Developer: Housemarque/Climax Studios
Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment
Platform: PS4 , PS3, PS Vuta
Reviewed on: PS4
Price: €14.99/$15/R200 (Free for PS Plus Subscribers on PS4)
It's always a strange thing for me when someone releases a zombie shooter without it having some sort of unique hook in it. The straight up idea of the throwing hordes of undead at players has more or less been perfected. It's a genre that's been used to such good effect both in terms of gameplay and story that there's really little room left to explore new elements in either. So what does Dead Nation do to stand out in this heavily populated crowd? Nothing much.
Dead Nation sounds great in concept. A twin stick shooter from the folks that brought us Super Stardust and set in world very much overrun by the undead. But the entire affair is a rather boring and uneventful one with the same handful of enemies and environments being recycled over and over again until the game decides that you've had your fill and caps off a story that only manages to get compelling in it's final few breaths.
If the shooting was any better I might have forgiven Dead Nation's constant recycling of the same few enemy types, but that's sadly not the case.Clunky combat and finicky aiming join in with badly lit environments and small enemies to result in a combat system that is more clunky and tedious that it has any right to be.
The light progression system has you upgrading a decently diverse arsenal with gold you earn from killing zombies, looting cars and crates and finding collectibles. It functions exactly like you'd expect it to because you've no doubt seen the exact same system in a hundred other games before.
Even as I progressed through the campaign and poured every scrap of gold I had into upgrading my gear, the combat never neared any level of enjoyment as the overly long campaign drew on. To make matters even worse the default rifle is the only gun on offer that doesn't run out of ammo, meaning that you'll be relying on it quite often. This would be fine if the rifle was not a single-shot weapon with medicore damage.
Enemy types really don't vary up after the first hour or so of the game, and what's on offer here is uncannily similar to the enemy archetypes of Left 4 Dead. The boomer, splitter and tank are all there and function nearly identically as they do in Valve's FPS. There are even some entire levels that you'd be hard pressed not to recognize even if you've glanced at Left 4 Dead.
Levels are dark, dreary and damn near pitch black in some cases. You're armed with a flash light that lights up the area in front you, but even in the most optimal of circumstances you'll be lucky to see what's coming at you. Hidden enemies are central to the game's design, but these unfortunately only highlight further how clunky the game feels overall as they force you into using the game's melee system which feels very weak indeed.
Dead Nation also isn't particularly a good looking game. The vast majority of the levels are all composed from the same looking city streets and generic urban areas, with cars strewn about that you can use to attract zombies by setting off the alarm, a mechanic that seems oddly familiar... As a PS4 port there is really no reason to get into Dead Nation if you played it on PS3. The graphical improvements are really hard to spot with the only noticeable difference being the very smooth framerate at which the PS4 version runs.
There is a co-op mode on offer here and the game is quite better with the addition of second player, especially considering how the distribution of zombies makes it quite hard to cover your own back. The online co-op works fine overall but is very susceptible to lag spikes that can see you landing in some nasty situations. But even with a buddy at your side the monotony sets in fairly quickly.
No matter which way you look at it, Dead Nation is a game that falls severely short of achieving success. Every mechanic it presents has been used by so many other games that they feel more like part of a check-list than an actual idea. So many other games have executed the same ideas Dead Nation tries to implement with much more success. It's simply not a game that warrants that you spend any time with it whatsoever.
It's only just not a disaster and may be worth a try to PS4 users who are subscribe to PS Plus, but for full price there are much better games on offer even on the PS4's small library.
