Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare Review

15 Nov 2010 at 18:18:53 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (360)

I will happily admit that Undead Nightmare is not what I expected from a single-player DLC pack for Red Dead Redemption. Considering GTA IV's The Lost and the Damned, and The Ballad of Gay Tony, I figured we'd maybe get something letting us play as a member of a bandit group, or perhaps a BOI agent bringing order to the lawless west. A slightly tongue-in-cheek zombie apocalypse was not the first thing that came to mind. Rockstar, you have confounded my expectations again.

Undead Nightmare takes place towards the end of Red Dead Redemption's single-player content, shooting off on a wild, apocalyptic tangent. At home with his wife and son, John Marston's hopes of a peaceful life are shattered when a zombie infects his family. Leaving them hogtied in the house and nailing it shut, Marston sets off into the wilds once again, in search of a cure for his family and an end to the zombie apocalypse. Now there's a sentence I never expected to write.

There's a fair amount of new single-player content here and it plays out surprisingly differently to the original title. The undead-ravaged landscape means that towns no longer sell ammunition and equipment; anything you want, you have to find or make (by collecting herbs, mostly, although blunderbuss ammo is constructed of undead body parts – and yes, you read that right) which means ammo of any particular type is in short supply early on. Quick-travel via the campfires is out, too. To get from A to B without riding there yourself, you need to access a safe town.

Yes, a safe town. The majority of the towns you'll encounter in Undead Nightmare are under attack from the zombie hordes, and need to be made “safe,” either by giving the few survivors needed ammo from your own limited stocks, or by killing a lot of zombies. Once cleared out, the town is safe for a few real-life hours. After that, it'll come under attack again, and if you don't head up to defend it, survivors will start to die.

It's similar to the turf wars from GTA: San Andreas, in part, in that you'll randomly get messages when travelling around that X town has been besieged by the undead, and you should probably get back there sometime soon. It's far less irritating, though: by the time I finished the single-player, I'd only needed to return to maybe four or five cleared towns.

Which, considering how long it takes for a town to get attacked again, says quite a lot for the length. Undead Nightmare isn't huge, certainly, but players should easily get five hours if they do nothing but follow the plot, while those attempting to do the new challenges and all of the non-essential survivor missions will easily take double that. Zombies aren't the only things added in Undead Nightmare, after all – if you fancy a surprising encounter with a sasquatch, or trying to break the Four Horses of the Apocalypse, now's your chance.

Plenty of characters from Red Dead Redemption return, each with differing reactions and theories regarding the living dead. Seth the graverobber, elated by the events, is thought by some to be a cause for the apocalypse. Nigel West Dickens is suffering similar suspicions, with various citizens apportioning blame to him and his “tonics.” Less-than-tolerant shopkeeper Herbert Moon suspects it's all down to the “Jewish British Catholic homosexual elite.” Chances are good that seeing the returning characters and what they have to say will keep you playing, even if the overarching story itself lacks any real development.

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