long trek into the dingy London Underground. Hardly an arsenal. How much longer can you hold out against the pressing darkness and the thought of the fiends shambling towards you, invisible, before you crack and run back the way you came? Or how much longer before one of them sneaks up behind you in your moment of indecision and panic and ends it altogether?


"ZombiU" really throws you hard into the survivor role. It never lets up, never gives you a break and sure as hell never stops. All that sounds like the game is full of sprinting undead, like those of "Left 4 Dead." No, I'm talking about the speed of your heart and your thought process. The dead in Ubisoft's new game don't move that fast, but that slow gait makes for a tension that riles you up.

As you see them approach, you mentally gauge the distance between you and them, whether or not your bat can reach them or not. Are they too far away for the bat? Do you have time to switch to your gun? Do you have enough bullets in it? How good of a shot are you to put them down quickly? All of these questions run through a player's mind, all the while the zombies continue to move towards you.

Not only are items and inventory a worry when fighting the enemy, but health and damage must be monitored as well. There are really very few hits that a player can take from the zombies before they are food. Not only that, but a player can die instantaneously if the zombies are too close and grapple them.

This insta-death spawns you as another survivor who has been drawn in by the mysterious Prepper, a man who is bent on finding ways to survive the apocalypse and full of theories as to how it happened. This serves two-fold, though. The ability to lose your survivor so easily means that the attachment the player places on the character can either draw them to be reckless and take many risks or be severely cautious.

Knowing that if the survivor dies the new character can kill the previous's risen corpse and retrieve the lost loot seems to give the player a bitter-sweet taste, knowing that not all survive in these scenarios, but if you do for so long you feel extremely proud of yourself and accomplished.

It's scary when those fuzzy hat guys actually move, isn't it?

There's something to be said for a first-person perspective in a game like this. "Dead Island" had a more fast paced and open feel to it, so the player was able to take in the scope of their surroundings and plan out how they would tackle a situation. Of course, there are times when close-quarters combat happens, which is more the style of "ZombiU."

Enclosed spaces in apartments, the London Underground, a supermarket and on and on. There are very few places where the player can move back and regroup away from the oncoming hordes. Not only that, but the limited perspective heightens tension and freaks me out to no end in all honesty.

How does this compare to games like "Resident Evil?" Well the open field of vision allows for more zombies to be in the area, giving the player larger numbers to deal with. It helps that the game also gives the player much more ammo and firepower to deal with the hostile forces. "Left 4 Dead" does a similar thing, though their weapons and ammo are much more powerful and plentiful to compensate for the first-person perspective.

"ZombiU" is a solid game. With or without the story it has some very well put together mechanics, decent graphics and works well in compatibility with the Wii U gamepad. The survival gameplay is well done and many will find it enjoyable. There are some clipping issues, some confusion with how to read the radar and it did in fact freeze on me twice while playing. Sometimes the player will get lost or not know how to get to certain locations without a little help from outside sources.

All in all, the game is a 7 out of 10. An excellent launch title for the Wii U, lacking in some qualities but performing admirably when creating an environment of fear and tension. A very well-done zombie game.

Eyes on the Last of Us

Kind of reminds me of that Will Smith movie.

The post-apocalyptic landscape of a destroyed city should be a familiar sight to gamers. But what flavor of desolate and deserted world is it? Cities? Sure. Zombies? Yup. Mutants? Absolutely. Crazed survivors? How could there not be? Now, I could be describing the Capitol Wasteland from "Fallout" or just the brain-eater populated universe of "Left 4 Dead." Instead I'm describing Naughty Dog's newest project, "The Last of Us."

This game made quite a big impression at E3 this year, after having been scuttled about the internet here and there through videos and articles for a few months.

The two protagonists, Joel and Ellie, seem to be thrust into circumstances together that require them to survive by any means necessary. Joel is apparently somewhat handy with his fists and a gun, but other than that he's no super action star. Ellie is your typical young girl who is able to fit where Joel can't, and seems to save his bacon more than once when things get too hard to handle.

The two seem like a good team, working in tandem through stealth and action sequences that had E3 audiences on the edge of their seats when the gameplay was revealed at the show.

Combat looks as visceral as "Resident Evil" but with the fluidity of Naughty Dog's flagship title "Uncharted." If you pay attention, you can see just how crucial ammo is in the game by how hard Joel aims to ensure his shots hit home. Of course, when he runs out of ammo, things get down and dirty.

Survival horror has never looked so good with actually trying to force you to conserve ammo and make you really think about your shots rather than the spray-and-prey method. This strategy and sense of danger is probably why "Resident Evil" and "Silent Hill" games have been so successful over the years. If "The Last of Us" can deliver the same sort of urgency in combat and level of thinking, it will definitely be a hit with that crowd.

The enemies in "The Last of Us" appear to be afflicted with some kind of fungus.

As for the monsters, they kind of look like a cross between zombies and pizza toppings. Mushrooms to be precise. Whatever has happened to the planet to make everything so overgrown and awkwardly lush in urban metropolises has clearly affected the people of the world as well.

We're not sure yet if this is a postmortem transformation or a gradual infection, or both. Whatever it is, it's gross and we like it.

Pretty graphics, a well-known yet refined gameplay style, intriguing story premise and still some time to go before it's released. Naughty Dog has come a long way from their "Crash Bandicoot" days, and hot damn it is impressive.