ZombiU is a smart and engaging exploration of what Nintendo's strange new machine can muster. Historically, third party releases in a console launch day have been chequered and timid affairs made by inexperienced teams fearful of losing their footing on unknown terrain. When Ubisoft Montpellier's ZombiU works in smart union with its host console, however, it frequently delights.
London has been ravaged by a zombie plague, and the shambling husks of its businessmen, Beefeaters and tracksuit-garbed working classes make for tough opposition. A single zombie must be dispatched with five or six cricket bat blows to the head, and even then a final coup de grace is required once the creature's on the floor. When faced with a crowd, running and slamming doors behind you is often your best option. Ammo is scarce, health depletes in worryingly large chunks and the virus can be passed on with little warning.
As a survivor (or rather, a sequence of survivors), you're guided by the voice of an ex-squaddie known as the Prepper - a Yorkshireman who chunters from a tinny radio withing your GamePad. Operating from a central safehouse deep in the London Underground, your quest is an odd mix of survival objectives and discovering the overarching intentions of the followers of Elizabethan occultis and academic John Dee. You must carefully tread through zombie-packed hubs, some tourist spots and a few housing estates. Throughout it all, your primary objective isn't just the plot MacGuffin you're after, but to also find savepoints and manhole shortcuts that will make your progress secure.
ZombiU's gloomy colour palette isn't the only area of the game that's deeply in hock to Dark Souls: death for your character is final, so your first task after respawning is always to tramp back through areas to reclaim your lost gear. Armed with a mere six pistol rounds and a willow bat, respawning is a grisly process that invariably involves murdering your former zombie self. It's a somewhat lightweight variant of what Hidetaka Miyazaki acolytes have come to adore, yes, but this trick can help the game ratchet up to a remarkable level of tension. Fear of lost ground and fear of losing your gradually levelling character's abilities keeps you alert, involved and deep-set within a survival mindset that an autosave safety net would dispel.
It's Wii U's GamePad that conspires to make this game impossible on other platforms, it's subtle art being to divert your attention from the primary screen. When you, for example, reorganise your inventory, you much touch-and-drag weapons, health packs and molotovs into easy-access slots on its screen, but up on the main display you're still vulnerable. As such, whether you're picking locks or inputting puzzle codes, you're forever worriedly peeking back up to the main screen to check the shadows. Very often those shadows move.
Ubisoft Montpellier has been given free reign to experiment with the new hardware, and it's relished every moment. ZombiU makes the relationship between TV and GamePad screens fell fresh, and - displaying a clear awareness of horror gaming conventions - it toys with you brilliantly. Red herring clues, twitching corpses and suspect doors all play into its manipulation and contribute to sophisticated shocks. The GamePad's new way to play also presents new ways for you to be played, and the resulting suprises are often delightful.
As you move through the game, you develop a routine of survival: you turn off your light to let it recharge, you scan the area for loot and danger by raising the pad to the TV in a riff on Arkham City's Detective Mode, and you knock the head off anything that looks like it could cause mischief in the future. Beyond that, it's crowd control: dividing, conquering and nailing doors shut in the face of zombies, whether you're negotiating a party in a block of flats that's taken a turn for the undead or the Tower of London's corriders.
The trouble with ZombiU comes when you go off-piste - those moments when you're thrown from the ribbon of the game's missions, or die deep down withing an unscanned area without a saved shortcut to easily retrace your steps. This issue is underlined when, just before the final act, the game forces you into a needless and poorly explained treasure hunt through previously explored environments. The strange dead end that confused you the first time round suddenly makes sense (and the Dark Souls-style symbol messages left by other players might water down the frustration), but it shines a light on the fact that ZombiU is a lot less fun when it can't deal out fresh shocks and surprises.
The game's strong feeling of earthly realism, meanwhile, is also sadly lost as it continues. At first, threat and variety are ramped up by zombies growing faster and more reactive, and the occasional policeman in body armour. Beyond this, however, enemies break with what a purist might call Romero canon and the game takes an unwelcome lurch away from horror and into fantasy. A late-game forary into an arena scenario, meanwhile, is another instance of the needs of the game pulling out of synch with the needs of the narrative. The use of explosive zombies, which ignite upon a thwack of willow against gas tank, genuinely feel unfair with the odds stacked so high.
The terrors of the horde that has descended on London come with caveats, then. ZombiU, however, is a title that will infuse impulse buyers, early adopters and Nintendo diehards with relief and appreciation for the novel gameplay that Wii U can and will continue to provide. It's a confident start, if not an end in itself - one that makes us eagerly anticipate where Montpellier will take it's ideas next. [7]
