Get Ready for ZombiU
I’m sure there was a collective sigh when a zombie appeared on the screen at the Ubisoft press conference. We’ve been bombarded with zombies these past couple of years, and although there is some great material out there like The Walking Dead, there’s still a saturation. However, the ZombiU trailer took us all by surprise (especially those poor souls in England).
The demo I got to play starts you off on the deserted streets of London where there’s nothing but debris, corpses, and burning buildings. The developer helping me along instructed me to use the WiiU as a scanner (which the on-screen character wears on his wrist) to observe my surroundings. In order to find loot in the vicinity, you have to use the scanner by moving the WiiU in all directions. You can make a complete 360 turn with the WiiU and observe everything around you.
The WiiU controller pad fit nicely in my hand, though it’s still a bit awkward to use given the width of the device and the placement of some of the buttons around the touchscreen. It didn’t feel heavy, so I could picture myself playing with the pad for a good number of hours.
Now to open your inventory you look through your backpack, nicknamed the “Bug Out Bag,” which again makes use of the WiiU pad. Something neat about the game is that it never pauses; the developer explained that this is because you can’t pause real life, so why would you be able to pause in this game? So even when you’re looking at your inventory you’re vulnerable. I did get attacked a few times while looking through my backpack, so that was a neat yet scary mechanic.
You can equip four items, two on the left top corner and the other two on the right, for easier access. You can’t melee enemies without a weapon, which in my case was a cricket bat. I primarily used my pistol though, which had limited ammo. You can loot corpses lying around and even the zombies you kill, which seems to be the primary way you obtain the necessary equipment you need. I also had a crossbow on me, and a syringe.
The syringe was only for instances when a zombie attacked me directly. As a means to get the zombie off of you, your character uses the syringe to immobilize them. This is an important detail, because it means there are no quicktime buttons to choose from when you’re attacked. You will most certainly die if you get cornered with no supplies.
Regarding death, this is the best part! Because the developers want the game to be as realistic as possible if we were part of a zombie apocalypse (excluding the scanner part I guess), if you die in the game, you die indefinitely. You don’t respawn, you just play as an entirely new character.
So if you’re a man named John in the middle of a quest and you get ripped to pieces, you come back as a random woman named Lisa who takes care of the rest of the quest. If the quests require you to retrieve items and you’ve already accomplished that part as John, you as Lisa have to now find John’s body, who is now a zombie. You kill your former self and loot your body for the items you need to finish the quest.
How. Cool. Is. That?!?!
In fact, if you go back and watch the trailer, you can actually spot some instances where the victim in one scene becomes a zombie in the next. It’s a very unique approach to zombie games that I truly feel takes us one step further into submersion of an apocalypse.
The game actually made me jump! At one point I was staring at the WiiU pad while scanning a zombie for data, and before I knew it the zombie was back up trying to claw at me. This is all happened on the WiiU pad, so the zombie looked even more terrifying given the manner on which it looked on the small screen and how close it was to me. There were more unique moments like this throughout my demo, so I’m sure the entire game will have more spooks for us to enjoy.
I’m really interested how the setting makes a difference in the game.
Overall, ZombiU is another zombie game. But it’s a zombie game that’s actually scary, and that’s utilizing the WiiU controller like it should be handled. I hope I’m not speaking too soon in saying that it might be one of the best WiiU games come launch time.
UPDATE: My review definitely changed my mind on a few things.