Topic: Super Zombi U, I'm freely warming up to it

[ShyGuy]

By the way, the crossbow is my favorite weapon. It comes with a scope and you can recover your arrow after you hit a zombi in the head with it. Only downside is the aim is a little odd as you hold up the Wii U pad to aim. It makes it hard to get the right angle on a shot that is below you.

[MrPhishfood]

By the way, the crossbow is my favorite weapon. It comes with a scope and you can recover your arrow after you hit a zombi in the head with it. Only downside is the aim is a little odd as you hold up the Wii U pad to aim. It makes it hard to get the right angle on a shot that is below you.

I find it funny because that's how it would be in real life.

[Adrock]

Died 8 times in the arena. Jawesome.

[leahsdad]

Even if I want this game...I could never play it.  Games this intense freak me out, and it is basically impossible for me to play.  Resident Evil 4...I tried to play the game once...and the first level, freaked me out so much, I couldn't play it again.

Okay, so I have to admit, I'm about 2 hours into this game, and I might have to give up.

This game is too scary.  No, screw that.  This game is ABSOLUTELY TERRIFYING.

I've played all the RE games, Fatal Frames 2 and 3, the better Silent Hills, Dead Space 1 and 2, Alone in the Dark, 7th Guest, Left4Dead 1/2.  You name a horror game, I've played it.   I can watch Suspiria in the dark, alone.   I will walk away from torture films like Hostel not because they disgust me, but because they are boring. 

The issue with a lot of horror games is that they try to ape horror films.  I'm not feeling that at all here.  This game feels like a completely immersive, well-polished, well designed simulation of what it actually must be like during the zombie apocalypse.  I mean, outside of the loading screens, I haven't heard any music.  At all.  And the loading screen music seems to be written to want to induce a heart attack.  You feel week, you never feel safe at all, and the whole new survivor / extra life mechanic is incredibly unsettling, because while it isn't really final, it "feels" final because you actually have to go and find your undead corpse.   

Last night, I lost 3 survivors trying to fend off an attack on my safehouse.  My friggin safehouse!  Where I'm supposed to feel safe!  My last survivor died right outside the room where you "respawn."  I'm afraid to go back and "respawn" again because I'm worried that zombies will be right there, in the friggin room!

So last night, I just turned it off, jumped back to the home menu, I didn't give a crap whether it saved properly or not.  And now it's morning, and I'm slowly working up the nerve to try again tonight.  But I don't know.  I am  honestly terrified constantly while I'm playing the game, and that is not a fun emotional state to be in during your rest and recreation time.

[EasyCure]

i feel like your post would of sold me on the game if I hadn't already bought it.

[Stogi]

^this

[ShyGuy]

I let a cousin try it and he gave up after about twenty minutes because it was too scary.

The tension in this game is unbelievable!

[leahsdad]

i feel like your post would of sold me on the game if I hadn't already bought it.

Yeah, and I had read reviews about how the game was very difficult, each zombie encounter was significant, your character is more "realistically" powerless, etc...

Honestly, this made me want the game more, so I decidedly I didn't want to wait until it went on sale, as all 3rd party launch games tend to do, so I paid full price and just downloaded it.

I kind of regret doing that now.   

The game succeeds at everything it sets out to do.  It fulfills every expectation I had of the game.  Only, like a monkey's paw, it does it too well.  In a sick and twisted way.  I wanted a game that would really scare me.  It does, in such an unsettling way.   I am completely sucked in to the game, in how everything just seems real.   I really feel like that zombie is lurching towards me, and when I see one, just one, pure terror seizes my insides.

And that is the problem.   I'm definitely incredibly scared, I'm just not sure if I'm having fun.  I'm not relaxing, that's for sure.

If anything, instead of selling and promoting the game, I really want to warn people:  this is really, really scary.  It is NOTHING like any horror game you've ever played.  It is not like L4D, or Dead Island, or COD Zombie mode.  There is nothing cinematic or exhilerating about this game--  it is lonely, it is frightening, and I can't imagine anyone playing this game for more than an hour at a time, especially the way that I play, with all the lights off and in the dead of night--- this is the way I always play games, because I've got a wife and kids who are sleeping.

I let a cousin try it and he gave up after about twenty minutes because it was too scary.

The tension in this game is unbelievable!

I think maybe more people should try it out this way.   If I had gotten to play a demo, maybe, one that went from the beginning of the game to....the end of the supermarket level, maybe (literally, the 2nd mission of the game), I might have reconsidered buying this game. 

[Stogi]

It's got to be pretty rewarding once you do beat the game right?

[EasyCure]

Has anyone here beat it yet? I haven't played it since getting stuck trying to get to Buckingham Palace because Arkham City is so god damn addictive. I've played it more than Zombi U and Nintendo Land (both my day 1 purchases) as well as NSMBWU.

It might also be that I like playing the game under the influence and I haven't had the chance to be.. uh.. influenced, in a while. Makes the game that much more tense but in a veerrry relaxing way . Too bad I can't recommend this to leahsdad.

Hey maybe you just shouldn't play it the way you're playing it. Maybe you should try to get some friends over, or at least your wife, to watch you play, maybe take turns, and treat it like a horror-movie night in. Invite BnM, Stogi and Nickmitch over to yell at you not to go in there :p (sorry guys, I had to)

[Caliban]

I don't think this game is scary, but it does keep me on my toes.

[MrPhishfood]

I've beaten it 3 times. First time in normal mode, died 7 times, then in survivor mode (4 attempts), then normal mode again using 1 life.

Last I checked I was number 3 for best high score in normal mode and somewhere like 12th (probably lower now) on survivor high score.

The first time through the game was tense but on repeated attempts you're already prepared for what the game throws at you. I wish it had something like Left 4 Dead's AI director that randomises things just so you don't get too comfortable.

[ShyGuy]

MrPhishfood seems to be FIST. Pro would have liked you.

[Mannypon]

Damn finals has had me off my game for a week or two now.  Once this weekend hits though, I'll be back in action.  I need to finish this game as the misses picked up Ass Creed 3 for me which I can't wait to play.  It'll be up next on the agenda once I survive this zombie Apocalypse. 

[Oblivion]

I don't understand how it is scary, but the game makes me nervous of the unknown. Games like Amnesia, Slender, Dead Space, Fear, etc are definitely more scary, but the hard difficulty compounds that slight fear.

[leahsdad]

I don't understand how it is scary, but the game makes me nervous of the unknown. Games like Amnesia, Slender, Dead Space, Fear, etc are definitely more scary, but the hard difficulty compounds that slight fear.

I haven't played Amnesia or Slender (though I've always been tempted to pick up Amnesia on Steam), but I played both Dead Spaces and just the first Fear, and I didn't find those scary at all, even any of the parts in Fear where Alma screws with you and there's those weird ghosts shooting out at your from the flames.  Hell, you wanna talk about repetitive combat, let's talk Dead Space.  "Oh, time to shoot off more limbs.  Again."

I think the thing in ZombiU that...if not scares me, then at least makes me very uneasy, is that this game doesn't seem to be following normal game conventions/limitations/design choices.   

For example, I got up the nerve to  start the game again after losing 4 survivors trying to defend the safehouse.  When I started it up, the zombies were right outside the door to the room/hallway that is immediately connected to your actual "safe-room" where your bed and computer is.  They swarmed in and I ran back into my actual safe room, right in front of the computer monitors. 

Now, in normal games that have these kinds of "hub" rooms or "non-combat rooms,"  enemies NEVER enter these rooms.  It's like some kind of invisible wall blocks them.   Like, for example in Dead Space, you will NEVER be attacked by Necromorphs in a room where there is an inventory machine.   You will never be surprised by a Necromorph while using an upgrade machine.  It could be a game design decision or a limitation of the scripting engine, but in any case, they never enter your safe-room.  The room where YOU FRIGGIN SPAWN AFTER YOU DIE.

Well guess what?  Last night, the zombies said "screw you, basic gaming conventions" and CAME INTO MY SAFE ROOM.   Like, right next to my bed!  I barely fought them off, I survived, used all of my 6 measly bullets, had 1/4 health left, but I did it.  The floor between my bed and the computer was littered with corpses.

Oh, and the fact that you have motion sensing radar, but it's mostly inaccurate?  That drives me crazy. 

[Oblivion]

Actually, what you said about Dead Space is wrong. Many times I run into a room that has that stuff in it, and I usually have to kill enemies first, or (like in the first Dead Space) I got butt raped by a Necromorph immiediately after I was done with a workbench. Or in the second one where I get repeatedly attacked in elelvators that are supposed to be safe.


I just don't find it as atmospheric and scary. I didn't call ZombiU repetitive, by the way.

[leahsdad]

Actually, what you said about Dead Space is wrong. Many times I run into a room that has that stuff in it, and I usually have to kill enemies first, or (like in the first Dead Space) I got butt raped by a Necromorph immiediately after I was done with a workbench. Or in the second one where I get repeatedly attacked in elelvators that are supposed to be safe.


I just don't find it as atmospheric and scary. I didn't call ZombiU repetitive, by the way.

Hmm...about Dead Space, I wonder if you played on a harder difficulty than I did...I played on the default.   You're right about rooms that had stuff and inventory machines that had to be cleared out first, but I remembered feeling pretty safe in those rooms after they had been cleared.   Workbenches were sometimes in larger rooms or hallways (I remember one in the first Dead Space with large generators in the middle) where the workbench was in one side of the room, and there were necromorphs at the other end, or up on another level on the other end.  But I don't remember them coming up to me right after I finished with a workbench, or while I was at it.

Oh, and sorry, with the repetitive comment, I don't think anyone in this thread actually called ZombiU (in particular, the cricket bat) repetitive.  I was just throwing that out as a general response to what seems like the main criticism that negative reviews (like on IGN) have of ZombiU.

It seems like maybe when I call ZombiU "scary," it might be a poor choice of words.  It's just that I seem to have this very intense absence of safety when I'm playing the game.   It's definitely not atmospheric or creepy in quite the same way that the Dead Spaces are, with the Unitarian stuff and people going bonkers in that sort of "Event Horizon" kind of way.  In fact, the central kind of horror in Dead Space seems to owe a lot to Event Horizon, more than Alien, in the sort of shock you get from this highly technologically developed and advanced world being torn to pieces by this....unknowable and unquantifiable force.

[Adrock]

I'm at the point of no return so I haven't completed ZombiU yet. I don't think the game is that scary, but it definitely was tense towards the beginning when you were mostly defenseless. A certain variety of zombie towards the middle of the game was kind of scary, I guess.

[ShyGuy]

I didn't know Zombies could come into the safe room.

This is why I always close the doors behind me when I'm moving through the world.

The innaccurate radar adds to the real world tension in my opinion.

[MrPhishfood]

I thought the cricket bat was repetitive. There's 2 easy ways to kill a zombie.

Push it from the front, walk behind it and push it twice from the back and it will fall down and you can finish it off. This works well with riot zombies, after you've pushed them down just keep hitting it until the helmet comes off. You don't have be completely behind the zombie, you can be a little to the side.

Pushing also works with zombies that are playing possum. You see one about to get up, just push it and will fall back down on the floor.

After you get the crossbow just push a zombie then aim with the crossbow and the zombie should remain still long enough to get a headshot in. When aiming the crossbow don't hold up your gamepad just aim like you would a handgun. I think I used the same bolt 17 times until I missed.

[EasyCure]

I fought so damn hard to make sure they didn't come in to my safe house but then the area outside of the sewer leading to Buckingham Palace, just behind that giant machine gun had a safe-zone where you could sleep/save and I ran in to it accidentally but while the zombie horde banged away on the door, they never broke in..

I dunno if its a constant but when I was first defending my safe-house, I noticed that the zombies would break in after exactly 8 bangs on the door. I basically camped in the room leading to the subway station, waited for them to open the door, push/whack/close/wait/repeat

[tendoboy1984]

So this game got poor reviews from people who expected it to play like a run-&-gun FPS? Uh... Isn't ZombiU all about high-tension survival? What were the reviewers thinking?

[NWR_insanolord]

Everyone who writes reviews for a game site is a complete idiot.

[tendoboy1984]

Everyone who writes reviews for a game site is a complete idiot.

Uh...    Would that include you? You do write reviews for a game site...