The more I play this game, the more I hate it. I've been playing co-op with my girlfriend recently because there's nothing better to do, and I have to say that this is one of the most frustrating, broken experiences I've ever had. The Thugs (AKA really big zombies) are annoying in that they can basically look at you and send you flying around a room like a bouncy ball. However, this annoyance is relatively contained in the beginning of the game because there's rarely more than one Thug in an area. However, once you get into the city level, everything can knock you over in one hit! Isn't that wonderful? I thought at first that this was because of the zombie leveling system, which scales somewhat with the player's level. However, I was continually knocked off of my feet by zombies several levels below me, zombies which just randomly decided to spawn behind me when I was fighting one of the annoying mini-boss super zombie things that they stole from Left 4 Dead. How can you play a game that has enemies that are illogically much stronger than you spawning out of nowhere for ever and ever and ever? There is no end to them. This may have been a premeditated idea for the game as zombies tend to swarm (they're social creatures, of course.) If that's the case, however, then make the combat fun or consistent or even usable for Christ's sake. In the beginning of the game, you can just kick a zombie and it basically explodes in a cloud of dust. Later on, however, you can kick them a million times and they just keep swinging at you while a million other zombies randomly spawn. Then of course there's the stamina meter that forces you to choose your shots or, you know, stop swinging altogether and die a horrible death. Also, your weapons break so that might happen. They pile all of this unnecessary crap onto their game to make it difficult, but its just annoying. In fact, even with all of this extraneous bullshit, the game would be easy if it wasn't so glitchy. I've swung at a zombie that was right in front of me and missed before. That isn't a testament to how bad of a gamer I am, but to how I swung through the zombie like it was a ghost. Maybe that's a power that zombies get when they reach level 20 or something.
Speaking of which, why do the zombies have levels? That is the stupidest concept I've eve heard. What do zombies gain out of levels? How do they gain them in the first place? What experiences are they gaining? Humans gaining levels makes sense because they're learning how to do different things, how to handle different situations and handle their weapons properly. Zombies can't do this because they're fucking zombies. Zombies don't learn from their mistakes. That's stupid. Zombies don't get stronger and grow. They're dead. Next they'll have zombie families and go to their zombie job where they hope to get a promotion to director of brain sales or something. Zombies are brainless and primal creatures that act on instinct. Thecided to completely ruin the intrinsic nature of the zombie to keep with the aesthetics of the RPG.
Finally, and most possibly nit-picky, is the whole central premise of the game. Not the tired survival aspect of the zombie experience, though that is annoying. No, the fact that your character can't be infected. It makes sense, of course. If you could be infected, then you would die very easily. It would be an even more annoying game than it already is. However, the thing that is scary or unnerving or even compelling about zombies is that they can infect you. Zombies can turn you into a monster with simply a bite or transfer of fluids. That's scary. However, what are zombies without their infectious nature? They're dead people that can walk. Creepy, yes, but what the hell is a walking corpse going to do to you? Half of the zombies in this game don't even have weapons, so they are just scratching at this character that is cutting them up with a machete or bashing them in the head with a baseball bat and, at least starting in the city section, they start to become very deadly. That is ridiculous. I know there's really no way around it, because instant infection would make the game unplayable. However while being scratched a lot hurts, it hardly seems deadly, no mater what level the zombie is at THIS IS STUPID!
There were a number of things this game could have used (polish, a writer, ect.) and a lot of things it could have done without (zombie levels, glitches, ect.) As it stands, we have a mediocre zombie game that couldn't possibly have lived up to its expectations and instead delivers an infuriating mix of glitches and poor gameplay. Sorry about this rant. I was playing this game this morning and I just couldn't take leaving these things unsaid. It fails on a narrative level, a gameplay level and just a general fun level.
No comments:
Post a Comment