John, what happened?

I am really, really, surprised to be writing this, but here goes: *deep breath* I'm not enjoying "Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare" at all.

Yes, I am Jack Jackson.  No, I am not under the influence of mind-altering substances, and I haven't sustained a head wound in the recent past.  Yes, I am saying this of my own free will and am not being coerced or threatened.

Backtrack a little.  As a little backstory for you, if you haven't been able to pick this up from pretty much any of the other posts in this blog, the original Red Dead Redemption has the ability to cause me to rant on any one of several topics for a scary period of time, and is a very strong contender, in my opinion, for Best Game EVARH. The gameplay, storyline, atmosphere, music; all are simply first-class.

When I first heard about it, I thought that RDR:UN was going to be even better.  The premise is an "alternate plotline", which agrees with the established storyline for the first few minutes, and then diverges after the fairly-major event of a zombie outbreak.

Which sounds absolutely fantastic.  I'm not averse to a good zombie game, and RDR's eery, lonely, mostly deserted landscapes already had me pondering the unquiet dead even before the announcement of this expansion.  It sounded like a match made in heaven.

Except that this isn't a good zombie game.  It's not even anywhere near as good a game as RDR was.

First of all, combat, which was an absolute joy in the original, feels clunky.  One of the first things you're told in UN is that ammo is much scarcer this time round, so you should favour the Torch (a new close combat weapon in this expansion) over guns wherever possible.  Right-o - survival horror standard.  Except that this engine is not set up for close combat, and although a solitary zombie can be swiftly (and satisfyingly) dispatched in a few firey swings, dealing with any more than a few becomes completely unfeasible as you are mobbed and can't target effectively.  Running up to a horde, taking a swing, running out of range, and repeating till they all fall over is feasible, but even more dull than it sounds.  The safer alternative, repeatedly running zombies down with your horse (you are invulnerable when riding at any more than a fast trot, at least against all the enemies I've encountered so far), is even more dull, even when you unlock the mythical Horses of the Apocalypse - any game in which running down zombies with a burning horse is boring is doing it wrong.  When you inevitably relent and go back to the gunplay (always the best part of the gameplay of the first game), even that isn't as exciting - I have no empirical evidence for this, but I'm convinced that the "lock-on" radius is smaller, the free aim moves slower, and Dead-Eye lasts much longer - there's very little reason to aim in real time when you can headshot almost everyone on the screen almost effortlessly, and with no sense of consuming a finite resource.  Grr grr grumble.

But, let's be honest, I didn't buy this game for the combat - I bought it to spend more time in the world of my favourite game character, and one of my favourite characters in all media; John Marston.  Unfortunately, this is a world that I really don't want to live in.

The story started out pretty ok - the writers were definitely going for high ridiculousness rather than menacing terror, but that's ok - Zombieland is just as good as 28 Weeks Later, in my book.  Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to have been any story progression.  Admittedly, I'm only completed 20% of the game, but considering that there will be side-quests aplenty, that means that I'm well over a quarter of the way through the storyline, and so far there's been absolutely no storyline to impress me beyond the opening cinematic.  Encounters with other characters feel almost like a cursory namecheck - each minor character's side mission being part of a role call to appease fans, while offering nothing to the story as a whole.  Meanwhile, the "main quest" missions have had no sense of cohesion or plot.

Maybe I'm missing something.  Maybe I should stop complaining about being overpowered and just enjoy blasting zombies.  Maybe the story will get going in a few mission's time and I'll forget all about these complaints.  I just feel like this was a golden opportunity for the perfect genre mashup that's been wasted.