For the past few years horror games have been on the up and up. Though even whence Amnesia reinvigorated the gaming landscape, such horror games were largely of the 'passive' variety. Horror games that primarily entailed you to run away and hide pretty much exclusively with no tangible means of defending yourself. That's certainly all well and good, though I personally do tend to prefer my horror games that let me have some form of defence. 'Survival Horror' is perhaps the most fitting brand for such games, usually, though as time has gone on it's morphed into a rather nebulous term; a catch-all bit of shorthand most video game critics in particular use to describe seemingly any and every horror game.
I don't want to suddenly morph this thing into an all-out genre definitions war, but I at the very least view survival horror as the sort of subgenre that rides an extremely delicate balance. In some cases you're generally pressured to avoid combat when possible, but at the same time should it come to it you'll have an assortment of weaponry to fight the tides of whatever it is that's hounding you. In other cases you're often bound to kill everything in your path to proceed, and the tension comes from utilising your generally limited supply of stuff to make the best of things. Games such as The Evil Within and The Last of Us in particular really accentuate this new sub-subgenre that I generally refer to as ''survival horror shooter''. They work within a particular frame of 'combat puzzle' and are dictated by your limited supplies that, while not wholly reminiscent of the survival horror games of the '90s, have taken certain philosophies and modernised them into something a little more contemporary and accessible. Though not wholly accessible, considering the somewhat divisive reception to The Evil Within and The Last of Us's combat.
Zombi, originally released in 2012 as a Wii U exclusive called ZombiU, is another such modern day survival horror game that tries ever so hard to have players relive the classic design hallmarks of such games as the pre-RE4 Resident Evil entries. In some regards it successfully manages to capture many of what made survival horror games so captivating... but there's a few caveats all the while that stop it just short from achieving its full potential.
I've been excited all this time for a game I basically knew nothing about!
Despite always wanting to play ZombiU for myself for the longest time, I was admittedly ignorant to much of what the game is beyond a few key elements - zombies, London, cricket bat. Was it open-world? Did you explore a single, contained environment? Could I save inside big, red phone boxes? Could I fast-travel via black cabs? Was there a dedicated button for me to call a zombie a 'fakkin' mug'?
All I knew upfront is that it was often looked upon as resembling a genuine modern day survival horror throwback, and that's pretty much all I needed to know to result in a burning desire to give this a go... Eventually. And go I have now given it!..
To my surprise it operates around a safe house HUB, with multiple individual locations of London to fast-travel to via manholes - not quite black cabs then, but probably just as seedy. At first glance you'd perhaps think it was functioning within a 'Metroidvania' sort of design, though such assumptions would be unfortunately wrong. The game is largely pretty linear, despite allowing you at any time to backtrack to previous environments at will. You'll obtain new pieces of gear to help you clear away obstacles you couldn't before hand, again adding to the image of this being a 3D bit of metroidvania'ing. But with each bit of gear you acquire you're then actually supposed to backtrack to new areas to then clear away the aforementioned obstacles to proceed. That's not to say there's no additional goodies to acquire should you go the extra length to scrounge around in bins and what have you, but despite looking like the sort of game that'd have a wealth of reasons for you to return to previous areas, locate some new stuff making you feel all clever and independent for doing something the game didn't explicitly tell you to do, the reality is a bit more mundane. Zombi also features a Missions tab, though there's primarily only the one mission set to follow, with an additional mandatory mission added to the pot. The second mission requires you to eventually start scouring around for a set of items needed to progress, though you won't be able to collect them all until you've most definitely accumulated all of the additional gear. Yet despite that they actually present the mission at about the halfway point, making it seem as if you can optionally scour around during your free, non-main mission time.
Nonetheless, the environments you'll explore are pretty varied and are generally well designed. They're not quite Deus Ex-levels of player choice, but they're wide enough with another alleyways and alternate paths to give you a sense of satisfaction as you examine your surroundings to make the best of the situation. One particular example involves a garden full of mines that you can choose to maneuver around, or you could instead use them to your advantage to lure the zombies to their explodey demise. That, and again the environments are just open enough to were going the extra effort to explore every nook & cranny will find you rewarded with firearm upgrades, if not just more supplies.
The environments themselves allow you to explore a number of London hallmarks, such as the Tower of London and even the Buckingham Palace's underground bunker. Even as someone that's not actually ever been to London, getting to explore environments that are distinctly English still feels surprisingly novel amidst a sea of video game Californias and New Yorks. This identity even progresses to the zombies themselves, as certain zombies will be shown wearing English police uniforms; the cricket variety of bat as well is another key feature that does wonders in setting itself apart from my American neighbours.
A pinch of survival and a sprinkle of horror
Zombies! Limited inventory space! Item box! A save point! Hell, you can even perform an instantaneous 180 degree turn! All of such aspects of Zombi in particular do a sound job in bringing about a familiarity to the ways of yore amidst my exploration of the Spencer Mansions, Raccoon City Police Departments, and... the Antarcticas. It is these specific gameplay tropes that serve as the foundation for a brilliant, modern day survival horror release.
Zombies nowadays are often seen as a punchline; an easy obstacle to place in front of the player so as to reward them with ample gore. They're easy to code for one thing far as AI is concerned, since zombies are generally recognised for being nothing but a bunch of lumbering sacks of meat just waiting to turn into mists of blood. That's where Zombi comes in. One of its prevailing ideas was to try and make the living dead actually feel threatening again. Now this sort of concept has also been realised in the recent Dying Light (to which I admittedly haven't played yet) for how night time turns the ordinarily dim-witted dead morph into the marathon running variety of zombies, but to be fair Zombi did originally release three years before.
Nonetheless, Zombi doesn't quite take its relatively fresh concept to the extent I was hoping, and this is primarily the fault of one of its most iconics features: the cricket bat. Your trusty cricket bat is, quite frankly, a little too trusty. It's the first weapon you'll acquire and will serve you well to the end... too well. It's effective, but a bit too effective. It can carry you throughout much of the game... too much of the game. It does what it needs to do, just it's a - OK, I'm sure you get the idea!
It initially requires some get using to, as it only has the one primary attack and there's a specific timing you'll need to master to get the most out of your undead brain demolishing. But once you successfully understand the timing and can accurately judge the length of your swing, which shouldn't take you too long, the cricket bat quickly becomes an overpowered weapon of mass destruction - most zombies can often be killed with a single swing in fact. Part of that is down to two key blemishes. For starters, the cricket bat is indestructible. It'll never break, no matter the number of craniums you proceed to pummel into a sticky neck stump. It contradicts much of the overall design philosophy of the game, as of course ammo is plenty scarce, your flashlight slowly but surely runs out of juice, your health doesn't regenerate, and even the gun turrets you can find have a limited amount of ammunition at your disposal. A melee weapon that can stand the test of forever seems contradictory to basically everything else in the game.
The other is that there's often too few zombies to contend with. There are some sparse occasions that involves you trying to defend against a genuine horde, but more often than not you're often put up against a gaggle of two, if not just the one, which are pretty easy to contend with solely with your cricket bat. Also, unrelated, but gaggle is a great word that should be used more often.
If you were more commonly encountering actual packs of the things, then that would then pressure you to start relying on other means of defence, if not actually choosing to run the Hell away. Or if your bat would at least degrade, eventually requiring you to repair it at the safehouse or something, that would then force you to consider what enemies to use it on while also incentivising you to actually take notice of all of the goodies you have in your backpack. The guns of the game are functional but somewhat unwieldy, requiring you to take careful aim to hit your target. For some that likely spells out the shooting as being bad, and while it's obviously not nearly as accessible as your average FPS, Zombi of course isn't necessarily an FPS, so the shooting being as difficult as it can be fits in with the design scheme of the game. Or it would if you couldn't so easily fall back on your cricket bat.
Though again, there are a number occasions that have often forced my hand in rummaging in my backpack to find something a little more suitable - to equip myself with a flare to throw, bundling them all together as they chase after the pretty lights before then dousing them all a similar pretty light made up of FIRE AND SWEET, SWEET DECAY. Or in some cases to just outright run while keeping them at bay with my fledgling supply of shotgun rounds.
Unfortunately, such instances are scripted and so most of the game as is tends to result in a lot more of this:
And far too little of this:
Despite all that, the bat is at least surprisingly fun to wield. Even though it only has the one basic attack, beyond a shove you can enact to try and create a little space between you and the British brain munchers, the animations and the resulting damage you inflict feels pretty satisfying to perform. You yourself are also still rather fragile, requiring your full and immediate attention for pretty much all combat encounters. In fact what I particularly like about your fragility is that it'll only take a single bite from a zombie to kill you - however they will often primarily resort to regular slashes and such. You'll eventually be able to acquire a substance you can use to defend yourself mid-grab, but you can only carry one dose at a time and it can only be refilled from certain zombie corpses. As such, whenever a zombie attempts to go in for the love bite can sometimes be rather panic-inducing.
There are of course a number of 'special' zombie types as well, including the requisite 'spitter' as well as certain zombies that are more heavily armoured, requiring a little extra punishment to kill. The most notable variety is one that is seemingly embroiled with electricity, as it'll sporadically chase you before then potentially vanishing. Its proximity also breaks your minimap, taking away a rather vital part of your survival kit. The most memorable encounter with one of these banshees is in the game's one sequence that was actually quite frightening set in a nursery. It opens up with the cliche' of creepy children laughter ect., but the point from when you fall through the floorboards into the grunge below made for some good old fashioned MUMMY SAVE ME FROM THE MONSTERS.
Even besides the strangely electricity-inclined zombies, the other types will force your hand to rely on your guns a little more often. Especially the ones that will explode on impact even from your cricket bat, outright requiring you to take it out from a distance.
However that I not once felt the need to ever board up a door to halt the advance of a horde speaks volumes of how Zombi falters in what I was explicitly coming to this game for. I did indeed die a handful of times, though four (out of six) of which were from explosions, and one was down to me underestimating the explosive radius of a landmine at that. Suffice it to say, despite what I had been lead to believe Zombi made for a surprisingly easy horror game experience. The tragic thing of it all is it could have been rectified so easily! The lack of zombies on screen is perhaps a technical limitation due to its origins as a Wii U game, but making it so your bat is basically as vulnerable as your character would have made for a legitimate game changer.
Oh! Conclusion!
Zombi can easily be summarised as a game I like that with enough tweaks could have resulted in a game I love. It has all of the ingredients to provide a stand-out survival horror experience, to which even amongst the horror game boon we're undergoing is still rather slim. Even in the face of its somewhat muted exploratory aspects and a woefully overpowered melee weapon, the roughly eight hours I spent playing Zombi were made of multiple occasions to where it was genuinely difficult to put down.
The melee combat is surprisingly engaging despite its undoubtedly divisive simplicity, and the few occasions that had me running for my player character's extremely vulnerable life, frantically making do with whatever weapons and gadgets I have to slow the horde, will stick with me as some of the most intense gaming experiences of the year. I applaud Ubisoft for certainly trying, as it's clear what their ambition was. This isn't some modern day Resident Evil release to where Capcom continually profess their desire to ''go back to their roots'' while still all the while developing a shooter. Zombi comes across as a genuine attempt at recapturing the elements of what made survival horror so engrossing during its heyday. Still, as of now Alien: Isolation continues to be the most fully-realised modernisation of the sort of survival horror I'd like to see more of. But Zombi still got awfully close to matching it, and even when taking my grievances into account deserves its due praise!
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