THE DEAD TIMES

RATING:

ZOMBIE RATING:

DESCRIPTION:

A devastating Zombie blight has struck London and for anyone remaining in this cursed city, survival will take more than the 'keep calm and carry on' British stiff-upper-lip mentality. Fortunately, 400 years before the outbreak began, John Dee - the much criticised historical figure obsessed with demons and such dark things - prophesised the Zombie rising. A secret society known as The Ravens of Dee have been secretly preparing for the event, stashing weapons and founding safe houses. You, taking control of a random survivor fortunate enough to stumble upon this mysterious cult but unfortunate enough to still be in the overrun city, have been contacted by one of their agents; The Prepper - someone who not only tells you how to survive in this accursed world but also coerces you into completing dangerous missions. Who exactly is this Prepper? What are his motives? Is he really helping you or just using you to save his own skin?

MY VERDICT:

Zombi is the next-generation port of WiiU game ZombiU. It is also a very frustrating game. I don't mean that in terms of difficulty or unnecessary repetition - it just has so much unrealised potential, so many quality, unique features bolted onto a tired, generic frame that strains to near breaking point. First of all, the things I really like. The Zombies are some of the best, most realistic, traditional slow-paced Zombies ever seen in a computer game - they can bite you at any point if you let them close enough, regardless of your health and often fall from lethal heights only to get up again and move around erratically until you get close. A bite means instant death so this is by no means an easy or forgiving game. This, however, is one of the main highlights in an industry obsessed with making the post-apocalypse accessible and easily beatable (a concept, in itself, entirely at odds with reality). Dying means you start back at the Prepper's safe house as a new survivor - your first task is to kill the survivor you were previously who has now come back as a ghoulish Zombie, allowing you to recover the much-needed items in your survival bag. This is a nice concept which adds wonderful believability to the game. However, and I'm getting to the bad bits of Zombi now, there is a lot of backtracking and wandering from place to place - the safe house or main hub from which every level stems from seems unnecessarily huge, with many floors and hidden corridors. This makes for long, arduous walks while you figure out how to get to where you want to be and extreme repetition where you retrace your steps as another survivor. Conversely, the levels outside the hub are too small and linear - you have to go where the game wants you to go, exploration completely impossible, every encounter forced to be met in the same boring way. The biggest complaint though is the disturbing number of bugs in the game at launch, some game-breaking.