May 2014 *
In 1986, Ubisoft released their first video game, simply titled Zombi, which was also the European title for George Romero's Dawn of the Dead. The game doesn't exactly follow the movie's plot, because remember, this was 1986, before an actual plot was a priority in video games, but a lot of the same things happen. Four survivors of a zombie apocalypse land on the roof of a zombie-filled mall, where they proceed to do things like steal guns from a gun store, block the mall entrances with trucks, and place the bodies of the zombies inside a walk-in freezer.
The thing is though, this isn't really Dawn of the Dead at all and is really more of a giant rip off. The four characters might somewhat resemble the four main characters in Dawn of the Dead, especially if you're playing the original black and white version of the game, but their names aren't even close to the names of the characters in the movie, instead named after the people who originally developed the game. Alexandre, Sylvie, Yannick, and Patrick... yeah, that's not really even close, is it?
The inside of the mall looks nothing like the mall in Dawn of the Dead either. Now you could just say they couldn't get the rights for any of that, but to that, I would say, it's a giant rip off! Seriously, I'm surprised Romero hasn't sued Ubisoft over this game. The only reasons I can think of that he hasn't are: the plot's different enough, as they're at the mall just looking for gasoline for their helicopter, he doesn't think the game is a big enough deal to bother suing over, or he's simply never even heard about it. The third option wouldn't surprise me.
So now that we've established what a rip off of Dawn of the Dead this game is, let's talk a little about the game itself. You can control all four characters by simply clicking on the icon of the one you want to control. There's even parts where you'll need to constantly switch between two of them to get a task accomplished and to me, considering when the game came out, that's a pretty advanced idea.
The game focuses heavily on point-and-clicking and puzzle solving, though you can fight the zombies too with guns and melee weapons. The guns are the better choice, of course, since it's possible to never have to actually fight a zombie if you can always put them down with a head shot first. If you fuck up the head shot, the zombie will start clawing and growling at you, draining your health, until you do manage to put it down.
You actually have three status bars per character, but I really don't know what they stand for exactly: F, H, and S. Food, health, and stamina? I say food, because you can actually click on food in a couple stores in the game to refill your status bars some. I'm probably way off on what they really stand for though.
Other than losing all of your health, you can also die instantly in a few ways. One is when you're outside moving the trucks in front of the entrances. If you walk past the edge of the mall, you're dead. That might sound like a simple and easy rule to follow, but on a couple sides of the mall, there's no way to know where the edge is other than just figuring it out through trial and error, and it's not exactly easy to tell on the other sides either. You can continue the game with the other characters if you lose one, but before a certain point, I think it'd be impossible to complete the game with any less than two still alive.
One thing I've not been able to figure out in the game is this store with beds. Your characters can lay down in them, but if they do, you might as well just consider them to be dead. They might get up again eventually, but by the time they do, you'll probably have grown bored and quit the game anyway. This might have something to do with your stats, maybe the S, but I've never waited around long enough to find out.
I think my biggest complaint about this game is triggering the final part of the game. If you've seen Dawn of the Dead, you can probably guess what that means: bikers
Do I recommend this game? Overall, it's really not a bad game. If you're big fan of Dawn of the Dead, I say definitely check it out. Otherwise, I still say check it out if you're curious and bored, but you're not exactly missing anything ground breaking either if you skip it. There's a couple gameplay videos on YouTube too anyway. I used an Amiga emulator and rom myself to play it, which was one of the colorized ported versions from 1990.
Thanks for reading. Until next time.
In 1986, Ubisoft released their first video game, simply titled Zombi, which was also the European title for George Romero's Dawn of the Dead. The game doesn't exactly follow the movie's plot, because remember, this was 1986, before an actual plot was a priority in video games, but a lot of the same things happen. Four survivors of a zombie apocalypse land on the roof of a zombie-filled mall, where they proceed to do things like steal guns from a gun store, block the mall entrances with trucks, and place the bodies of the zombies inside a walk-in freezer.The thing is though, this isn't really Dawn of the Dead at all and is really more of a giant rip off. The four characters might somewhat resemble the four main characters in Dawn of the Dead, especially if you're playing the original black and white version of the game, but their names aren't even close to the names of the characters in the movie, instead named after the people who originally developed the game. Alexandre, Sylvie, Yannick, and Patrick... yeah, that's not really even close, is it?
The inside of the mall looks nothing like the mall in Dawn of the Dead either. Now you could just say they couldn't get the rights for any of that, but to that, I would say, it's a giant rip off! Seriously, I'm surprised Romero hasn't sued Ubisoft over this game. The only reasons I can think of that he hasn't are: the plot's different enough, as they're at the mall just looking for gasoline for their helicopter, he doesn't think the game is a big enough deal to bother suing over, or he's simply never even heard about it. The third option wouldn't surprise me. So now that we've established what a rip off of Dawn of the Dead this game is, let's talk a little about the game itself. You can control all four characters by simply clicking on the icon of the one you want to control. There's even parts where you'll need to constantly switch between two of them to get a task accomplished and to me, considering when the game came out, that's a pretty advanced idea. The game focuses heavily on point-and-clicking and puzzle solving, though you can fight the zombies too with guns and melee weapons. The guns are the better choice, of course, since it's possible to never have to actually fight a zombie if you can always put them down with a head shot first. If you fuck up the head shot, the zombie will start clawing and growling at you, draining your health, until you do manage to put it down. You actually have three status bars per character, but I really don't know what they stand for exactly: F, H, and S. Food, health, and stamina? I say food, because you can actually click on food in a couple stores in the game to refill your status bars some. I'm probably way off on what they really stand for though. Other than losing all of your health, you can also die instantly in a few ways. One is when you're outside moving the trucks in front of the entrances. If you walk past the edge of the mall, you're dead. That might sound like a simple and easy rule to follow, but on a couple sides of the mall, there's no way to know where the edge is other than just figuring it out through trial and error, and it's not exactly easy to tell on the other sides either. You can continue the game with the other characters if you lose one, but before a certain point, I think it'd be impossible to complete the game with any less than two still alive. One thing I've not been able to figure out in the game is this store with beds. Your characters can lay down in them, but if they do, you might as well just consider them to be dead. They might get up again eventually, but by the time they do, you'll probably have grown bored and quit the game anyway. This might have something to do with your stats, maybe the S, but I've never waited around long enough to find out. I think my biggest complaint about this game is triggering the final part of the game. If you've seen Dawn of the Dead, you can probably guess what that means: Do I recommend this game? Overall, it's really not a bad game. If you're big fan of Dawn of the Dead, I say definitely check it out. Otherwise, I still say check it out if you're curious and bored, but you're not exactly missing anything ground breaking either if you skip it. There's a couple gameplay videos on YouTube too anyway. I used an Amiga emulator and rom myself to play it, which was one of the colorized ported versions from 1990.
Thanks for reading. Until next time.
