Disappointing Anyone who has had any substantial experience playing video games will immediately notice the many horrible game designs used in this subpar game. Allow me to elaborate, in detail, why this game is horrible and you should save your money for a more enjoyable game: 1. Controls (5/10) Aiming with a thumbstick is a horrible and outdated way of aiming in 3D games on a next generation console. It’s ineffective, slow and frustrating. The technology the WiiU has makes it possible to make aiming a much more pleasant and enjoyable experience than fumbling around with a thumbstick. One only needs to look at the Zelda Archery minigame in Nintendoland to see that aiming projectile weapons in games on the WiiU can be both easy, fun and accurate rather than backwards, clunky and inaccurate. The rest of the controls such as map, inventory management, “pinging” for nearby zombies, scanning a room are all executed on the WiiU gamepad. Many of these features are used very often making looking down at the gamepad a common occurrence that detracts from the immersion in the game and makes it more difficult than necessary to accomplish simple and always repetitive tasks. It seems that Ubisoft went to great pain to make sure their game used EVERY SINGLE NEW FEATURE of the new WiiU regardless of if it actually even added any value to the title. Just because your game can utilize a feature of the WiiU console/gamepad doesn’t necessarily mean it has to. The scanning feature is cool the first two or three times you use it, but pulling out your scanner and waving your arms around every single time you enter a new room gets repetitive, boring and slows the gameplay and action to a crawl. Over 50% of the time you play this game you will be spent either scanning each and every new room you enter or collecting the items you find during said scans. This makes the core of ZombieU feel mostly like a easter egg hunt game rather than a zombie survival game. For a title that makes it’s main selling point the game controls, ZombieU leaves a lot to be desired on the controls front. 2. Graphics (5/10) The game actually looks pretty nice when you can actually see it. ZombieU has this persistent dirty screen effect that puts random circles on the screen that look akin to viewing the entire game through a dirty piece of glass. This I feel detracts from the game or was put in to obscure the overall average polygon counts in ZombieU. ZombieU also has a habit of making light sources look like someone installed nuclear powered light bulbs in every socket. Being blinded by overly bright lights is just another graphics gimmick that makes actually seeing the environment difficult. The game is also notoriously dark making the viewing area in such areas just as wide and as far as your non nuclear powered flashlight can shine. Flashlights in games are cool but only if they are used sparingly here and there such as in games like Metro 2033. ZombieU has a heavy reliance on flashlights making it even more difficult to view your environment. 3. Combat (3/10) I hope you like that pretty cricket bat you get at the start of the game because 90% of all combat in this game will be you bashing zombies over and over and over with the damn thing. Between scanning rooms and bashing zombies over and over with your cricket bat, 80% of the time you spend in this game will be doing one of these two repetitive actions. Aiming is difficult and the firearms in the game are weak. A headshot to a zombie (if you can even manage to hit a moving zombie in the head with a crappy thumbstick aiming device) doesn’t kill a zombie, it takes upwards of three headshots to kill a zombie. With ammo being scarce as it is already coupled with crappy and ineffective alternatives you are pretty much stuck with that crappy bat. Speaking of that crappy bat, your character really really **** at using it effectively. The animation (not animations) to swing it are slow, boring and repetitive making combat a thing of timing seeing as it can take a whole 4-6 seconds from the time you push the swing attack until the time you can swing again. Timing combos, varying bat animations and effects and not to mention just different melee weapons (knives, swords, hammers) could have made the melee combat more enjoyable. 4. Gameplay (4/10) I hope you like a linear roller coaster gaming experience. This game is not open in the least, it does not give you choices to make you simply hop in the ZombieU roller coaster and tackle each and every problem it throws your way in the proper order it wants you to. There isn’t even any dialog choice to make, the only voice characters in the game simply talk at you rather than talk with you. Overall, this game doesn’t feel so much like a fun well designed game but rather a gimmick to show off all the new features of the WiiU that will drive you utterly insane with frustration at it’s backwards game design.
Horrible waste of money and time. DO NOT BUY THIS GAME FOR PC. EA did a horrible horrible job porting this to the PC. I'm pretty sure trained monkeys could have done a better job. First off, I hope you enjoy mouse lag, turning off vsync helps but does not remove it. Second half of the menus are off the screen no matter what you do. Third the character spins to the left if you use a USB keyboard and Mouse. This game is far to buggy from the get go and after 30 minutes of trying to fix the issues I gave up and demanded a refund from steam. Trust me, don't waste your time on this one.
