Challenging, but so much fun
The game starts you off with the protagonist Chuck Greene, a pro biker, participating in a chainsaw-bike race in a reality-show taking place in an arena filled with zombies for contestants to kill. The winner gets a money prize, which comes in handy for Chuck who needs the money to buy Zombrex for his daughter. Now, obviously things doesn't go as planned, a massive zombie-outbreak occurs and the game starts "for real". Now it's up to you to find out what caused the outbreak.
Story and gameplay:
The main goal is to get the facts about the zombie outbreak, but you also have other objectives, like finding other survivors, finding Zombrex for your daughter and murdering "psycopaths", all of which are timed.
You have a fair amount of time for your main objective, and this gives you some time to do some of the other objectives. These secondary objectives, however, don't have long timers. They usually take place far away from you and are time consuming. With this combination, you just cannot do every objective while still having enough time to do the main objective. This offers an interesting pick-and-choose play style. Should you defeat this psychopath or help these survivors? Should you do two seemingly easy ones, or this one hard one? You can do several objectives at the same time, though, if you want. The survivors are smart enough to take care of themselves while running after you.
This time-thing does leave you quite stressed. I often found myself running like a madman trying to do one last objective before doing the main objective-timer ran out, and by the time I was at the starting place for the mission, the timer had mere millimeters left. It definetly feels set up so that you have to play through the game several times to do everything the game offers, something you also should., as your level progression carries over to the next playthrough. This gives you a great incentive to start over after finishing.
"Satisfying" is a great word to use when talking about this game, because it can be crazy hard to times, not to mention horribly unforgiving, which makes it oh so satisfying when you accomplish something. Restrooms, or save-points, are very sparse, and with the decent sized map, time spent running to a save-point could be used doing objectives or earning points for leveling up. But saving is perhaps more important here than in any other game. Why? Because you lose all your shit if you die. No check points, no nothing. And you will die. Especially in boss-fights which can be insanely "unfair" some times. You die, you revert to an earlier save.
I learned that the hard way.
The game starts off fairly easy, so when at one point I ran into a secondary objective on my way to a save point I figured it couldn't be harder than anything else I've done so far. Well, it was. It met a crazy ass chef who ate "strange meat" and charged me at 100 MPH. Needless to say, he murdered my ass, and I lost an hour or so of game play.
But like I said, "satisfying". That is the feeling you get when you finish a mission with seconds to spare or when killing a hard to beat psychopath with one bar left on your health bar.
While I'm on the topic of killing and murdering: the game offers a magnitude of variety to zombie-murdering. Weapons are aplenty, and with the ability to make custom weapons you can maim zombies in ways you've never dreamed about. Sledge hammer? Check. Fire-axe? Check. Why not tape them together and make a sledge-axe hybrid? Tiki torch and water gun? A gun that shoots fire balls. Combine a hard hat and beer to make a beer-hat, combine a drill and a bucket to make a drill-bucket that can be placed on a zombie's head. Combining boxing gloves and knifes makes you Wolverine. There's tons of options here.
Both movement and attack speed are slower than in many other third person games, which makes it a bit challenging at times, but it feel alright once you get used to it. You also get new abilities and things like faster movement speed and more health when you level up, which makes things a little easier.
The game looks pretty good graphically, though not completely up to par with some of the triple-A titles. The cut scenes are very nice, and the animations both during cut scenes and in game are superb. The characters are believable, and the voice acting is great, especially in the psycopath-cut scenes.
Other stuff:
My biggest gripe is the load screens. Every time you enter a new area or start or finish a cut scene it needs to load. With the game so based around time and always needing to hurry, the load screens ruins some of the momentum. Picture this: you're watching this awesome cut scene with a psychopath getting ready to stab your face with a chainsaw. You're pumping yourself up, drying your palm sweat on your pants and gripping the controller like its the rope separating you from sudden death. You just want to smack this guy with your spiked bat more than anything in the world.
Boom. Loading.
The load screens are 30 seconds to one minute long and are pretty boring, with the same three or four "pro tips" every time. Some stats or something to look at while waiting would be nice.
There was also some trouble with the framerates during cut scenes, but the framerate otherwise feels solid, though it tend to drop slightly when there's much going on, like blowing up 20 zombies at the same time.
Conclusion:
The game offers much challenge, endless fun, and lots of replay-value.
(Played the European PS3-version, finished the first playthrough with the best ending in about 12 or so hours, over the course of 3 days. )
