Be Excellent To Each Other

http://www.vg247.com/2012/09/18/zombiu- ... bie-games/

First Bayonetta 2, now this spurious claim.

You getting one then or what?

What did I say? What did I say? Aye?

Day 1, baby!

It is like Nintendo is doing it on purpose.

It looks blocky.

I'm still on for two consoles at £199 each. Gonna sell the white one to Zardoz at an insanely inflated price when they're nowhere to be found at Christmas.

Good luck. Zardoz tries to trade in his Christmas trees.

Well if nothing else they've "been inspired" by a few of the multiplayer bits of Dark Souls.

Despite being rather fond of dark souls, and finding reviews of both it and demons souls sold the game very well to me, that leaves me a bit cold.

Whether it's the scrounging for ammo thing, or that the setting by now feels painfully generic, or that the penalty for death seems too harsh, or what, I don't know.

The only thing leaving me a bit cold is the prospect of paying £350 to play one game with no certainty at all that there will be much of anything else that I'd want to play on it. If it was on the 360 I'd be all over it.

If I get a WiiU, I'll probably give it a go - it'll probably be cheap by the time that's likely to happen anyway. (Unless it's thought to be shit, that is)

But it's not going on my list of reasons to get a WiiU.

Buying a Ubisoft launch title for any console is the path to disappointment.

Step forward Red Steel.

Yeah Red Steel was bollocks. But to be fair it was a Wii game.

Different devs anyway.

Everything they put out at DS or 3DS launch.

They even put out a dodgy rushed port of Rayman 2 twice.

Ghost Recon Shadow Wars was great. 3DS launch title. I find it slightly worrying that folk possessing vidyergame knowledge such as yourselves are poo-pooing games based on publisher rather than developer.

Besides, ZombiU looks pretty good. I don't remember Red Steel looking anything other than "last gen" shite with potentially shite controls prior to the Wii's release.

(Yes, I realise you can say the same things about ZombiU. Very good!)

I remember quite a few people on WoS frothing at the gash about Red Steel prior to its release.

Was that the FPS with destructible walls and things?

No, that's Red Faction you're thinking of.

Was that the famous American firefighter?

No, that's Red Adair you're thinking of.

Red Adair? Is that the fashion designer and manufacturer, started in London in 1982 by Wayne Hemingway and his wife Gerardine Hemingway. They design products such as shoes, spectacles, bags and watches?

I thought he was a Fraggle.

No, he danced with Ginger Rogers.

Shadow Wars sort of doesn't count because it was a game long in development, originally for the DS, which got ported over to the 3DS instead. Any game that they have made specifically for console launches has been shite.

Edit: And someone needs to ask the question of why there is only ever three zombies on screen at once in all the footage of ZombiU so far.

And Dusty Bin.

I haven't seen any proper footage yet. I'll check it out on this YouTube app that's on my phone.

That was awesome.








...having a dedicated YouTube app.

The ZombiU footage in the nursery was pretty cool an' all. Apart from that guy telling you what to do by radio. Just fucking leave us to wander about games developers without your incessant bullshit.

Dedicated apps are overrated. Just ask Windows Phone users.

No.

Sure. And I'll canvas the Betamax users too, yeah?

*quietly sobs into his cereal*

I was. That's back when I believed what Nintendo said about the controller.

9/10 on Ergplonks.

And 6.3 on IGN (who often i think 'overrate' stuff) http://uk.ign.com/articles/2012/11/18/zombiu-review

I'd just call them utterly incompetent and I don't even consider anything they say about anything good or bad. It's a site for kids, isn't it? I always assumed it was, anyway.

Just generally I mean. I'm not arsed if ZombiU turns out to be good or bad, particularly. I just don't pay any attention to IGN.

Looks decidedly marmitey. If I had a wiiU I'd take a punt on this, if only because I find more risky games to be generally more interesting than something playing safe.

So I rather hope it does well.

I hope everything Nintendo create or that is created for Nintendo in any shape or form is immediately napalmed and then extinguished with dog shit.

Has anyone actually played this? I'm in the "a bit bored" camp.

And what's wrong with this picture (besides the fact it's bound to come out the wrong way up or something)?

What's that black border crap running around the edge of the screen for no reason whatsoever?

I thought it might be to demonstrate the limited view when you've got the torch on but here I am outside with the torch off. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Plus, the wiiU touchscreen does not like to be fingered at all. Without the fucking stylus it's a pain in the arse shuffling items around and I'll be damned in a game where paying attention counts that I'll get the fucking stylus out everything I open up the fucking menu screen. Fucks sake.

Nothing breaks your immersion like a door not being able to open because the game has yet to load up what's behind it so it smacks a LOADING on the screen while you sit and wait for it to magically spring open.

I played the demo. I came t the conclusion that if this was your kind of thing, you'd probably like it quite a lot.
But it wasn't my kind of thing.

I loved it.

This is some tedious shit at times and reasonably challenging at others. But mainly ropey bollocks. Here's 3 reasons why:

1) The only melee weapon in a game where the majority of your fighting will be melee (until just over half way through when you suddenly accumulate a shit ton of weapons) is handled by one cricket bat that you start off with. And that's it. It's cricket bat for at least 6/7 hours. A cricket bat with one move: club over head. The move is slow and I can understand why they made it like that (makes combat slower and harder, duh) but the amount of hits some zombies take is taking the piss. A single police zombi can take up to 8 tedious slow hits to take their head off and stop them shuffling towards you. That's A LOT of boring, slow, tedious button presses. Plus, although the game says to hold down the button for a stronger hit this is a lie. There's no difference at all. But worse still once you start holding down the button your character will swing that sodding bat after two seconds even if you are still holding the button. Bad, bad input/design thingy. Most zombies are dispatched with a final move where you smash their heads apart and this requires you to hold down the shoulder button on its own. So? Well to actually swing the bat you have to "aim" with the left shoulder button to swing. All weapons will do a "push" move if you just press the shoulder button on its own. (Oh and pressing the right stick in will do the same so I've no idea why it's mapped in this way. Pick a button press and fucking stick with it). So anyway its counter intuitive to release the left shoulder button to do the final finishing move and then hold down the right shoulder button which is mapped to a completely different move altogether. Jesus. That's not terribly well explained is it? Anyway, it's shit.

2) The worse but for me are the reused assets. Every shortcut is accessed by a drain. These drains are accessed by a turny staircase. The same staircase, the same lockers in the same places, same rubbish, same everything despite being in a completely different area of the map. Very poor. Some areas are connected by identical sewer routes or the same subway route. The. Same. Despite being miles apart from each other. Lazy, lazy developers. I'm sure it wouldn't be too hard to alter the geometry of some of these areas at too great cost.

3) Loading. The load times aren't long but they ain't quick neither. Then you appear in, say, the same turny staircase and run to the top and open the door, what happens? Every. Single. Time. It. Says. Loading.... It loads the corridor but seemingly doesn't load in the level until you press open door. You'd have every right to expect whilst you're navigating the same turny corridor/sewer that this samey walk was for THE SOLE PURPOSE of masking the WiiU loading in the next area (like what Dark Souls does so well)... but no. It can't be arsed to load them up even if there is only one way out (eg every time except in one area). It's so bad that a few doors have cracks that allow you to look through them and see the white space where the level should be. Then as the level finally loads up the world pops into view in the crack and a second later the door opens up and you can finally get going. Piss. Poor. Does the PS4 version do this anyone know who's played it?

*removes from wishlist*

I was on the fence about this before from various reviews but I trust your opinions and that sounds bollocks.

Finished in 9 hours 59 minutes.

It turned out alright in the end but a bit of a chore to cut through. If it was a mixture of chores and being awesome, id say it was Chorwesome. It wasn't. It was worse than that. A sloppy mess of a game with some good ideas terribly executed.

Hey, I never did try and unlock a door as a hoard of zombies came staggering on me; me nervously fumbling with the WiiU remote with one eye over my shoulder looking at the TV at the approaching undead. Wasn't that demo'ed at some point? I think I missed something or they just weren't able to recreate that scenario.

Anyway, I've an idea for the sequel on WiiU: ZombiTUUO.

ZombiTuuO.

Y'know, with two U's making a W? It's clever, right? Anyway, it'll never be made because the WiiU is about dead. Tch.

ZombiU: 4/10.

No, hang on, 5/10 for the brilliant end sequence where you get one last life and if you fuck it up - that's it. That was good that. I died.

No, I'm deducting a point for scanning rooms like Metroid Prime. Tedious shit. If you want players to search your rooms for items then make the rooms have areas that look like they need searching - shove a desk here, a cabinet there; you don't want an object searching leave the cabinet open, or the desk ransacked. There's no need to prop up your lousy game with tedious shit like holding the controller up to scan areas.

And another point for making me tap the screen to remove barracades. Why am I tapping the screen (anywhere mind, just pound away) to remove nails? And how to I barracades a door? That's right, you press A and nails and boards appear. I think you've got this the wrong way round Ubicrap.

And another point deducted for artificially making the ending longr. You have to get back to the safe house from Buckingham Palace but what's this - EVERY DOOR AND EVERY SHORTCUT HAS BEEN CLOSED BY, by, erm, who? Zombies? Presumably. There's no other big baddie in the game. No bad government trying to stop you rummaging around. It just closes the doors and routes off to make you go an artificially lengthy route through some of the areas. Come on fuckers, be more coherent, come up with an excuse for this last journey. Anything. Something stupid. Whatever. MAKE SOMETHING UP. If doors suddenly have the bars replaced then why and how did they get there? It's not hard. Come up with some people who are meanies. That gang I fought earlier could have done it.

In retrospect, fuck this game: 2/10. It's a load of old bollocks.

That is a damning review, there!

Who could have possibly predicted that.