Undead Nightmare - Zombies Are So 2010

With Red Dead Redemption complete I decided to play through its DLC pack, Undead Nightmare.  Undead Nightmare was released in November 2010 as a download or it could be purchased in a brick-and-mortar store on disc. It is a third person action game. It has no difficulty settings so I’m playing it on “normal”.

What the hell is with zombies? I would swear that they are everywhere.  The fact that they snuck into Red Dead Redemption is enough to make me laugh. Undead Redemption takes place shortly after John Marston returned home after killing Dutch. He’s enjoying a quiet evening at home with his wife and son when they start to wonder if Uncle is going to be home or not. It’s eventually determined that Uncle is having too much fun down at the bar and won’t be back this evening.

John and Abigail are resting peacefully when Uncle comes stumbling in.  He’s turned into a zombie and he’s looking for flesh. John and Abigail stumble outside where Uncle finally catches Abigail and takes big chunk out of her neck. It’s at this point that John blows Uncle’s head right off. At this point we officially enter non-canon territory. Uncle can’t die here since he dies at the end of the main game. It’s a little sad since I this would’ve been a great way to tell what John was doing during those months before the final mission.  Oh well.

Jack comes out to check on his mom and she takes a big ol’ bite out of him. This really is a great way to start off the game. The Marston’s eating each other just has me laughing.  Then John hogties the both of them and throws them into a room.  John is officially off to find out the cause of the zombification and save his family, again.

First stop is Blackwater and boy to I relish this stop. Shortly after arriving you encounter Professor McDougal. He apparently got bored and returned to Blackwater to finish his paper on the old west. First clue that something is wrong: McDougal is staying with Nastas who was shot and killed before these events occurred.

John wants McDougal to stay with him and they’ll get out of town. McDougal agrees, but only after he goes by himself down this dark, abandoned, foreboding street to get his stuff. The obvious set up is obvious and that’s why it works. Has McDougal heads down the street Nastas jumps out from an alley and eats McDougal. Raise your hands if you saw this coming. Everyone have their hands raised? Good.

McDougal kind of deserved this. I mean if you’re going to board with a dead Indian you shouldn’t be surprised when he tries to eat you. Sadly I have to kill Nastas, which is too bad because I liked the guy. Happily I get to kill McDougal, which is great because I despised the wretch.

People don’t take long to turn into zombies around here. The transformation takes a matter of seconds. The streets are now alive with hoards of zombies. This is the moment when horrible tutorial messages start popping up. I am running from zombies, now is not the time to tell me that ammo is a limited commodity. Wait….ammo is a limited commodity? Crap. Guess I better stop shooting zombies.

I have to find some chick that’s hiding in town. She talks about how her dad (who’s been dead 3 years) came back to life. Her family was so happy to see him; at least until he ate her mother, then she wasn’t so happy. I like listening to her as she defends her father, “He was a good man, but he drank a lot. He was a good man, but he beat me. He was a good man, but he cheated on my mother.” The humor thrown into this game is spot on. Here are zombies out eating everyone and she needs to defend her obviously low-life father. She eventually directs John to the graveyard since that’s where the dead are coming from. She does this with the message that if you see her Uncle Mordecai, make sure he burns. Oh right, she also gave John a torch.

The Torch is the main weapon in this game. Setting zombies on fire is a good way to kill them, but it also makes it easy for them to surround John and overwhelm him. But you’re going to want to use it, ammo really is scarce.

This post is getting kind of long so I’m going to cut it short here. I’ll post the rest later.