Dead Nation Review

Dead Nation Review | May 3, 2016
PlayStation Exclusive Title

Dead Nation is a top down run and gun survival horror zombie shooter and is rated M for Mature. You can play in single player on with other people in co-op and online. The world has collapsed after a virus has turned most of the world’s population into zombies. You get to decide if you want to play as Jack McReady or Scarlett Blake. The two of them are immune to the virus and are trying to find safety. They find a radio with a faint signal and try to make their way forward through the streets filled with the undead to try to find out why they are immune and can they help stop the world’s zombification.

Now the story and idea in Dead Nation may not be new if you are a video game zombie fan, Zombie outbreak, someone is immune and needs to get to smart scientist people to create a cure. It all been done before but it works so well here that we were happy to see this story unfold. The top down gameplay is exceptional the entire time. Having an overhead look at the landscape gives you time to figure out a strategy of how to engage the zombies walking the streets. Set off car alarms and draw them over until the car blow up is a favorite. But, there is several ways to distract them while you get into position to take them out like setting flares, grenades and landmines.

The action mixes up the intensity with dozens if not hundreds of zombies coming at you all at once or it is very slow paced where you can set traps or avoid them all together if you want but avoiding them is boring. Blowing them up and shooting them is what you want. It is so easy to pick up and start playing and you are never safe when you are out exploring the city. Even after you clear out an area something will come jumping out of a store window or a car. It just keeps you interested from the start to finish. The only things we did not like is the aiming right thumb stick is also the reload button when you push down on it. We kept reloading our weapon by accident when this started to get intense and most of the weapons are not that good even after you max out their stats.

There is also dozens of secret treasures all over the place and mini challenges like get through in a certain amount of time as part of each level. The secrets are mostly currency based but there is also armor and multipliers to increase your overall score. It took us about 8 to 10 hours the first time through. We did a lot of exploring trying to find all of the hidden things. Replay value is very high, not just because if challenges like trying to get through each of the 10 levels under the recommended time but Dead Nation is very difficult to stop playing. You just want to keep playing.

8.5 out of 10
Great Game