GAMING
Critical Gamer reviews the latest games
Zombi U games reviews
* Format: Wii U
* Unleashed: Out Now * Publisher: Ubisoft
* Developer: Ubisoft Montpellier
* Site:
zombiu.ubi.com/zombi/en-gb/home/index.aspx
With talk of infamous Elizabethan spy John Dee and an associated prophecy, the plot has admirably lofty ambitions for a zombie ‘em up. It’s unfortunate then that the story never really goes anywhere. Not even the squaddie who talks at you through the gamepad helps, as every time he starts painting in the background he stops talking just as things get interesting. Said squaddie is ‘The Prepper’. At the beginning of the game, he calls you to a safe house in a nearby London un- derground station which becomes your base of operations. Here you pick up a multi-purpose device through which the extent to which the gamepad is utilised is revealed to you. It houses a radar for instance, which becomes an Aliens- style motion tracker in your hands; rats and birds can set it off just as easily as zombies, but it never hurts to be over- cautious. Fighting as many as three zombies at a time is unusual, but death comes all too easily. You start with just a pistol and six bullets, and ammo is scarce. On top of that, any zombified police in full riot gear you come across are bul- letproof until you knock their helmets
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off. Thankfully, you have a jolly useful cricket bat. It will knock off a helmet with a few hits, and will obliterate any unprotected zombie head – eventually. You’re usually looking at 4-6 swipes per enemy. Time a swing wrong, and you leave yourself wide open to attack. You have to make sure you actually aim when attacking with any weapon. The result is that survival comes down to staying calm under pressure and plan- ning your next move.
There are other tools for DIY solutions to sticky situations, such as flares (which attract the undead), planks for barricad- ing doors, explosives, and so on. You value your belongings and your life in a way that very few games encourage – partly because when you die, you re- spawn at the safe house as a new sur- vivor with just a pistol, bat, and anything you were wise enough to store. You then need to return to find and kill the last survivor so you can loot the items back. Die before you do this, and they’re gone.
The Prepper’s device can be used to scope an area out, allowing you to identify & mark enemies and items; and later, hack locks and find hidden mes- sages. There are also CCTV boxes which becomes much more important near the end of the game, when you need to finish collecting certain items from pre- viously visited locations. The gamepad’s use means that everything happens in real-time. You’ll find yourself double checking the coast is clear before you check a corpse for items, or enter a door’s keycode. Concentrating on the pad when you hear a telltale groan from
the TV is panic-inducing. Deviations from the ‘normal’ zombie model are rare, but usually mildly an- noying. Borderline unfair are ‘bombers’, which explode at the slightest provoca- tion. Being blown up in this way is the only death hard to blame on yourself. Sadly, the last two hours or so ignore much of what makes Zombi U great. There’s a lot of compulsory retreading of old ground, with most shortcuts frus- tratingly and inexplicably cut off. Worse than that though is the misguided em- phasis on combat, with regular una- voidable zombie fights. If you think this means a tidal wave of new weapons and ammo, think again. Masochists will enjoy the option of Sur- vival, the same as Normal except you get just one character. Make a stupid mistake, and bang – the credits roll, and that session is over forever. There’s also a tower defence-style multiplayer mode, where one player sets legions of zombies on another. It’s good fun, but a lack of online play limits its appeal. So the story is where it’s at, and ‘it’ is – for the most part – involving, chal- lenging, atmospheric fun that you’ll never forget. If only Ubisoft had the con- fidence in the core ideas to resist drop- ping in different zombie types and an anticlimactic endgame, this would have been an essential purchase. Hopefully we’ll see a sequel; this is more than enough until then.
written by Critical Gamer’s Luke Kemp
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