Dead Nation

Dead Nation – Review

Published By: SCEA, Developed By: Housemarque, Genre: Action, Release Date: November 30, 2010, Rating: M, Systems: Playstation 3 (PSN).

Presentation: I originally started playing Dead Nation soon after the whole PSN fiasco happened last year. You remember you could pick two PSN games and two PSP games? Well finally i am now getting around to writing  review for this twin-stick zombie shooter. Dead Nation upon start-up evokes a strong George A Romero vibe. If you seen any of his zombie movies Dead Nation has a similar vibe. The presentation regarding Dead Nation is a mix bag overall. On one hand you have a dark challenging zombie shooter with good content. On the other hand you have a shallow story and a gang of problems relating to its online component.

While waiting to sync with random Dead Nation players for co-op online can get frustrating. Most times you except the person you connect to. When the game starts up it either freezes or you loose connection to the player. Asides from that, no mic support in Dead Nation. When strictly talking atmosphere Dead Nation does the zombie thing good enough. The game takes place mostly at night. The visuals evoke an apocalyptic vibe and the sound design adds a visceral touch of its own. The main menu screen featured menus of Solo Game, Co-Op Game, Online Game, Global Status, Rankings, Options, Online Store and Gallery. Navigating the menus and interface wasn’t a chore and featured good menu music.

At the bottom of the Dead Nation’s menu screen features a news feed of updates and fictitious info. Dead Nation really pushes its world rankings alote. Every country is scored on how many zombies it killed and shown on the news feed. The controls via the Duel Shock 3 gamepad: R1-fire weapon, L1-throw item, R2-close combat, L2-rush, LS-move, RS-click (reload)/aim, D-pad-previous item/weapon. For the most part the controls are decent. Dead Nation naturally is a challenging game. Its difficult even on Normal. Upgrading and using all of your flares, mines, grenades can only help you.

Story: Dead Nation’s story centers around two protagonists Jack McReady and Scarlet Blake. You can play Dead Nation with either character. The stories of each character aren’t so different in the end. They both are trying to get to the same location. Jack McReady and Scarlet Blake both have their reasons for surviving the zombie apocalypse. Dead Nation never really explores how, why or who is responsible for the outbreak. Its story is more focused on the two main characters and their struggle for survival. Cutscenes with narrating at the start of each chapter fleshes out the story.

Visuals: Dead Nation is a decent looking game. Good lighting accompanied with decent artstyle brings out the atmosphere. Levels and settings are diverse featuring hospitals, carnivals, rail sequences and even snow covered landscapes. My only complaint is that the game is too dark all of the time. There were many times i just wanted to see dusk or a glimmer of sunlight.

Sound: I did like the sound design in this game. The zombies pretty much all had unique sounds attached to them. The music sounded as if it was ripped out of one of the newer zombie movies. The sound design really fit this game like a glove.

Gameplay: Shooting zombies in a top down view has been done before. I played so many Xbox Live Indie Games where you’re in a top down view shooting waves of zombies. Does Dead Nation set itself apart from most twin-stick zombie games? Not really. However the co-op, armor upgrades and stores do help the gameplay. Dead Nation isn’t an easy game to walk through, its difficult. Some of the weapons i used were assault rifle, smg, rocket launcher, flame thrower, a gun that shoots electricity, a gun that shoots blades and the shotgun. Each gun is upgradable at stores at each major checkpoint. You can also buy and upgrade, grenades, flares and mines.

Upgrading is important especially for tactical items like the latter. For guns you can upgrade stuff like ammo, power, rate of fire etc. As far as zombies go they really range from all types. You have your normal grunts that move slow. You have big swarms of faster moving zombies. You have fat zombies that spit and giant zombies that jump and leap towards you. Some zombies do take strategy to destroy. Many areas in the Dead Nation has you pres a button and wait for a lift or door to open. At which time you have to fend off mass amounts of zombies. The gameplay at times did get repetitive and predictable.

Replayability: The single player campaign will last you upwards of five hours. You can play in co-op (if people still play it on PSN). You can collect armor sets to strengthen your character. As you play Dead Nation you can venture back to the Gallery menu to see artwork you unlocked. There is also Road to Devastation DLC if your tired of the main campaign. Overall the content is good in Dead Nation. But be warned the online component does have issues.

Final Verdict: Dead Nation is a good, challenging top down zombie shooter that features online co-op. There are some glaring issues with the online componant but doesn’t take too much away from the gameplay. Thanks for reading.

6.5/10