Great. Another zombie game. We don’t already have enough of those yet, right? While I’m more than tired of the zombies in video games and other forms of fiction, I’m willing to let my fatigue slide if a particular piece of media brings forth a new twist on the trope. From Plants vs. Zombies cutesy tower defence, to the human drama of The Walking Dead, there’s still room for growth.
ZombiU draws heavy inspiration from Dark Souls, while making great use of the Wii U GamePad’s defining features to create a survival horror experience unlike anything out there. Though it has its quirks, and the overall gameplay may turn off some, it’s very cool for what it is.
The gameplay premise is an interesting one. Zombies have taken over London, and you, as a survivor, stumble upon one particular subway station that’s being monitored by a mysterious voice who only refers to himself as The Prepper. He leads you to a safe house, which then becomes the central hub for the entire game. From there, you take on tasks for him that will hopefully lead you out of this dreadful place. However, if/when you die, you will respawn as a different character that has supposedly also found the safe house and is now getting helped by The Prepper. If you can find your old self (who has now turned into a zombie) and kill them, you’ll then be able to gain back all of your stuff.
I know that the setup sounds odd, but if it helps you imagine it better, the closest analogy I could come come up with is that it’s a first-person survival horror game meets Dark Souls. Besides the obvious factors of fear, tension, and limited supplies, the game adds an additional layer of pressure to players by spreading the save points across the world thin. You can easily go 30 minutes to an hour without coming across a place to save, and there is no auto save of any sort. While you won’t lose progress on your objectives if you die, you’ll start all the way back at the safe house, which can mean a lot of retracing your footsteps and the possibility of losing your stuff. This design choice will rub certain people the wrong way, and it’s usually something I don’t like in other games. However, it works well here and I was willing to keep pushing forward.
The other parallel is the game’s combat. Your character’s primary method of attack is a cricket back. He/she has a light attack that does no damage but pushes zombies away, and a heavy attack that does damage but is really slow to wind up. It’s up to you to carefully time your button presses so that you’re triggering the right swing at the right time in order to deal damage and protect yourself. If not, one good grab from a zombie can call you, even if you’re at full health. With the stakes being so high, you really need to master the nuances of combat in order to get out of every encounter alive.
Adding to the tension is the game’s clever use of the Wii U GamePad’s touchscreen. It acts as your map, scanner, and backpack, among other things as the situation requires. That description alone admittedly doesn’t sound all that interesting, but its in their execution that they shine. The map, for instance, features a radar that can pings for enemy locations. However, to start, you’ll have to manually ping the radar by looking down at the screen and hitting the button. You’ll be forced to actively look away from the screen to use the radar, but that could be just enough time for an enemy to get the drop on you.
Taking your eyes away from the main screen is especially tense during situations where you need to manage items. If you’re low on health during a fight, and don’t have a health pack handy in your immediate item slot, you’ll have to look at the touchscreen, pull down the backpack menu, and adjust your inventory in real time. Pausing in this situation does you no good, as the game doesn’t let you manage (or even look at) your items when paused. You’ll have to do it on the fly, which means that you better be mindful of what you have at the ready, what’s in your backpack, and when it’s a good time to adjust.
All of these defining traits make for a game that’s highly immersive, genuinely scary, and not quite like anything else out there. At first, I had my concerns that these elements would make for an experience that wasn’t up my alley. However, once I got comfortable with its rhythm, I really grew to enjoy it. In order to minimize frustration, I would only play from one save point to the next.
For as cool as it is, there are some things about it that don’t sit well for me. Though I enjoy the moment-to-moment tension, pretty much all of the game’s story beats were lost on me. It’s as far as I could tell, some nonsense about a prophecy and some vigilante group trying to find salvation. Maybe to the game’s benefit, I could overlook it’s garbled mess of a plot and just enjoy what I wanted out of it. There are also at times some weird things that happen when interacting with zombies. Their AI at times is so dumb at times that they’ll stop chasing you if you’ve walked past some imaginary line that they apparently can’t follow you past. There were also isolated instances of zombies ‘warping’ or having no shootable hit box, though both were more annoying than detrimental.
I like this game a lot, but it’s unapologetic save system ultimately did me in. I got myself into a situation where I went hours without finding a save point or unlocking a short cut. When I died, I had to start all the way back at the beginning of the game, without a shortcut anywhere near where I left off. Backtracking would have taken upwards of an hour, and I would have to fight my way through all of the enemies yet again. Maybe I played it wrong, but that was enough for me to stop playing this one before completion.
ZombiU is not for everyone, and after hours of play, ultimately determined that it wasn’t for me, either. With that said, I had a lot of fun with it before the save system screwed me over and there’s no guarantee that the same would happen to you. While there are no shortage of zombie games, this one makes a compelling case for existing by providing a gameplay experience that isn’t quite like anything else. It’s also one of the best at justifying the existence of the Wii U GamePad, as this game leverages that screen to great effect. Maybe in the sequel I won’t get burned as badly as I did this time.
In Third Person 