Once the zombie disaster happened and I started the game from the safe house, I was a little disappointed that the game apparently wasn’t about having fun. Your first quest is to find Zombrex medication to give to your daughter at the safe house so that she doesn’t become a zombie. (I get bit by zombies all the time and it doesn’t bother me.) Unfortunately she needs it every day at a specific time. So that has a time limit. The stuff isn’t easy to come by either. It’s stupid because you have to come back and give it to her within a narrow time frame when you could just give the Zombrex to the adult you left her with and have HER deal with it in a much more realistic and reliable fashion.
There are survivors scattered around everywhere which you can escort back to the safe house for experience points, Zombrex, money or combo cards which let you make special homebrew weapons. The survivors only appear in certain places at certain times so all of those have time limits too. Most of the time you just walk up to them and talk to them a little and they’ll follow you but some of them want you to do really stupid shit. One guy needs Zombrex. Some need you to pay them money to get them to move. The worst is the three people that you have to beat at poker. I’m not that great at poker to begin with and what I’m used to is five card hands. I had to learn how to do this two card thing like they do in tournaments and what made it worse is that once again, my old TV doesn’t let me read .001 font so half the time I can’t even tell what the cards are. It makes it virtually impossible to build any kind of hand except pairs of things. I lucked out when I went all in on the second hand and surprisingly so did two of my opponents who lost and were out. Having the overwhelming majority of cash, I then widdled away at the third person until they were gone, just like in Monopoly.
Also there are psychopaths mixed in which are like boss fights only they’re all overpowered and you can’t beat them. No really, you can’t. When you first start out the game, you’re weak as hell and can barely make it from point A to point B intact much less have a chance at beating some asshole with chainsaws strapped to a motorbike. You have to just avoid every psychopath for the first half of the game. I was able to beat ONE early on; the guy with the tiger but that was only because he’s relatively weak and I sat safely behind a counter, drinking beer and throwing computer cases at him while he got mobbed by zombies. I also left without dealing with the tiger. Seriously, FUCK that tiger.
Hard to kill aside, the psychopaths are actually pretty entertaining. It’s like each one tops the previous one being creepier/more insane. You’re always thinking it can’t get any crazier than that guy and you’re constantly being proved wrong.
The craziest one in my opinion is Bibi the washed up diva that has strapped her stage crew and manager to bombs, threatening to blow them all up unless you help her put on a show for her adoring fans which are all zombies.
The creepiest one without question is Slappy. I like how his mouth looks like it was stapled up at both ends like he’s being forced to smile forever.Then of course there are the main plot missions which you have to show up for at certain places at certain times and all of those have time limits too. There’s also the overall countdown to when the military comes in three days.
So basically first thing I’m bombarded with needing to juggle keeping my daughter alive, saving survivors/killing psychopaths and following the plot. Escort missions and time limits for EVERYTHING? That’s horrible. That sounds like the worst game ever. When the hell do I get to have fun? How do I make time to try on random clothes, make combo weapons or explore? Well there are brief lulls that occur sometimes where you can go to a couple of stores and screw off for a few minutes but that’s really it. Theoretically you could ignore everything that you’re obligated to do and just have fun running around smashing and throwing things. The only problem with that is that goofing around means you’re going to stay weak for a long time. At a low level, your attacks do less damage, you have less health, you run slower, you have less physical attacks and you can’t carry as many items. That really sucks. And of course, the best and most reliable way to level up just so happens to be saving survivors.There are some things that don’t unlock unless you kill specific psychopaths like all gaming machines in the Yucatan Casino and more importantly the dirt bike and bike shop in the strip. The same can be said for certain areas of the map if you don’t follow the plot missions like the cashier places in the casinos and the underground tunnels.
As for leaving your daughter high and dry…
Sure, you can do that if you’re some kind of puppy-kicking, Satan-worshiping Nazi.Essentially all this means is that in order to have fun, you have to do all this other annoying shit first. It’s like going to Disneyland and being forced to ride the monorail around and around all day. You just go from destination to destination, periodically looking out the window and thinking wow, that place sure looks fun. I wish I could be having fun right about now.
And it’s true, at least for me it was on the first play-through. I did nothing but missions the whole time. Everything else was just an irrelevant blur only to be experienced in passing on the way to the next mission. I didn’t gamble. I didn’t search for objects to make weapons, I didn’t take interesting detours. I barely even stopped to use save points. It was sad. It wasn’t until I restarted the story, which retains your personal progress like level and combo cards unlocked, that I actually loosened up a little. It was incredible all the stuff I never noticed because I was so distracted.
Even with your character at a high level, there is still a point in the game where wandering around aimlessly becomes too annoying to deal with and that point is when the gas zombies show up. Unless you’re driving a vehicle or using the zombie repelant drink, walking around is just too much of a pain in the ass now. The zombies have evolved from nice slow, meandering George A. Romero zombies into sprinting, tackling 28 Days Later zombies. They’re all over you all the time and you just can’t hang around anymore. Even the slow zombies made some things impossible like trying to play video poker or talk to survivors. In both cases you’re trying to do something while zombies are constantly fucking with you. You try to beat them away and just end up hurting the survivor or breaking the poker machine.
You know what else is shitty? Guns don’t do anything. They kill zombies okay but any time you’re fighting a live human, you might as well be throwing rocks at them. But fortunately the same goes for enemies shooting at you. You can quite literally defeat six guys with full auto rifles just using a fire axe, easily. Really the only gun worth a damn besides Blitzkrieg which doesn’t count since it’s several guns is the Super BFG combo weapon which can clear about an 8x15 column of zombies in a single blast. But the gun you have to modify to make it can only be acquired around the end of the game and the only way you can get there is to follow the plot the whole way. So for the last 15 minutes, live it up with your giant fantastically overpowered weapon before restarting the game with an empty inventory. What a crock of shit. They ALWAYS steal the fun.
That said, at least you retain vehicle keys that you buy because it would be terrible to finally buy the SUV key for $2M, (which is highway robbery if you’re not buying a Bentley,) just to have it for one round. Strangely the best part of the game was probably driving vehicles over hordes of zombies. I never get tired of it. You’re impervious to everything too, the asshole snipers, the asshole gas zombies and the asshole with a chainsaw motorbike. Nothing can touch you.
Seeing hundreds of zombies flying over the hood of my Hummer and messages flash on screen like “Special Kill Count Bonus,” I had to laugh because it looks exactly like every inaccurate depiction of violent video games you’ve ever seen in movies and daytime TV. All it needs is innocent pedestrians instead of zombies and maybe an evil sounding Mortal Kombat announcer to read out your score.
