ZombiU Wii-U Review

Developer Ubisoft

Publisher Ubisoft

Platform Wii-U

Release Date Out Now

One of the Wii’s biggest failings was the perception it gained (somewhat unfairly) that it didn’t have any adult orientated games. This was something Nintendo wanted to address before the release of the Wii-U so they picked Ubisoft’s ZombiU as the game that would sell the Wii-U to an adult audience.

ZombiU is certainly built for survival horror fans, for those players that prefer to have to struggle to find bullets rather than have an endless supply of clips and an ever increasingly extravagant list of weapons. Your main weapon here is a Cricket bat and boy does it get some use. Weapons degrade and bullets are hard to come by but the bat sticks the test of time cracking open many a zombie head. 

 

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ZombiU is set in London England, right smack bang in the middle of yet another Zombie apocalypse, there isn’t a huge back story and the game really centers on time trials and seeing how long you can stay alive with one survivor. One of the coolest features in the game is when you die you don’t respawn as the same person. You get a new character and of course since your previous character just got bitten they have now turned into a zombie too. You can return to where you were killed and you will find your old zombiefied-self, then you need to smash his head in to collect all the goodies from your back pack.

The game does include a survivor mode which only allows one character with one life, and once you die it’s game over. This is for those who really want a challenge as ZombiU is not artificially difficult, it is actually difficult. Keeping one person alive is a really challenge something I’m yet to manage. There was a phrase for games on the old Nintendo 8bit NES that “games weren’t just hard they were Nintendo hard”, this is true today of ZombiU.

The weapons come in many forms although the bullets are quite limited, they include your trusty Cricket bat as mentioned earlier, a pistol, a sniper rifle, an assault rifle, a shot gun and a cross bow. Timing is everything as and when you get bitten you are done for. You can collect Virucide a sort of temporary vaccine that if shot into your arm just before a bite will save you from contracting the virus. This is often the difference between life and death….and then un-dead.

 

 

 

Zombies are attracted by sound, movement and light so when using your flashlight be careful not to crash into some dustbins and make a clatter. This all adds to the tension, balancing the need to see over the need not to get eaten. When you are in a pitch dark location you can’t see without the light, but if you turn it on you will be seen quickly.

The game allows plenty of tense sneaking around rather than going all guns blazing. This will suit certain types of players and is certainly a return to good old fashioned survival horror where the big set pieces are not what’s scary, it’s actually when nothing is happening that you get really scared.

Performance wise the visuals are quite average, this seems to be more a tech demo that got released rather than a full AAA title. It is still a great idea that is well executed but just without the budget to match Far Cry 3 or Assassin’s Creed in terms of production levels. Something that you can’t expect Ubisoft to push similar funds into a game that is exclusive to a console with such a low player base. The sound on the other hand is brilliant, the animation are good and the general game play is all quite enjoyable.

 

 

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Overall: It is definitely a top survival horror game, a genre that has sadly lost many other titles such as Resident Evil and Dead Space to the action horror genre. It has its flaws, the quality overall is lacking but it is nice to see developers trying something different. Fingers crossed ZombiU 2 gets a better budget and the team can flesh out a quality game.

All in all the Wii-U lacks serious games and this is serious, it is a lot of fun but don’t be expecting to be popping headshots into zombies this is true survival horror. The game makes good use of the control pad for inventory, maps and other cool features but be warned while looking in your back pack you are still vulnerable to attack in the game world.

 

Well worth a pop purely due to the Wii-U’s lack of games either already out or on the horizon.

 

SCORE 7/10

 

 

 

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