And rise again they did when Rockstar Games released the Undead Nightmare DLC pack for Red Dead Redemption. If you recall I reviewed Red Dead Redemption on the site a few months back when the game was released. My interest in it had waned despite the release of the Legends and Killers pack and the Liars and Cheats pack. Having new gang hide outs was great and being able to enjoy poker and horse racing online were great additions. Undead Nightmare arrives to cash in on the zombie craze and gives us new game types that are very enjoyable. Today I'll be covering those two new modes as I've had a chance to play them at length.
Land Grab
While it's not an entirely new idea this mechanic is pulled off very well by Rockstar. Land Grab is essentially another form of King of the Hill matches seen in various first person shooters these days. It has it's differences though. For one, these Land Grab sessions take place in free roam lobbies and they're completely user initiated. When the DLC pack was released on October 26th I initially jumped into a random lobby which already had a game going for an extended period of time because the land kept switching hands. It was very interesting.
I didn't revisit this game type until a few days later after the hype of the release died down. I jumped into a random lobby with Ramble On Dru and we started a posse. At the time there was no Land Grab game initiated but there were various people fighting in Armadillo. After some friendly firefights we decided to combine our forces and start super posse of sorts. We then initiated the Land Grab game in the Armadillo saloon and all hell broke loose. No sooner had we started picking people off as they came in one by one, but the opposing forces even decided to band together and form a rival posse to combat us. The battle raged until we had claimed Armadillo for ourselves and moved onto the Thieve's Landing.
It is an interesting take on an old mode of play. Instead of rotating spots and designated matches, each spot is claimed until another person or rival posse attempts to retake the land as their own. After the land is claimed for at least two minutes before someone can come in and begin anew. Once again the spots do not rotate either. There are set pieces of land in each down that can be claimed, leaving ample space for posses to carve out their territory in the old West.
Undead Overrun
With the release of Gears of War 2 came Horde mode. It was a game type where you and four other friends took on wave after wave of Locust monsters. There were 50 waves in all and each wave brought more enemies and better artificial intelligence. After ten waves the enemies became stronger and so on. Undead Overrun is Rockstar's spin on such a horde mode. You and three friends are tossed into the Overrun lobby where you can vote to begin or skip the given map. There are four different weapon layouts available to you:
- Ravager - Medium Range
- Overkill - Close Range
- Long Shot - Long Range
- Mauler - All Purpose
It was definitely good to have a person who specialized in each area as it kept things balanced. In the later waves though it started to not make a difference as each member was scrambling for ammo, helping their teammates stay alive until the clock rolled down to sudden death. With each wave that appears, lightning strikes the ground at some point at the map, leaving a coffin filled with ammunition behind. Together you and your teammates must open the coffin to replenish your supplies and keep the clock running. Luckily, you are able to revive members who have been knocked down and you'll have a variety of ways to get to them in order to do so.
In Overrun you still have access to such things as dynamite for clearing large groups of zombies. What really comes in handy in grabbing a coffin or reviving a teammate is throwing a bottle of bait into the air and letting it crash down on the ground, attracting the horde of zombies away so that you can do what needs to be done. More often than not I found myself tossing out bait at the beginning of each wave just so my teammates would have an opportunity to open the coffin and keep our round going. Unfortunately all good things must come to an end.
When time finally runs out, coffins stop appearing and there is no longer any way to restock your weaponry. You and whoever survives to this point are left with an endless wave of undead westerners clawing at your heels and trying to take you down. My most recent play through saw me and two other players camped out on the roof of a house in Blackwater, doing our best to take down the leftover horde but soon more of them descended upon the house. Soon we had depleted our ammunition and were left with nothing but torches. In the end, it came down to me and all I could do is jump down off the roof and make a break for it. To my dismay the horde soon caught up and while I did my best to fend them off with my torch, I was soon devoured. It was a thrilling play through to say the least.
So if you're a fan of horde modes and you love yourself some zombie fiction I would definitely look into buying this DLC pack. The multi-player portion alone are well worth it but I've also heard that the single player campaign is quite a piece of work as well. I'll be back with my thoughts on that one I've given it a thorough session.
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