The Undead Nightmare Review

The Undead Nightmare pack, an expansion for Red Dead Redemption is one of those games that, when played in a busy office, can act as a Weapon of Mass Disruption. For starters, there's the odd spectacle of zombies swarming all over Rockstar San Diego's carefully constructed Western wilderness, disrupting the cut-scenes and generally making a mess of things. Then there's the utter racket made by the undead hoards - the wails and howls, boxers-browning shrieks that attract people from the adjacent room. The occasional frustrated yell adds to the disturbance, but that's nothing compared to the excitement that greets the arrival of a rare mythical creature. "WHAT THE ***K IS THAT?! Is it... wait... no! Can I ride it? I can ride it! And it's on fire!"

Thankfully for the rest of the staff here, I've now finished my battle against the plague-ridden denizens of New Austin. The fight took a surprisingly long time to finish, however - far longer than what you might expect from an 800 MS point / £7.99 piece of DLC. Undead Nightmare gives you an awful lot for your money: a new single player campaign that will take five to six hours to wrap up, a quartet of fresh weapons, and a long list of side quests and challenges to complete. After you're done with all this, there's new multiplayer material to get to grips with: the territory-snatching Land Grab match-type, and a co-op mode called Undead Overrun - essentially a zombie-based variant of Gears of War 2's Horde, pitching four human survivors against 10 waves of re-animated nasties.

Aside from the volume of additions, the impressive thing about Undead Nightmare is its sheer thoroughness. Rather than going for the easy money, and perhaps just lobbing a few new enemies into the existing framework, Rockstar has opted to completely overhaul the Red Dead experience in fine detail. So alongside the new quests, foes and weapons - the kind of thing you expect from a typical expansion pack - the developers have changed the whole appearance of their world, redressing the land in gloomy hues. There's a revamped soundtrack too, including a few licensed psychobilly tunes and even new cheeky comments for Marston himself as he loots the bodies of his rotten opposition.

This expansion is well worth it's reasonable price tag, and if you enjoyed Red Dead, and love zombies, which of course everyone does, then you're sure to enjoy this well developed expansion which brings you back to the rogue with a heart, to kill those whose hearts no longer beat.

Written by Tj Scrivener