Is this the end of zombie Shakespeare?!
Ill call it system tourism in lieu of something better.
Mostly, though, I can only give you advance warning to avoid it.
It all started so promisingly, too.
Its all alarms and panicked chatter, flames lapping and dogs fitting in the distance.
Sometimes theres sobbing, shrieking - individual and collective anguish.
It sounds like refried hell, and its Dread Dawns best feature by quite a way.
My first task is to go check on my characters sister in the girls dorm.
Along the way to the dorm, I loot a few bookshelves.
Looting is such a monkeys paw here.
The stuff you find is intriguing, but the act of acquiring it is a real pain.
At one point, you get a skateboard.
I’ll take what I can get.
There’s just too much stuff, though, and looting both containers and corpses takes a slow-cooked eternity.
The worst thing, though, is the unavoidable FOMO.
I ended up feeling pang of anxiety for each zombie I didnt loot.
Sometimes, that meant around 80 pangs of anxiety.
Thats at least twopingsof anxiety!
It hangs over you, resulting in exploration that mainly inspires regretful second-guessing.
To pass through one street, I have to get past around fifty zombies.
At this point, Im armed with a screwdriver.
If this suggests the screwdriver - or any melee weapon - is enjoyable to use: they arent.
Strangely enough, Id have a hard time showing you ten better water hoses, though.
I… dont know what happened here, really.
Its not like you encounter these hoses very often.
Theyre conveniently placed near fires, as youd expect.
This should have been the game, Dread Dawn!
That would have been good!
Unquenchable, unfortunately, are those carpet bomb fires I mentioned above.
Youll occasionally run into fights between the military and zombie hordes.
Bombs out of nowhere.
The initial bombs dont hurt, just knock and stun you.
Its the ensuing flames that do it.
The autosave is quite generous, and thank zombie Shakespeare.
There are right ways to make a world feel dangerous, and these arent it.
A couple of caveats to round out, then.
I didnt come close to finishing Dread Dawn.
This is roughly where I started finding the game physically painful to play, so I stopped.
I feel much better now.
Secondly, Im not a fan of gathering wood and rocks at the best of times.
I dont actually mean that, but the chopping is both lusterless and very slow.
It’s such a core interaction and Dread Dawn couldn’t even manage that.
Otherwise, uh: game bad.
