Last year, an interesting Wii U exclusive was debuted by Ubisoft: Killer Freaks from Outer Space. This game was supposed to be about killing freaks from outer space and using the Wii U GamePad in interesting ways. As Ubisoft Montpelier, famous for games such as Rayman Origins and From Dust worked on the game, they decided to take a very different direction with it. This resulted in the creation of the Wii U launch title ZombiU.
ZombiU is a first person survival horror game. You play as the survivor of a plague that has hit the city of London. Your whole goal is to to survive by any means necessary. This includes running away from zombies as well as killing them with a variety of weapons. The Wii U GamePad is what is known as your “bug-out bag”. All of your items including food, first aid, tools, and maps are accessible with just a single touch of the GamePad’s screen. The GamePad’s screen can also be used a scanner, radar, and to lock pick and solve various puzzles. ZombiU really looks to take advantage of the Wii U’s GamePad to make it feel like not just a controller, but a life line.
How the game’s single player mode will work is somewhat unknown. In the E3 demo, it seemed as though you played until you died. One bite from a zombie will kill you. When your character becomes infected, you start over with a whole new survivor. When you play as this new character, you will be forced to find your previous character and kill him or her. When you do that, you can get back all of the cool weapons you lost. Additionally, when you die, your zombie crosses over into an online friend’s game as well. Your friends can find your character, kill him/her, and use the weapons you worked so hard to collect.
Aside from single player, there also a really cool multiplayer mode called Survivors vs. Zombies. The original idea for this mode comes from the demo Ubisoft gave of Killer Freaks from Outer Space last year. In this two player mode, one player is playing the game on the TV screen using a Wii U Pro Controller or Classic Controller, while the second player is on the Wii U GamePad. The player on the GamePad is known as the Zombie Master. The Zombie Master has a top down view of the map the other player is playing on. The Zombie Master can summon zombies to any place on the map and spring traps on the second player. The player on the TV screen must survive whatever the Zombie Master throws his or her way.
Overall, I think ZombiU is one of the more interesting Wii U launch titles, mostly because it is an original game. It makes really good use of the Wii U GamePad, and the Survivors vs. Zombies mode sounds like a lot of fun. I’m personally just worried about the single player component. I am someone who dies in video games fairly often. I really don’t want to start over after I die. This would make ZombiU an incredibly frustrating game. From what I have heard, only around 10% of E3 attendees who tried out ZombiU survived through the whole demo. I don’t think the game will set you back too far after you die, but I would like to know for sure. If you think you can survive, check out ZombiU when it launches alongside the Wii U this Fall.
