Land of the Dead : Road to Fiddler's Green

[DeeBye]

I don't normally like FPS games, but I can't resist the zombie genre. I liked the movie, so I picked up the Land of the Dead : Road to Fiddler's Green game.

A horrific plague breaks out and mobs of zombies are roaming throughout the
tri-state area, killing people at random. You play Jack, a simple farmer who
must rise beyond fear, and battle your way through hordes of terrifying
undead who are bent on spreading the zombie plague. You encounter a
mysterious man named Mr. Kaufman who has established Fiddler's Green, a
fortified city, which holds the last of the living. He has offered you a
special job, with an exceptional reward. An offer too good to turn down, but
will you live long enough to reap the rewards?

I have only put about 3 hours into this game, but that's a lot longer than I put into most FPS games. The atmosphere is pretty good, and the graphics are really nice considering my antiquated system. Even with a Radeon 9200SE 128 MB video card, I get about 70 frames per second at 1024 x 768 with maxed visual goodies.

Some screenshots. Click to make big. My video card doesn't handle anti-aliasing that well so ignore the jaggies :(

The texture detail on the zombies is outstanding. They are really gross. It's a lot of fun to shoot the zombie's legs off and watch them crawl towards you.


The onscreen stuff is very simplistic. You have a paperdoll cutout of yourself showing damage, and an indicator of ammunition.


Fat zombie alert! The lighting effects in this game are very cool.


Jack just dropped a zombie with his M-16, and is ready to drop another.


I didn't think to take any screenshots in the city parts of the game, which is a pity. The city portions are a lot of fun and look great.

The story is told through a series of video cutscenes, as well as radio updates whenever Jack can find a working radio. The action takes a backseat to atmosphere. You'll find yourself creeping along with no enemies in sight for long stretches, only to have the crap scared out of you when one comes at you out of nowhere. This game reminds me a lot of the Resident Evil series.

The weapons are generic, but that's okay. I can't expect lowly farmer Jack to come across a BFG-9000 while shucking corn and milking cows. The melee weapons are especially fun.

You can download a demo version of this game here (130MB).

[NiteFox]

Might I add a possibly better demo link?

Here.

Gonna try this out. If there's one thing I enjoy more than putting a bullet in a zombie's head, it's putting bullets into many zombies heads.

Edit: Okay, just got around to playing it for a bit. I'm less than impressed with what I saw, but there is a sizable nugget of a good game here. Nice locales, nice zombies, and nice ways to dispatch them (One favourite method I quickly discovered was to blast off a leg and an arm and then club them while they thrashed around on the floor). One mistake, and you are screwed beyond all hope, and the zombies seem to be able to take a significant amount of headshots before dying.

They've ruined the best zombie-killing weapon. The shotgun is pathetic, weak, takes about four shells of close-range headshots to kill a zombie, and the reload always chambers four rounds even if you're only reloading one shell. Annoying. Every one knows that in close-quarters zom vs. shotgun situations the shotgun wins every time. You aim, you fire, and their heads evaporate in a cloud of blood and buckshot: Sublime.

Not in this game though.

But anyway, I digress. Love the atmosphere, love the prospect of taking on zombies with an assortment of weapons. Love just beating wriggling body bags with a shovel 'til they stop moving. I hope someone mods this game to replace the baseball bat with cricket bat though.

Oh, and for more UT-engine zombie killing, try Killing Floor.

[Fragbait]

Love just beating wriggling body bags with a shovel 'til they stop moving.
[right][snapback]94757[/snapback][/right]

Hey, that one shouldn't be quoted out of context. :whistling:

Greetings, Fragbait

[Wyrm]

Hey, that one shouldn't be quoted out of context.  :whistling:

Greetings, Fragbait
[right][snapback]94771[/snapback][/right]

You aim, you fire, and their heads evaporate in a cloud of blood and buckshot: Sublime.[right][snapback]94757[/snapback][/right]

Neither should that one.

[DeeBye]

Edit: Okay, just got around to playing it for a bit.  I'm less than impressed with what I saw, but there is a sizable nugget of a good game here.  Nice locales, nice zombies, and nice ways to dispatch them (One favourite method I quickly discovered was to blast off a leg and an arm and then club them while they thrashed around on the floor).  One mistake, and you are screwed beyond all hope, and the zombies seem to be able to take a significant amount of headshots before dying.

They've ruined the best zombie-killing weapon.  The shotgun is pathetic, weak, takes about four shells of close-range headshots to kill a zombie, and the reload always chambers four rounds even if you're only reloading one shell.  Annoying.  Every one knows that in close-quarters zom vs. shotgun situations the shotgun wins every time.  You aim, you fire, and their heads evaporate in a cloud of blood and their heads evaporate in a cloud of blood and buckshot: Sublime.
[right][snapback]94757[/snapback][/right]

Yeah, I am a bit disappointed in the weapon power too. All of them seem to have their problems.

The shotgun should be better in close range, but it misses. It's far better when facing a pack at medium range. You can dispatch 3 or 4 zombies in a bloody mess of flying limbs with a couple of shots. When they get close, the shotgun sucks. I think it's a collision detection problem.

The Glock is a nice fast fire weapon, but that's it's weakness. It takes 3-5 headshots to kill anything so you chew through your ammo too quickly. With a full compliment of ammo, it's only useful for about 5 minutes before you have to find more.

The .22 rifle works well enough, but again it takes too many headshots to kill anything. When you factor in the awful reloading time and the fact that it only holds 4 bullets, you can really only use it when facing 1 or 2 zombies at range. If anything gets close you're screwed.

The revolver is probably my most used weapon. 1 or 2 headshots at medium to close range does the job, and reloads fairly quickly.

The sniper rifle is a lot of fun, and there is a nice mission based around it. It's not that great for anything beyond medium range though. It's tricky to aim, and if anything gets in close it's worthless.

The melee weapons for the most part are fairly useless. They have horribly long swing times, and multiple strikes are needed to kill anything. Unless you are absolutely out of ammo for every weapon, don't bother. They are fun though. Hitting a zombie in the head with a hammer is satisfying.

The molotov cocktails and grenades are pretty crappy. I've seen grenades go off in the very center of a bunched zombie pack and only killed about half of them. This shouldn't happen. Again, I think it's bad collision detection.

The M-16 is by far the best weapon. 1 or 2 headshots at close to medium range kills as effectively as the revolver, and short bursts at long range works too. It eats through ammo very quickly at long range, so it probably best to use the .22 or the sniper rifle in these situations. You can also carry a lot of ammo for the M-16, which is a huge plus. Among all of the weapons, the M-16 is clearly the winner.

So, for anything in close I like the revolver. For anything at medium range I like the M-16 or the shotgun. For anything at long range I like either the sniper rifle or .22.

I think that they intentionally underpowered the weapons to balance the fact that there aren't hordes of zombies at every turn. To maintain atmosphere, every zombie jumping out at you is an "OH SHI...!!!" moment. I can understand this, but surely there is a better workaround. Oh well.

Land of the Dead is not the best zombie game ever made, but it's worth a playthrough if you like the genre. I'm hoping some user-made mods pop up in the near future.

[NiteFox]

Well, truth be told I've been looking for this game today. "Released in October" the post-demo splash screen promises, but only accurate for across the pond it seems. I'll try my friendly local importer today, their PC games catalogue is larger than the typical high street store's. Still, I should expect to pay handsomely for any PC game I buy there, they tend to mark up.

I'm a sucker for zombie games. Played through the demo three times last night figuring out the best way to kill the zoms. With the shotgun I found that by aiming at the neck rather than the head would result in a sweet headshot.