Sony and Housemarque have joined forces yet again to bring Playstation 3 players a new downloadable experience after the excellent Super Stardust HD which was a hit on the console. Dead Nation is Housemarque’s latest title and deals with, you guessed it, Zombies. Picture a world with plenty of undead in the way of you and survival, maybe a cold milkshake as well. Dead Nation is a top-down shooter that has been so well executed that the developer can get away with making yet another zombie game in this very saturated market.
Players are part of the fight against the zombie outbreak in Dead Nation, which is visualized in the menu system where statistics for each country are being tracked. When I booted up Dead Nation for the first time I was a bit skeptical but also excited to dive into this interesting looking title. The game runs in a beautiful HD resolution and looks stellar even if a bit dark at times. Players get to choose a male or female protagonist when they start their journey through hordes of undead, zombies or infected – whatever you would like to call them.
Dead Nation is based on a set of 10 levels which are split up by checkpoints where players can change their load-outs, upgrade their weapons re-up on ammo before going into the next dead zone. As I said, Dead Nation is a great looking game and has a well crafted level design which is also visually appealing. Playing through the game was fun at all times but could be a bit frustrating when I mismanaged my inventory and used mines or flares at the wrong time causing my inevitable death. Using equipment and weapon types wisely is key in Dead Nation, as there are plenty of intelligent zombies of various types, which will swarm after you when alerted. Of course, players can distract the zombies with previously mentioned flares, car alarms and beeping grenades which resemble pipe bombs from Left 4 Dead.
The game is at its best when a horde of zombies is attacking the player who then barley manages to use a pipe bomb, a car alarm and a few calculated shotgun blasts to get rid of the undead and the immediate danger. Dead Nation has lots of variety in zombie types with enemies ranging from generic zombies to witch-like undead or ones that resemble the well known boomer. Throughout the levels, Dead Nation supplies the player with ammo, money and health packs which need to be managed intelligently so that supply satisfies the ever growing demand for all of these items.
While the story is not the best asset of Dead Nation’s package, the comic book style cut scenes portrait a nice grim picture of what the world has become. I quite enjoyed the narrative on most levels.
After I played through Dead Nation, I can firmly say that this is one of the best downloadable games on the Playstation Network to-date and at 15 Dollars, a must buy for PS3 owners. Going through the various — often frantic but well paced — levels has been an absolute pleasure and had me somewhere between creeped out pumped with adrenaline throughout.
Score: 8.5
Dead Nation was developed by Housemarque and published by Sony for the PS3 on November 30th. A review code of the retail version was provided to us by Sony for reviewing purposes.
