Why did it take me so long to get this game? I don't know, maybe it's got something to do with being unemployed.
Anyway, I finally grabbed a copy during the holiday sale, and what happens? It fucking drains out 15 hours of my time. I'm still thinking about it right now.
I don't know why. It has some flaws, but overall, I found it way too addictive to care.
You start the game as the character Marcus. You and your friend Ed have just gotten back from a lakeside vacation. And immediately are attacked by zombies. So immediately, that you literally start the game by going from black screen to you kicking zombie ass. No intro cut scenes or anything, just straight to the action.
I like this already. As you're discussing the fact that suddenly everyone is a cannibal, you decide to head to the ranger station. You can run your way through zombies, inevitably having to fight them off, or you can sneak around them. You'll always end up fighting some of them.
That's one of the things about this game. You will slog your way through a lot of zombies. I would assume that for your characters, this is a terrifying prospect. But for you? Meh. It's an endless grind through all manner of disgusting flesh-eating monster. Some of them are more annoying than others, but you can easily dispatch a band of 10 or so by yourself. After that, things can get a bit dicey, but then you just find a car and run them over.
And yet you will keep going out there to kill more of them. Maybe it's the CRUNCH of their heads as you jump on their backs into the air, to land a flying kick that smashes their heads into paste. I dunno. That's pretty satisfying. And the world is fairly large. Lots of people are dead, but there are plenty of survivors out there for you to help out or bring into the fold.
I haven't gotten very far into the story yet. There appear to be a couple different factions, which I'll get around to helping out eventually. Right now, I'm busy being annoyed at the game for a few minor things- like why can't I upgrade areas of my home that were already there when I moved in? I live in an industrial garage, yet I can't manage to upgrade the built in workshop to handle fixing cars? What is this fuckery? Also, how did you manage to forget that people put things in the back of trucks? I mean, I get only being allowed to wear one backpack, but you put vehicles in the game, and yet your rucksack will just fall right through the bed of the truck? Eh?
Thankfully, there is already a modding community ready to fix these bugs. And they have.
The frequency of side missions is a problem. As soon as you finish one, another pops up. You won't have time to do them all if you want to actually accomplish anything. And yet one of your community members will, at some point, decide to run off and fight the super zombie all by themselves. Why? Who the fuck knows. But you have to run out there. Even if you don't want to fight the thing, you'll still have to get all the way up to that particular person just to tell them "No, stupid, we don't need to do that." And then they don't like you. Or you can ignore them, and then they don't like you. And then fights start breaking out in your community, because nobody else can fucking handle their shit if you aren't around.
Which is weird, because you go through the game by playing multiple characters. They will get tired, and they will get hurt, and you will cart them back to base so that you can switch to another person who is not tired and hurt (or maybe just less tired and hurt). Each character levels up with use. And yet they aren't capable of sending one of those people out to help the dipshit who wandered off to fight a rotter all by himself. You, meaning whoever you're controlling, has to be the one to do it. Everyone else just farts around at home while you're tirelessly running every mission solo.
This is tedious. It's hard to really get to the story missions because those don't ever disappear. Meanwhile if I ignore one little side mission, one of my characters might die, and I'll end up not having enough people to run the fort back home.
Well, it's all right. Because I can, again, take a car and go run over a horde of zombies. They splatter so good.
