ZombiU (Wii U) Review

Horror games are few and far between today, the expensive nature of these projects always means that they are hardly considered to be viable investments by publishers. With ZombiU, Ubisoft’s arguably most ambitious launch title yet, the team at Ubisoft Montpellier have managed to capture the essence of the survival horror genre, and distil it to it’s most pure. Utilising dangerous enemies, a relatively helpless protagonist(s) and scarce resouces, ZombiU does a fantastic job at throwing you in the deep end. But some critics have lamented that this could be another “Red Steel” in that it’s rather ambitious but doesn’t pay off quite as well as it could have, at least for a launch title. Well, I’m here to tell you that ZombiU has met all of my expectations, and in some aspects, exceeded them.

ZombiU is a bit of an odd game when it comes to story. The developers appear to have put a lot of thought into the world and its identity, however when it came to the story itself and what actually happens throughout the game, everything feels rather light. Players step into the shoes of unnamed suvrvivors who hide in a bunker owned by an ex-military figure known only as “The Prepper”. Your character is nameless, if they die, another survivor steps into the spotlight. London itelf is in the midst of a Zombie outbreak, and several factions are in the fold who all have their own agendas to take care of. The “Ravens of Dee” are a secret society bent on finding a way to stop a prophecy from being realised, and their leader Sondra appears from time to time to help the survivors. Meanwhile, in the secret basements of Buckingham Palace, a doctor working for the queen has been searching for a cure for the outbreak.

ZombiU’s biggest problem, at least for me, was that it was so light on story elements to drag the player along the experience. It’s a fantastic game that builds atmosphere extremely well, using the implicit and the unseen to tell a story rather than overt elements or files found elsewhere. But nothing especially happens throughout the main story. A few things here and there, but it just feels like a by the numbers survival / escape film. Some aspects of the story are done well – namely in portraying different factions having different motives during a time of crisis. But otherwise, it just feels like background to something that could be more substantial. The game’s world and story is well fleshed out through files, but besides that don’t expect much to happen nor a “big twist” that Ubisoft was hyping up pre-release.

One of the greatest things about the last generation was that the dirtier, grittier graphical prowess of the consoles allowed most horror games to create revolting looking environments. As games became more graphically capable, some of that was removed with “clean” looking environments (one only has to look to the latest Silent Hill games to see my point). ZombiU is a bit of a weird game to critique on a presentation level. On one hand, the game’s artistic direction is fantastic, but I can’t tell if it’s some specific design decisions that make the game so good or just the pure graphical prowess of the Wii U. You see, ZombiU presents itself in a largely dark environment, with the screen having a kind of vignette at the corners to give the viewpoint a claustrophobic feel. The screen itself is dirtied up with this kind of “wet” or “dirty” filter that makes everything just feel dire. It lends itself perfectly to the atmosphere, but many might be put off by having so many filters applied over their field of view.

The game itself looks great, but I can’t help but feel that the Wii U could probably do better. For a launch title, however, this title looks fine. The zombie models are varied enough that you probably won’t notice repetition, and the textures are all of notable quality (though some look a bit blurry up close). The framerate is, thankfully, consistent and suffers from minimal drops. The coolest part of ZombiU is the gore effects – chunks of blood fly all around the place when in a fierce encounter with the infected and it all feels realistic and more importantly, dynamic.

It doesn’t take a genius to realise that the parallels that can be drawn between ZombiU’s setting and premise and Danny Boyle’s zombie film, 28 Days Later. This especially becomes apparent with the game’s soundtrack, which is absolutely fantastic but obviously inspired by John Murphy’s score of the 2002 film. It makes the situations that players will find themselves in dire, and works great with these kind of sombre piano melodies. During more intense situations, the game will ramp up the string compositions to give an almost Hitchcockian inspired scare and key sequences play soft rock renditions. The soundtrack is great, fits the mood perfectly and dynamically complements the action – in some instances a Zombie would be backing me into a corner, the music would ramp up, I’d scramble through my GamePad for a pistol and let off a killing shot, leading to the music to almost completelty disappear. The music and sound design are just used to great effect and relieve the player where necessary and do the complete opposite at times too. The sound design of the weapons themselves are fantastic. Firing a gun has a suitable “feel” to it and you can really feel the power behind the weapons you’re using, while every crunch and smash of your trusty cricket bat sounds so authentic that some fans might even squirm as their weapon collapses their enemies skull. It’s a word I hate using, but the combat, especially melee, uses sound to make everything feel so visceral.

At its core, ZombiU has a little bit of an identity crisis. It’s partly like SEGA’s Condemned series, mixed with elements of a typical roguelike with a touch of Metroid-esque exploration. Players begin armed with a Cricket Bat and whatever firearms they can scrounge up – although mostly the bat will do the trick making most firearms feel superfluous in the big scheme of things. Objectives will be relayed to the player, and they must essentially survive as they complete said objectives. It’s rather simplistic, and it works well, but easily the biggest problem (or, well, benefit depending on how hard you like your games) is just how unforgiving it is.

The way ZombiU handles death is interesting. Players can choose to have a game over after one death (which, personally, seems to favour realism over actual fun). The standard option, however, means that players will be able to die and lose all their belongings. It is possible for the next survivor you begin playing as to return to the place of death, slay their former self, and retrieve the weapons and equipment if they so wish. This naturally brings about a rather major decision that will have to be constantly made by players – whether to risk returning to their corpse and retrieve their equipment (and subsequently risk losing it should they be slain by their former self) or simply move on and attempt to recoup any losses later. It’s a nice and interesting system that borrows a few ideas from Demon’s Souls and Dark Souls, but we’ll touch on just why that is later.

Of course, being an exclusive Wii U title, it’s important to critique just how well the game uses the tools available to it. The GamePad is used for almost every activity in ZombiU – sorting through inventory, entering codes on doors, reading files, looting corpses and containers and even to aim some weapons. For the most part, it works well, but it also means that there really isn’t ever a moment where the game is paused. Players will always have to watch their back while looting, breaking down a door or looking through their inventory (as the camera shifts to a third person perspective), as any time an enemy could run up to the player and it would be the end for them. At first, I felt this was a bit of a cop out – but then it struck me that this system effectively emulates what you would do in a real situation. Putting your head down to look through your bag is really not that unrealistic of a motion, and it ramps up the tension in the game and adds to the horror. One aspect of the game that really falls flat is the touchscreen minigames, which literally involve dragging the stylus to a point and holding it, or just tapping rapidly. It just feels poorly implemented and/or tacked on and really adds nothing to the game.

In terms of performance, the Wii U GamePad handles everything fine. It admittedly feels a little bit cumbersome to hold one trigger and hit another to attack with a melee weapon, but otherwise everything feels just right. The touch screen on the GamePad did falter a few times and unfortunately during the moments where I really couldn’t afford it to, costing me a life, but generally speaking there have been good experiences all round. There is a slight bit of auto aim involved with weapons, but it is more than helpful in those more stressful moments.

One of the questions asked most to me while playing this game is whether it actually successfully scares the player or not. This is a difficult question to answer, as fear is quite subjective to most people. As a veteran of this genre, there were not many moments where I was frightened by ZombiU, however it did make me jump quite a few times, either through scripted moments or just casual moments during the game. The game, for me at least, built tension and stress a lot better than actually scaring me – the radar in the GamePad can act as an Aliens-esque motion tracker, picking up everything (including rats and crows) and ramping up the stress factor. ZombiU is programmed rather cleverly to have corpses randomly animated or attack the player, even if they don’t appear to be enemies. Thankfully, the GamePad can be used as a scanner to find items and bodies to allow you to see what’s coming, but some players might not appreciate having to stop to scan everything. In short, it’s tense and very foreboding but not necessarily “scary” in that the effect probably won’t stay with you after you’ve finished gaming.

In terms of staying power, ZombiU is a pretty lengthy game., taking me roughly fifteen hours to finish (and even longer to find absolutely everything). To add to this, the game features a multiplayer mode but to be quite honest it’s not that great, we didn’t have a lot of fun with it. Instead, ZombiU’s better online / multiplayer functionality is the way it handles death. Players with MiiVerse enabled can come across their fallen friends exactly where they died in their game and slaughter them. It’s a simple idea, but it works well and is even better when you slay a friend who was carrying heaps of items for you to stock up on. It also gives the feeling that the world is a little bit more alive than what you would think.

ZombiU is a perfectly atmospheric survival horror game that manages to nail that isolation feeling very well. That being said, I felt like too many times that too many things were sacrificed artistically in order to achieve this vision. The lack of proper exposition, story and character development as well as a decent ending really hammered this point home for me. For those looking to indulge in ZombiU, be warned, it is an incredibly difficult and unforgiving game that emphasises the “survival” part of “survival horror” and will most certainly test your skills. ZombiU, as a launch title, manages to take advantage of all the Wii U’s features rather admirably, and looks good too but suffers from a few issues previously mentioned that keep it from being truly great. Despite this, ZombiU manages to carve itself a unique identity, and I am excited to see where (or if) Ubisoft will take this franchise next. Definitely worth your time.