The fans demanded it and Rockstar is delivering. The Red Dead Redemption Undead Nightmare pack is the latest, and last downloadable content to saddle up with Rockstar’s western romp. It’s packed with zombie humans, zombie bears and more in a DLC package featuring a whole new single player campaign, weapons and deathly multiplayer modes. We’ve had a chance to try out the campaign ahead of release, so read on for our first impressions of Undead Nightmare’s horror-filled campaign mode.
The launch and continued success of Red Dead Redemption showed a legion of game fans that Rockstar can do as much justice to the open western world as it can the gang-plagued urban streets it found a comfortable home in, in the Grand Theft Auto series. Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare closes this very chapter, with what Rockstar confirmed again to us, is the last batch of downloadable Red Dead Redemption content, due to arrive on Xbox Live and PlayStation Network very soon on 26th October, costing 800 Microsoft Points and £7.99 respectively. The pack will arrive simultaneously on both platforms.
In Undead Nightmare you’ll once again be playing as John Marston, who has a very personal reason for wanting to find a cure to the zombie epidemic that has swept across the now deathly landscape.
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Before we could dive in to play it Rockstar was keen to add that in drafting in the undead, it wasn’t simply going with the current ‘just add zombies’ trend, but were reacting to fans requests dating back several years, giving the fans what they wanted- zombies. They’ll love this. Not only is there zombie multiplayer (look out for our review of the multiplayer extras soon), but a whole new single player campaign more than worthy of spending around eight quid on alone.
The new Undead Nightmares campaign starts off in the Marston Ranch. A deadly epidemic breaks loose overnight, and John leaves the farm to find a cure, riding into the macabre unknown. As John you’ll also be charged with helping the few desperate survivors living in fear of being infected, and clearing small towns of zombiedom, meeting different classes of undead along the way. There are even more activities and challenges, but Rockstar wishes to keep them a surprise.
We started off with a taster of one of the five graveyard missions where the aim is to torch all the coffins there to prevent zombie respawns. Riding there on horseback through the desolate, murky landscape dotted with burning trees and foliage you’ll come across zombie cougars, bats instead of crows, and mythical creatures such as The Four Horses of the Apocalypse. Capture them to mount and take advantage of their powers.
The War horse is a scorching black beauty, enveloped in flames that set zombies alight. There’s also a Death horse, that explodes the heads of the undead, and a Famine and Pestilence steed with infinite ammo and invincibility from hordes. But beware, each horse is stubborn and has a mind of its own. Veer to the right and it’ll suddenly decide it wants to go in another direction, unless you reign it in. We sadly didn’t get to see the zombie Grizzly bears, but they are about, as you may have seen in some of the Undead Nightmare trailers.
Once you get to the graveyard, you’re faced with taking down hordes of territorial zombies protecting their patch, before a boss zombie emerges. Destroying the remaining zombies makes that patch a zombie-free zone, and another step closer to clearing the plague.
Rather than face-off against your Average Joe zombies there are different classes. Undead zombies are your regular zombies, they’ve only just gone zombie, so are, besides the rotting flesh, almost human in appearance. Bolters are nimble buggers. They crawl at you in a quick, but disturbing fashion, but are easy to blast away.
Bruisers are fatties with tree trunk-like legs, bulging arms and meaty torsos. They’re tough to kill, but are easily outrun. And then there’s the Retcher zombies that shamelessly projectile vomit at you every chance they get. The only way to kill each instantly is to put a hole in their head, made all the more easier and enjoyable with Dead Eye, Red Dead Redemption’s equivalent of the Bullet Time effect made famous by the Matrix films.
Failing that there are plenty of new weapons. You start off with a torch, with is just a piece of wood with a flame on the end you’ll mostly use to set coffins on fire. Holy Water is one of the cooler new armaments used to set zombies on fire with blue flames, it sounds dull, but the sight of a zombie burning brightly in the throes of death in the moonlight is a beautiful thing. Then there’s Zombie Bait. Tossing it into a horde of zombies lures them to it, but even better is boom bait, which explodes, sending zombies flying into temporary orbit. The Blunderbuss is the biggest weapon of the lot. It has devastating power, able to turn zombies to smush in one hit. Its ammo? Zombie body parts. Looting dead zombies replenishes your ammo.
There are other activities. Rockstar wouldn’t share them all with us, but among them is the choice to locate missing people. You’ll find their posters in clean zones. These missions are similar to the Bounty Hunter missions of the main game, except you’ll have to return the person to a zombie-free zone.
Riding through the plains you’ll notice pockets of brighter areas where the weather changes according to the local zombie count, the brighter areas being less hazardous. There are also safe-houses you can use as save points, as long as you take out the zombies first, though in some you’ll notice them respawning as you face a constant battle to keep the zombie population down.
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Another mission type involves rescuing survivors from zombie-ravaged towns packed to the brim with what seems like up to a hundred of the un-deceased. How you approach these is up to you. Should you go in with your Blunderbuss blazing, or more cunningly throw in some bait and rescue the poor soul? Whichever you pick it’s genuinely enjoyable attempting to get to your goal while Dead Eyeing zombies in the head. After returning our former hostage in one piece it was time to put the pad down.
So the question is, is the Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare pack worth your £8? Rockstar promised us that there will be plenty to do and see in Undead Nightmare. It brings with it a new single player campaign with what looks like delivering plenty of hours worth of gameplay. Add to that new weapons, three new outfits and, did we mention zombies?
Undead Nightmare is already looking like the DLC Red Dead fans have been waiting for, and we haven’t even got onto the multiplayer mode yet. Speaking of which, we’ll be bringing you a full preview of next week. But on first impressions, Undead Nightmare is more than just a zombie add-on.
Out 26th October 2010 | £7.99 (PS3) or 800 Microsoft Points (Xbox 360) | Rockstar
