The Haunted Hoard: Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare (PS3)

Red Dead Redemption seemed like a game designed to provide you every bit of the wild west cowboy fantasy you could ask for. It wouldn’t be too outlandish then to expect some downloadable content for the game to try and flesh out any spots it missed, but Rockstar San Diego went in an interesting direction with their addition to the open world action game. Rather than playing more into tropes and iconography of the wild west, it brought in a more modern idea to see how it could shake up the setting, Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare a retooling of the game to make it about a zombie outbreak occurring in the very lands you once you patrolled as John Marston in the regular game’s campaign. In fact, since the game utilized the same large setting for its new horror leaning adventure, Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare would release not only as DLC, but as a standalone game so you can play it even if you don’t own the original or haven’t even played Red Dead Redemption at all. However, you’d be having a weaker experience by skipping ahead to the zombie killing, as much of this Undead Nightmare’s appeal is seeing the people and places you’ve come to know thrown into the chaos of an undead invasion.

 

Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare kicks off after most of the events of the original game, John Marston settling in with his family on his ranch one night when they come face to face with a member of the walking dead. The zombie manages to spread its infection to John’s wife and son, John restraining his now feral family and setting off to the familiar towns nearby in search of an answer on what caused people to suddenly start eating each other’s flesh and what John can do to reverse that process. It seems, while John is willing to believe there’s hope for his family, he’s not quite as patient with the rest of the world, the gun-slinging cowboy inevitably going to blast his way through plenty of zombie hordes on his quest for answers, even having to take down people he recognizes along the way. In fact, one of the most entertaining parts of Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare is checking in with the characters you met in the original story and seeing how the undead invasion has shaken up their lives. Some people meet a tragic end, others are taking things into their own hands and clearing out the dead just like you, but then there are more curious and fun situations like the delightful snake oil salesman Nigel West Dickens trying to find an angle during this situation while people have started to suspect his bogus tonics are the source of the undead plague. It can be a bit of a surprise to see who meets their untimely end in this DLC, the story itself not working too hard on any big new beats as it feels like the intent is very much seeing the world you know corrupted rather than adding to it or building up interesting new personalities or situations.

Picking up quests from familiar faces will be what guides you through Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare, but the bulk of what you’ll be doing is facing the walking dead with an arsenal befitting of a cowboy. At first, when there is fresh confusion around the outbreak, you’ll learn that a good deal of the towns spread out across the desert and the plains have become overrun, many places having to shut down their shops and other amusements as they fight for survival. This means your means of getting weapons and ammunition for your guns has become limited, zombies sometimes having some on their body but hardly enough to keep you stocked up, especially when the undead come in swarms and different forms. Freshly turned zombies can shamble about but also might find a burst of speed from time to time, but there are also undead that scurry on all fours to reach you faster, ones that spit deadly bile, and even fat charging zombies so sometimes a crowd of them is deadlier than it first appears.

 

However, if you take the time to assist the towns around Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare’s world, you’ll get a new gun or tool for your trouble each time as well as chests with ammo refills. When the game starts and you are limited to things like a plain pistol and shotgun, you can feel the pressure of the situation, but as you help more places purge the undead, you’ll have so many guns to shuffle between that it’s more about if you have the ammo for the ones you prefer rather than really running dry in a heated moment. The zombies are so abundant that the few variations that exist also start to lose a bit of their luster as you’re overexposed to the undead in general, but you do start to get some more fun tools for dealing with zombies as the game goes on. Toss some undead bait and then follow with a stick of dynamite to clear a horde quickly, or whip out the blunderbuss to turn whatever you shoot into a cloud of red mist. Most important of all though, normally, aiming in Red Dead Redemption can be a bit slow, especially considering that the undead here only really go down if you either fill them with a lot of lead or land one good headshot. However, Dead Eye is made even more useful here than in the main game to compensate. Dead Eye refers to a slow motion effect you can activate for a bit to line up a shot, and in Undead Nightmare, you can get Dead Eye energy refilled so quick you can chain it together repeatedly to clear away zombies with frequent pinpoint headshots. It feels like its been upgraded specifically so the zombies can be more fearsome, coming in great swarms or rushing you easier to deal with thanks to the generosity, but if you are working on recharging Dead Eye or let yourself get surrounded, you can still end up in quite a bit of danger despite having such a powerful trump card on hand at almost all times.

Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare does lean a lot more towards a humorous look at how the west might be worsened by an undead invasion, there being times John Marston just shrugs and watches someone get eaten by zombies because they brought it on themselves or it serves as a punchline to a dark joke. The music, while sometimes moody, also can be more indulgent in clearly playing up the spookiness to contrast the game’s previous leaning towards grounded reality. Gags with undead are common, like an undead prostitute leading an undead john around as they blindly repeat their actions from life, but where some of this willingness to get more ridiculous gets even more interesting is the game bringing in some other otherworldly elements. Mythical creatures can now roam the land, some meant to be killed, while others like the four horses of the apocalypse can actually be tamed and turned into mounts with special features. Even though a horse of Famine or War isn’t going to have an outlandish bonus, the perks often more things like unlimited stamina, managing to find one and break it adds a little something to an otherwise rather empty open world.

 

Your quests will take you all about the map and there are optional tasks like finding missing people or following treasure maps, but there’s not too much special to find out in the world and even the few random events out on the road that can occur repeat themselves fairly quickly. It feels like for the most part you’re supposed to stick to the path, dropping by cities to free them and then heading to where the map markers say someone is waiting with a new job. Rarely do things like collecting animal skins or plants matter, but it is possible the game figured you got your fill of the area in the main adventure and tried to keep its focus on more structured moments. At the same time, while the game can dress up zombie shooting by having you do it on board a train or have you clearing graveyards as the dead rise out of the ground, the simplicity of your opposition means the action doesn’t get too intense or unique. The same thrills can fill the space of this game’s story, but it is built more like an expansion rather than feeling like it could truly be standalone despite receiving such a release.

THE VERDICT: Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare doesn’t have quite the depth or variety needed to justify its standalone release, but if viewed as a post-script to your original wild west adventure with John Marston, it does provide a fun twist to a familiar world that makes the revisit worthwhile. There’s definitely some satisfaction to be found in popping zombie heads with Dead Eye or using the new weapons designed to help clear the zombie hordes, and check-ins with familiar faces build on their personalities well or leave you guessing if they will survive the outbreak. Town clearing, mythical creature hunting, and quests can structure the action enough to make this horror follow-up to Red Dead Redemption worth the look, although don’t expect too much off the beaten path in this game dedicated mostly to putting lead in the undead.

 

And so, I give Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare for PlayStation 3…

A GOOD rating. The Game Hoard doesn’t normally cover DLC, although since Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare received a release as a standalone experience that doesn’t require or even include the original game, it did feel eligible for a look. However, while some standalone DLCs can feel like full games on their own, it’s hard to completely divorce Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare from the game it is built out of. It is enjoyable when you’re familiar with what you are getting into and that seems to be the biggest part of its appeal. Shooting your way through the undead tide does have its own visceral thrills and moments of tension, but it’s a lot more interesting when you drop by a place you recognize and can see how it’s been adapted to this undead plague. Seeing who survives or has a unique reaction to the situation makes the quests, be they important ones or optional, more interesting than their sometimes straightforward tasks of killing yet more zombies. Saving towns at least has its own appeal since so many undead end up crammed in one place, even if the occasional need to return to help them repel a repeat invasion isn’t exactly an appealing feature. Still, the fact you also get your increasingly powerful arsenal by clearing out the settlements does make them challenging at times but always rewarding, although the town rescues are also unfortunately where the game gets most of its use out of its open world. The powerful mythical steeds and a fast travel system when you find a safe bed do mean you don’t have to have a lot of downtime, but Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare does feel in need of more activities and more ways to reframe the undead menace so it’s not mostly just building on what already worked before.

 

Some of the high praise Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare receives likely comes from its price when its treated purely as DLC since it is an expansion that builds off the entire world of Red Dead Redemption, many companies charging more for far less. Still, while it may not be a true 10/10 masterpiece, Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare is a fun recontextualization of the previously more grounded cowboy fantasy, the shooting system working well for your new task of clearing out scores of zombies and the world you got to know in the original adventure richer because you can now see how it handles a supernatural disaster. While a bad idea to buy alone, Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare provides a unique reason to return to the game, it playing differently in interesting ways but not discarding elements that would have made you like Red Dead Redemption enough to seek out more.