Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler’s Green is a new Xbox and PC game based on the George A. Romero film, Land of the Dead. The plot of the game is simple: a horrific plague breaks out and mobs of zombies are roaming throughout the tri-state area, killing people at random.
The plot of the game is a bit different than the movie, which served to ask some questions (deeply hidden) about humanity and life and all that important stuff.
You play Jack, a typical farmer, who is skilled in the use of a .22 rifle as well as a Glock pistol, an M-16, and a sniper rifle, amongst other weapons. You know, the same skills every farmer knows.
During the game, he must rise above his fear and battle hordes of terrifying undead that are bent on spreading the zombie plague. Along the way you encounter a man named Mr. Kaufman who is establishing a city of the living. But that is enough of the plot for now, if you want to find out more pick up a copy of this amusing game and find out for your self. Starting out at $29.99 for the Xbox, it’s is a good deal. And I found it for a lot cheaper as well. Amazon had it for just $20.
The game opens and Jack is unarmed standing inside his farmhouse, and a guy (a zombie) is standing out in his front yard. You run Jack up into his attic and grab the .22 rifle and start killin’, and you will find that you quickly run out of ammo no matter what challenge level, Easy, Normal, or Hard, that you have set the game play level to be. The game play gets better once you get out into the shed and pick up the .38 revolver and more ammo for the .22 and .38, and the shovel as a melee weapon. Everyone loves hitting zombies with shovels after all.
The majority of the game is mostly Jack walking around killing zombies with guns, or when he runs out of ammo or just for fun switches out to one of the many melee options (sadly you can only carry one at a time) from the shovel, to a bat, to a golf club, to a lead pipe, and finally to a fire axe. Don’t worry about settling on one choice as options for melee weapons are laying all around. Pretty much if you think a weapon would be fun to bash a zombie with, then you will probably find it here.
Unfortunately, the repetitive gameplay can get a bit boring after a while, if you are not really into killing zombies that is. But the occasional sniper level, where you get to shoot the nasty baddies from the relative safety of a rooftop is a nice change when you start to get a bit tired of the same old thing.
The only problem I had with the game is some strange glitches where I could not pickup the heath restorative medical bottles. Naturally this only happened when I was down to about 20 percent health, or at least that is how it seamed to me.
The other oddity I found was that on one level my gun was pink. I have not gone out to the message boards to see if this was a common occurrence or just my Xbox showing its age and giving me an excuse to pickup a new console. Seems a bit odd to me that the new Xbox 360 just came out and suddenly this is the first problem I have with my old Xbox. Conspiracy theories please begin here. Oh well, killing zombies with a pink gun is not that bad. I hear the anti-zombie army has a don’t ask, don’t tell policy.
Lets be honest, the graphics for this game are very much dated to about three years ago, and certainly are not cutting edge. But then again, the game is not selling at cutting edge prices either and you are probably buying this game because you’re a fan of the film Land of the Dead or you just like killing zombies.
Personally I had a blast over the weekend with this game. I rented the movie to set the mood and then I started playing the game. For your added pleasure, the game includes Xbox live multiplayer support with the usually death match components.
Overall I found the game to be a lot of fun and well worth the price. It’s hard to really do the zombie killing and bashing genre wrong, and it’s nice to see nobody dropped the ball on this one.