The dead have never been so appealing.
An exclusive title from Ubisoft launched alongside brand-new Nintendo hardware; stop me if you’ve heard this one before. In 2006, we were fed trailer after trailer, preview after preview, touting Red Steel as the game mature, would-be Wii owners should have on their shelves for when the kids went to bed and the grandparents went home, elbows sore from hours of virtual bowling. Well, we both know Red Steel didn’t exactly live up to what was sold. So, who would expect anything different six years later, with the poorly named ZombiU heralded as the third-party game to pick up alongside the usual Nintendo offerings? The thing is, though, ZombiU is not only a fantastic and overbearingly frightening game, it is also the go-to game for illustrating how the Wii U GamePad can be used effectively outside of Nintendo Land.
You are a survivor (and then another, and another, and…) tasked with the ho-hum goal of outliving the zombie apocalypse. Living, it turns out, is no guarantee, as death is waiting for you throughout the barren roads and still flats of London. Even in the opening scene, which has you sprint deep into a subway station toward the “safe house” at the request of a man ona loudspeaker, you can die. Dying is so omnipresent that it actually becomes a gameplay mechanic. When your character does finally fall to the undead horde, you wake up as another survivor with an immediate choice to make. Do you return to where the previous survivor was struck down, risking death once more to reacquire all the loot previously in your possession, or do you forsake the supplies and instead move forward with your quest? It’s a choice that is much easier to make on paper than from the empty safe house, your motion tracker beeping in steady rhythm.
Even so, death alone isn’t what makes the game so terrifying, so “I have to stop because I’m actually scared.” The world is, at times, littered with zombies, and large firefights will ensue. Yet, it is the moments between that are most frightening of all, the moments where an absence of movement and sound around you instills dread, a quiet yet growing sense of foreboding. Something is coming… but when and where? Nothing encapsulates this more than the Nursery, where you must go to retrieve medicine. Children’s furniture and toys are scattered about the seemingly empty building, and lullabies quietly hum along in the background. I won’t spoil the events of the Nursery, but the level is absolutely one of the scariest moments I’ve ever experienced in a video game. Or across any medium, really.
Other survival horror trappings, somewhat lost in recent years, are revived by ZombiU. Ammo and medkits are extremely scarce and require careful rationing throughout the game. With a limited (but expandable) amount of inventory space, excess supplies can be stored securely at the safe house, and will be available to your next survivor should you perish. Weapons can be upgraded and leveled up through found items and amount of usage, respectively. Save points are also scarce; you can only save at the safe house and at a few designated hideouts throughout the world. Oh, and don’t think you can go back to a previous save should your survivor die; there is only one save file, and the game autosaves the second you die. This all makes for a punishing system that will no doubt turn some people off, but isn’t that sort of refreshing? A game that never loses its focus to instead cater to a wider audience; that’s ZombiU.
Another core element in building ZombiU’s oppressiveness over the player is the utilization of the GamePad in inventory management and lockpicking. When opened, your inventory displays on the GamePad’s screen, and the TV transitions to a third-person angle to allow you to see around your survivor. While you muck about in your inventory, using a medkit or equipping a Molotov cocktail, the world around you continues to move. You’ll find yourself shifting your eyes up from your inventory every few seconds to make sure nothing is lurking toward you. The same is true for picking locks, looting dead bodies, and more. The extra screen the GamePad presents isn’t really used in a way to benefit the player, it’s more of a way to keep the game moving and present opportunities for ambush.
ZombiU also features some of the best online implementation of any Wii U game. True, there is no actual online multiplayer to speak of, but what you’ll find instead is that the perished survivors of players on your friends list will actually come to inhabit your game. Typically tougher than a random zombie, these survivors will meander about where they were killed and, should you kill them once more, you are able to collect all the loot they had upon their demise. I’ll never forget the first time this happened to me, as our own Andy Goergen shambled toward me, his Nintendo Network ID displayed proudly above his walking corpse so I knew exactly who was trying to eat me. It’s a really remarkable feature.
Perfection is not a word anyone would use to describe ZombiU; animation is limited and repeats constantly, sewer environments are often recycled, the game doesn’t exactly look next-gen, and every now and then, a zombie will get stuck on something in the environment. Still, these are mere pinpricks in the foot of a giant. ZombiU isn’t for everyone. It probably isn’t even for most people, but that’s exactly what makes it so remarkable. The game isn’t watered down; it isn’t cheapened to make the experience more accessible. It is a terrifying, trying game that wonderfully illustrates how the GamePad can impact gameplay. It is an unforgettable experience that beckons to only a few, and it is without a doubt one of the best games of 2012.
