Dead Nation Review (Playstation 3)

Yes ladies and gents, we are actively living in the Zombie Apocalypse. Sure, you won't see any of them popping out of the ground and eating your crazy neighbor-lady (as much as you really hope would be the case), but we are still 'infected' by them thanks to the media.

We've had zombie-themed survival horror games like Dead Rising, Left 4 Dead, (loosely) Dead Space, Resident Evil, House of the Dead. But now the infection has spread to other game genres like World War II shooters, and even wild-west games like Red Dead Redemption getting 'zombified'.

If you haven't seen Shaun of the Dead, you now have your homework assignment.

But the infection doesn't stop there, as it's apparently bitten Hollywood and the results are movies like the George A. Romero remakes and the rising-dead comedies, "Shaun of the Dead" and "Zombieland". What do you think is immune from the zombie plague? Perhaps classic literature has some sort of natural immunity? Guess again. I bring you the novel "Pride, Prejudice, and Zombies".

Yes, we are living in the Zombie Apocalypse. But fear not, because it's at least keeping the Tweenage Vampire Apocalypse at bay. Seriously, if Red Dead Redemption were to get a Twilight Expansion Pack, I'd just chalk it up as the end of Western civilization and be done with it all.

So how is a guy supposed to survive in a climate where zombie-themed games are just as plentiful in the mall as the zombies in Dawn of the Dead, all wanting to eat your brains with a side salad of your hard-earned money?

Luckily the folks of Housemarque, creators of the Playstation Network hit "Super Stardust HD", have a great solution: an arcade-styled zombie shooter at an affordable price, "Dead Nation".

Dead Nation centers around Jack McReady and Scarlett Blake, survivors of the Zombie Virus Apocalypse thanks to their natural immunity, and their tale of survival. Everyone knows the scenario: billions dead, limited supplies, survivors huddled together in hiding as zombies roam the barren city streets. It's the standard stuff.

But do you really need a killer story for an inexpensive zombie-slaying romp? Not if the gameplay is tight.

Zombie Nation is arcade zombie-slaying at its best. The gameplay in Dead Nation is fast and furious. You move your character through a fictional city, mowing down hordes of zombies with machine guns, flamethrowers, and even energy beams later in the game. As you kill zombies, you gain point multipliers and rack up obscenely high scores that are then paraded on the online global leaderboards for all to see and compare.

The gameplay is similar to the top-down, bird's-eye view of the classic arcade games "Smash TV", "Robotron", and various other 1980's shooters. The dual-stick control scheme is simple, yet highly effective, as the left-stick controls movement and the right-stick aims your weapon. You can pinpoint your aim thanks to the laser-sight provided to you right from the beginning. The combination of the two-stick controls allows the gamer to easily strife around enemies and even retreat while shooting the onslaught of the undead.

There is a downside, as the controls are unlike Housemarque's hit downloadable game, "Super Stardust HD". In "Super Stardust HD" you shoot simply by use of the right-stick, allowing you to react to obstacles and enemies with the reflexes of a jungle cat. You got an asteroid coming up from the rear? Simply flick the right-stick backwards and it's taken care of, no sweat. Also, you didn't have to worry about a finger getting tired from excessive button tapping, especially from a more awkward button like, let's say... the right trigger button?

In Zombie Nation you fire your default weapon (the Rifle) by tapping the R1 trigger as fast as humanly possible, causing the inevitable finger cramp. Granted, you get auto-fire weapons later in the game, like SMGs, Flamethrowers and whatnot; still, while it may be somewhat more 'natural' as a gun-trigger and it is standard practice in most FPS (First-Person Shooter) games, the relentlessness of the zombies in Dead Nation will tire your finger faster than a male OB/GYN and a female proctologist on their honeymoon.

Basic movement also includes an element from "Super Stardust HD" that has saved my ass countless times: The Dash/Rush. By pressing the L2 Trigger your character charges in the direction of the left-stick, pushing through zombies without taking damage and increasing your distance from the hordes of reanimated corpses that hunger for human flesh. You are, however, limited on how often you can re-use this single-use Rush technique via a powerbar that slowly recharges over time just like in "Super Stardust HD", so it should be reserved for EXTREME EMERGENCIES where there is no other chance for escape, as using it prematurely it will eventually bite you in the ass. But what do you do when you're out of ammo? You can't just dash to the next checkpoint.

The R2 trigger acts as your melee attack which, while it may actually kill the thinner, more skeletal zombies, it won't cause enough damage to kill basic zombies without 2-3 total hits. It does, however, help knock back zombies and stun them for a split-second, and in Dead Nation that split-second is the difference between a checkpoint and becoming zombie chow.

You have some extra firepower thanks to the ability to throw grenades and flares at zombies, and to set mines, and the sooner you can fully upgrade your grenade capacity, the better off you will be.

As you navigate the city, you collect money from the zombies you kill, from the trunks of unexploded cars, and from hidden armor stashes. Using the thousands of dollars you collect, you upgrade your weapons and purchase ammo at what appear to be ice cream trucks within your checkpoints. The upgrades themselves are pretty basic and lack any real customization, but what do you expect from a downloadable game? Still, you get the ability to increase magazine sizes, ammo capacities, weapon damage, and fire rate, so all of the bases are basically covered.

Beware that if you die before reaching a checkpoint, you will lose the upgrades you purchased and the money you earned prior to being killed, effectively putting your character in the exact same position he or she was in when they reached the previous checkpoint. In other words, you die and you restart that part of the level. Personally, I think that's bullshit, but I guess if you didn't do that a person could easily upgrade all of his available weapons by farming money from zombies.

Luckily the armor upgrades are significantly more forgiving. Armor upgrades you can't just purchase; you have to find chests with the armor upgrades contained within, and the locations they're in are usually thick with the undead. If you do manage to get an armor upgrade, it's yours, win or die.

And thank God because the zombies in Dead Nation are RELENTLESS, and, even more horrifying, they're actually diverse. Different zombies have higher tolerances to weapons, some are faster, and some just deal tons of damage. There's zombies of all shapes and sizes: from thin to grotesquely fat; from cops with guns and military personnel with machine guns and armor; from football players and cheerleaders (I'm not even joking). I'm pretty sure I even saw zombie hookers hanging out on a street corner.

Then there are the more gruesome specialty zombies, like the Bombies (the cliche fat zombies that explode), the Mouth (zombies that have a vertical gaping mouth that runs from nuts-to-neck), and Jumpers (zombies that … jump). Each of these breeds are difficult to kill, but the different kinds of weapons help depending on the situation: SMGs, Flamethrowers, Rocket Launchers, and so on.

Don't think that just because you have some killer weapons and tough armor that you can "spray and pray" your way through Dead Nation, because it's not nearly that simple. The difficulty, even on the 2nd difficulty level (medium) still requires you to manage your resources, make appropriate upgrades, observe your environment and plan your routes.

So what do you do when you're low on ammo and there's a lot of zombies flooding towards you and little chance of survival?

I'm serious, SHOOT A CAR. One of the best things about Dead Nation is that parked cars actually act as explosives which, when shot, indicate how long they have before they explode indicated by a blinking shrinking circle within the blast-radius circle. When the inside circle reaches the car, everything within the blast-radius takes damage. But you ask, how do you get zombies off your ass and get them killed by a car? Some cars have car alarms, which blink red in the windshield. If you shoot a car with a car alarm, nearly all of the zombies will stop their pursuit of you, and race to the shrieking car where they actively attack it, making the timer deplete rapidly and thus killing an antire swarm of zombies in the blast.

One of the most satisfying moments in Dead Nation is easily taking out dozens of zombies with an exploding car.

And what do you do when you have a flood of zombies coming at you? You do what Leonidas and the Brave 300 did at Thermopylae against the Persians: You concentrate the flow of your enemies. In Dead Nation you do so by slipping down a (hopefully) empty alley to get the most kills out of every bullet and bomb you have available. Constraining the undead to narrow alleys and pathways is often an invaluable tactic to managing the crowd, and in order to do that you MUST learn the layout of the area you're in.

For a downloadable game, the graphics in Dead Nation are commendable at the very least, because it's really a technical marvel. You will have dozens, possibly more than fifty individual zombies on the screen at any one time, and each casting their own shadows, each accurately lit by the surroundings (streetlights, fires, cop car lights, etc), and each complete with rag-doll physics to not only make the zombies more believable, but also for an added bit of sadistic amusement when you blow them up and see little pieces of them interacting with parked cars and the sides of buildings.

The environments are moody and tell the stories of the zombies themselves. You'll see a toppled schoolbus burning while zombie cheerleaders and football players swarm out of it, you'll see convict zombies outside of a prison van, and even plenty of fat police zombies outside of a doughnut shop. My major complaint is that the atmosphere gets very oppressive very quickly, and the excessive darkness can get tiresome quickly.

"Scientists say 'just shoot them in the head'"
Thank God we gave the scientists billions in Federal grant money instead of a fistfull of movie tickets.

I mentioned the points system and the leaderboard earlier and it's probably the most ingenious and purely awesome leaderboards I've seen in recent years. Besides tallying up the leaders on a point-for-point basis, Dead Nation also tallies the total number of zombies killed from country-by-country. As each nation's tally continually skyrockets, it counts towards a percentage of the virus that has been effectively wiped out from each country. Once 100% of the virus has been eliminated from a country, the percentage is reset to 0% and the game repeats ad-infinite.

But why should you fight the legions of the undead by yourself? There's two survivors, right?

Dead Nation includes BOTH online co-op and split-screen co-op, so you and a friend can fight for your lives together. While I was expecting the online co-op, what drew me to Dead Nation was the offline 'couch co-op' where a friend and I could play a game with each other on a single PS3 and TV. Offline co-op is a dying form of gameplay, and it's so unfortunate because the best experiences I've ever had playing games was co-op with friends, offline, in one living room with some pizza, beer, and whatnot, so any game that retains an offline co-op feature gets serious consideration of a purchase from me.

With the world up to its ass in zombie-themed movies, games, and whatnot, you'd wonder if the Zombie Apocalypse isn't already here. Zombies have apparently infected every entertainment medium so it's hard to tell what's worth the investment. But I'm here to tell you that "Dead Nation", the latest game by the developers of the PSN smash hit "Super Stardust HD", Housemarque, is a tight package and, if you're a zombie-slayer on a budget, it is probably the best bang for the buck. The controls are smooth, the graphics are atmospheric and highly detailed, and Dead Nation is intelligent enough to foil your plans to "spray and pray" your way through the game like the top-down arcade shooters of the 1980's.

So get off of your horse, cowboy, and forget about getting Zombrex for your daughter, because there's a new virus going around.