lame

Cool surprise

@RYNO9881 said:

Cool surprise

@Vinchenzo said:

lame

Thanks guys.

Glad to hear that the game is actually scary though. This is something a lot of people didn't get around to mentioning just because there was so much else to explain about the title. I'm really, really sensitive to scary games.. but.. I'm gonna do it. If things get too rough, I'll just play the Nintendo Land menu music to take me to a better place.

COMMENTS!

great game.

I'm missing the cartoony Patrick being impressed. :(

Nice review. I enjoyed the QL too.

Sounds neat. If I had a Wii U and liked Zombie games I would totally maybe rent this.

@patrickklepek said:

COMMENTS!

I DON'T GET IT, did you try to steal the quest from people and you failed? You're better than that sir... You should delete their comments so no one ever knows.

@patrickklepek said:

COMMENTS!

WORDS! (Am I doing it right?)

If/when I get a Wii U, I will probably play this game.

I'm surprised Patrick liked it so much. It's been getting lukewarm to bad reviews almost everywhere else. Huh.

Great game. There's some real consequences for death and it's a lot of tension to a game with great atmosphere.

Patrick. It's like you want me to buy a Wii U just to play this game.

"This review is for the WII release of ZombiU."

That'll explain the sub PS3/360 level graphics. ;-)

lame

@patrickklepek: Thanks for the review Patrick. I like to think you wrote it while enjoying a tiny packet of in-flight peanuts.

Good review here. Bad review on GameSpot. I don't know who to believe anymore!!! :P

I'm remotely interested in this. I don't have any interest in the WiiU at all, nor any of the other titles in the near future besides maybe Bayonetta 2 but this + the QL just make me kind of want a WiiU.

Then I remembered the launch day live stream, and all is well. Though I do like concepts like unreliable technology in that auto-ping thing.

Is there any variance to the enemy types? The QL made it seem like they're all just shambling zombies, and sometimes one of them will have some armor.

It also doesn't actually seem that difficult. It seems like they aped the Souls games note for note, but tuned it back a bit. The variance in the types of enemies you face in those games is so vast and diverse, that you could be facing a shambling piece of meat that has strength in numbers (similar to the zombies in this game) and the next moment you could be facing a knight with intense speed and prowess with a blade. The Souls games also respawned all the enemies in an area if you died or rested somewhere to heal. It seems like ZombiU might be a better game for not aping that, because if I had to fight the same shambling zombies even more than it seems I already would have to, I'd shut the game off immediately.

The Souls games also have lots of interesting characters to meet and places to see. Does this game have any of that?

I may be asking a lot, and I can't fault it as it is a different game, but with so many direct comparisons to those Souls games I don't think it's asking too much for it to at least have more of the things that make those games so good. This just seems lackluster in comparison (though I guess I don't really care for inventory management in games, whereas you seem to just fucking love it, dude. More power to ya', but it ain't my bag).

Good review. Made me rather interested in a game I'd more or less written off.

The little allusions to Amnesia and the Souls games this game seems to posses makes it sound a lot more intriguing than something like Dead Island was.

Great write up, Patrick. I have yet to play the game and probably never will, but as an avid Dark Souls fan, I've been puzzled by other reviewers critiquing similar game elements that I enjoy. Don't people want a punishing and lonely zombie game?

Really glad this game turned out interesting, launch games seem like a dicey proposition at the best of times and a lot of the stuff coming out about this system have seemed kinda meh. I almost wanna pick one up to play this game. Almost.

Oh and ps. @patrickklepek "At first, when a button is pressed on the screen, it cans the area and blips red"

Just a heads up :)

@MormonWarrior said:

I'm surprised Patrick liked it so much. It's been getting lukewarm to bad reviews almost everywhere else. Huh.

I have also seen some very good reviews so I am not too surprised. and I normally trust a giantbomb review over others say a gamespot review

great review. someone get patrick a review avatar!

PK, just a heads up for context on the naming choice for this game: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4b/Zombi_box.jpg

Spiritual successor to ^that^. Doesn't exactly redeem the name, but some Ubisoft history/context

"It's a smart, scary, incredibly difficult action game with an unfortunate name, an experience that rewards patience and punishes arrogance."

And everyone hates Dark Souls.

This game sounds pretty awesome. The Wii U doesn't sound half bad either.

I got a chance to try this out on a friend's Wii U last night and I was really pretty impressed with what I played. When I inevitably get a Wii U (because I'm just the kind of person that eventually has to have all the consoles), I'm really excited to play it. It's not so crazy mind-blowing that I feel the need to play it right this very second though.

Damn, reviews are all over the place on this.

"The lack of an iPad-level touch screen with multitouch means you have to be very careful and deliberate with your finger presses on the GamePad, but in a funny way, that falls perfectly in line with the rest of the game."

This is by far, the dumbest thing have ever read.

@MormonWarrior: Well not every reviewer is the same. This game has a lot of features that Patrick enjoys, so he rates it better than others who's tastes are more mainstream. The trick to knowing if you'll enjoy a game based on the review is to know the reviewer. I feel I have a handle on Patrick's tastes, and where they converge and diverge from mine, so when he writes a review or talks about something on the bombcast i use his opinion as a lens to view the game through. Patrick and I have very different tastes, but his opinions are still useful to me because i know some things that he dislikes i don't mind or even enjoy, and vice versa. For instance, I know Jeff and I have very similar senses of humor, and I'll almost always enjoy any story he does, but i prefer games with more measured pacing and controls than his usual fare.

@George_Hukas: dude, you need to read a little more... or cut down on the hyperbole. On another note, the game seems interesting, especially given the really divisive reviews out there. The last time I remember a divide this deep was Deadly Premonition.

Great review. I think this convinced me to make the plunge.

Great review, Patrick! Reads as exciting as it was watching the Quick Look (somehow I find these Dark Souls-y games very interesting to just watch)

Been sold on the game from day one, still looking forward to grabbing it on EU launch (even more so now, actually)!

@ashton said:

great review. someone get patrick a review avatar!

I asked Dave last Christmas to get him one as a gift :)

They're probably going away with the new site anyway^^

I know the site's getting a redesign in a couple of months, but somebody put a cartoon Patrick on these things. That void next to the quote creates a void in my heart :.(.

I refreshed this page loads of times before finally accepting that a cartoon of Patrick wasn't going to pop up.

ZombieU sounds interesting and would have been enough to make me become an early adopter of the hardware, like Condemned did for the 360, but I'm so unconvinced about the WiiU's lasting appeal that I just cant justify the money, maybe a few more interesting exclusives and I'll change my mind.

Edit: BTW Patrick the bit under the score "This review is for....." has it linked as a Wii game not a WiiU one.

It sounds like an interesting way to experience the console. Something I won't do for some time while the WiiU proves it's worth.

Really what we all want is The Last of Us anyways.

i dont believe you patrick.

@joeshabadoo said:

PK, just a heads up for context on the naming choice for this game: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/4b/Zombi_box.jpg

Spiritual successor to ^that^. Doesn't exactly redeem the name, but some Ubisoft history/context

So it is essentially because they own the "Zombi" brand that they decided to attach it to this game. Man, this is a pretty old game.

@altairre said:

@patrickklepek said:

COMMENTS!

WORDS! (Am I doing it right?)

YES U ARE! (I hope)

This is the one game I am sad to miss out on by not having a WiiU... despite the name. For now i will just have to live by Quick Look Osmosis though Patrick.

I don't know man, 1 melee weapon in the entire game, one swing animation to go with it, and requiring 3-5 hits just to kill normal zombies seems incredibly tedious and uninteresting. Not to mention how buggy the game seemed in the Quick Look and that there seems to be no real story or characters to get invested in. The multiplayer mode seemed like it would be cool with friends, but everything else I've seen (including the Quick Look and most other reviews) make me think that this game is no where near as good as Patrick is giving it credit for.

@blurienh said:

I refreshed this page loads of times before finally accepting that a cartoon of Patrick wasn't going to pop up.

haha lol I did wait staring at the empty space expecting a picture to pop up! oh well lol

So, if this game sell well in the next month on Wii U does that start the count down clock for XB360 and PS3 ports? From what I can see Ubisoft developed and published the game, so Nintendo does not own the IP. Therefore, it is not out of the question that if this sells well-enough, Ubi would want to port it.

Truthfully, this is the only game I have seen on Wii or Wii U that I wished other system had now. I won't buy a Wii U just for this game, but if they were to port it, I'd buy it for my current system even if it lost the second screen inventory and used Kinect or Move for the "scanner".

@Colourful_Hippie said:

Damn, reviews are all over the place on this.

Opinions! This seems like a game not for everyone and especially one that won't just get an automatic rating. **cough** GameSpot **cough**

Personally, I would just watch the Quick Look and if it seems like you will have fun with it, buy it. Reviews can be too nit-picky if the reviewer didn't have some sort of fun.

Good review, and I must say the quick look made the game look much more interesting than I thought it would be.

...but ugh, Red Steel? Pretty good? I dunno man, Red Steel kind of defined everything that I felt was wrong about the Wii.

I find it very interesting that the Dark Souls comparison has been used, has anyone at GB played DS any significant amount?

@ProfessorEss said:

Good review, and I must say the quick look made the game look much more interesting than I thought it would be.

...but ugh, Red Steel? Pretty good? I dunno man, Red Steel kind of defined everything that I felt was wrong about the Wii.

He was referring to Red Steel 2.

I'm definitely getting this game when it arrives in the UK, I'm just gutted I have to pay crazy launch day prices for it.

@KlUMZeE said:

I don't know man, 1 melee weapon in the entire game, one swing animation to go with it, and requiring 3-5 hits just to kill normal zombies seems incredibly tedious and uninteresting. Not to mention how buggy the game seemed in the Quick Look and that there seems to be no real story or characters to get invested in. The multiplayer mode seemed like it would be cool with friends, but everything else I've seen (including the Quick Look and most other reviews) make me think that this game is no where near as good as Patrick is giving it credit for.

I agree with you, dude. I feel like there are a lot of things about this game, like the limited weapon selection, that Patrick doesn't outright address. That's fine, because that's probably not that important to him, but it is to me.

Ultimately, the way he describes the game in the review--which uses the design of going from anecdote to anecdote--seems to evoke the notion to me that it's kind of a "D. Souls lite". It's missing core elements like an interesting and profound world, diverse enemies, and fascinating characters. It tries to take a few core elements like messages and difficulty, but falls flat by not properly implementing precanned messages and having enemies mostly not respawn and limit their challenge to mere tedium of clunky design.

I think Jeff is right: Reviews are on their way out. I got all I needed to see from the Quick Look because I actually saw the game in play and got to see several of the scenarios Patrick refers to with reverence in this review, and I could make my own judgements as to whether or not they were compelling (to me they were not).