RDR: Undead Nightmare is a Decent Spin on the Original with a Shitty Patch

I don't think I ever could have anticipated what would happen when I put this bad boy in.

Basically, as soon as you start getting into the core gameplay of Red Dead Redemption:  Undead Nightmare, it's glitches galore!  The first thing I noticed was people spawning with their heads and arms missing.  This wouldn't even be a big deal except that when the game spawns them, they also get spawned as their own faction.  What I mean by this is that during missions (particularly when saving a town) not only will you have to kill the zombies to pass, you will also have to kill the headless civilians.  This becomes difficult as they will often flee from town during the zombie attack.  If they get too far away, eventually they disappear forcing you to fail saving the town.  On top of that, what is particularly interesting is that the civilians without heads but with guns will help you shoot zombies but also shoot at you.  So basically, you have a three faction clusterfuck that isn't supposed to be happening.

After this happens, if you try to save the game, you will only get a black screen that forces you to restart the game, hoping that auto-save didn't set you back too far.

In addition to these main glitches, the game also has many, many, many visual glitches.  Zombies will also appear without heads or arms, people and zombies will occasionally go through walls, my horse's hooves even disappeared (though the horse shoes were still present).

I searched the internet about what was going on here and apparently it was only the latest update of the game that was causing all of these problems.  Turns out, this is actually true which blew my mind.  Never have I seen an update that messes up the game this much.  In fact, though there are updates that have bugs that need to be quickly fixed, none that I know of have ever caused a game to go from fine to unplayable.  I'm not sure exactly what they were trying to fix because when I deleted the patch from my Playstation 3, the game ran fine with no apparent glitches.

The only issue with deleting the patch was with my actual console.  Since I didn't have the most recent update installed for the game, the PS3 felt the need to keep reminding me that there was an update available about every 15-20 minutes while playing the game.  So, I had to disconnect my system from the internet to finish this one out.

Overall, it isn't great.  The gameplay is fun but a little easy since you can basically abuse the "Dead Eye" feature, an ability to slow down time making headshots really easy.  The graphics look pretty good once you delete the patch.  There's a decent variety of weapons that allow you to kill zombies in a multitude of ways including throwing axes and stationary Gatling guns.  The story is pretty basic but there are a few laughs to be had.  Now, despite the horror based lore, the game does occur in the same continuum as the original, chronologically being a prequel (except for the end which occurs after the events of the original).  Other than that, this game doesn't offer much else.  It's open world but a lot of it is filled with empty space or cacti.  It's a decent spin on the original so if you liked that and want to expand a bit on that experience, this will probably be up your alley.

Don't be surprised though at the run length.  When I played it, my run time ran a little short of 7 hours and that included fighting the glitches at the beginning and doing all of the side quests.  However, I didn't save all the towns though because I didn't see the point.  Strategically, only saving a few towns is worth your while for fast-travel purposes.  But yeah, the game length is a little short in an age where even garden variety shooters can reach 20 hours of total gameplay time.

For five bucks?  Yeah I would give this a go.  The latest update for the game hasn't been corrected for about five months now (at least that's what I gathered based on various forums) so, if you expect that patch to be fixed, I think you're sorely mistaken.  However, if you don't install the patch, it's a decent 6-7 hours of gameplay.

To play online, I would've had to install the patch.  I didn't bother.

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