Hands On: Dead Nation (PS3)

Let’s be honest: there’s enough games based on the undead to last a lifetime, even if their lifetimes are well gone. Just like the recent resurgence of zombie movies, the gaming industry has thought fit to unleash title after title onto pretty much every platform capable of showing the shambling, shuffling hell. However, it appears nobody told Finnish developers Housemarque who, fresh from their wonderful space shooter revamp Super Stardust HD have taken on the unenviable task of going toe to rotting toe with the likes of the equally ambitious but slightly flawed Dead Rising 2.

Thankfully, Dead Nation is actually rather good. It’s top down, or thereabouts, so you’ve instantly got the rather dislocated removal from the main character that Alien Breed suffered from – even more so as this particular game is, at times, even more zoomed out than Team 17’s xenomorph based but otherwise mechanically similar title. That doesn’t mean it’s not scary, but it’s scary in the sense that you know you can’t outrun and outgun the encroaching hordes and the last checkpoint’s a good 10 minutes or so back.  Going face to face with enemies is always scarier than seeing them come from above.

Regardless, the fact that Dead Nation is bloody dark and you’ve only got your torch to light the way means that there’s at least some sense of suspense and terror, even in the game’s wide open spaces of the first couple of levels we’ve been playing through.  There’s some excellent use of surround sound, too, with the player able to precisely pin-point the location of any zombies aurally before they’re even visible on screen – there’s some brilliant ambient sounds going on as well, and the various shots, explosions and blood squirting thumps are a joy with the volume turned up all the way to 11.

The guns themselves pack a real punch – the standard rifle comes with unlimited ammo (but a small clip) and the second weapon we unlocked, the SMG, naturally offers much higher rates of fire but with the caveat of less accuracy. You can switch between them at will, and the various Ammo Shops that pepper each level allow you to spend any money you’ve collected on beefing up the various aspects of each weapon in the order that you choose – this means you can keep the rifle as your ‘heavy’ and pile on the damage, with the machine gun just for cutting down the weaker hordes.

Your armour is also upgradeable – in the build we have you can toggle freely between each part of the suit and choose different sections, affecting the numerous attributes of your player character as a result.  It didn’t seem necessary to do so during the few hours we were playing, although on the harder difficulty levels this might all change as the zombies get tougher and smarter.  Visually it’s rather gorgeous, the lighting effects are impressive and the frame rate’s consistently smooth, even when the screen filled with the undead – dispatched bad guys remain on the ground, too, which is nice.

Dead Nation could be a real winner for Housemarque (and the Stardust HD touches like the dash move are great fan service).  I’m hoping for a change of level design as the game progresses, though – the open spaces work well but tension could be raised by breaking the familiarity and some classic zombie flick locations, such as old favourite the shopping mall, could work great.  We’ll see what happens as we work through the game, which appears feature complete in the version we’ve got.  Online co-op will be a big draw, too, so we’ll be sure to check that out and report back.