Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green

"Ah! It's a decent budget zombie first person shooter."

Let's get this out of the way; I am a pretty big zombie film/game fan. With that said, I still can't give this game an amazing score. There are a lot of drawbacks and shortcomings that this game would have to surpass to grant it a good score.

Graphics: 7/10
Nothing amazing, LoTD: RFG is a game made to run on pretty much any pc. No ground breaking visuals, nothing spectacular about the environments. This was a good decision on the developer's part. Not having a huge fan base in the first place, they needed to make the game available for all possible budgets. For people who have been craving for a zombie shooter and are fans of the movie, this will be excellent. Anyone else with a higher end pc and plays games such as Half Life 2 or Doom 3 will be severely disappointed. All of the props are pre-rendered and bland. The one saving grace is the character modeling. There are some pretty impressive looking characters that seem to spring out from a different game. However, you will run into these same characters over and over again as there are only about 8-10 zombie models in all. There is also diversity in the level designs. You will encounter everything from the country, city streets, sewers, to office building locations.

Game play: 7/10
The game play is as basic and as straight forward as can be. You encounter a new level, you get a couple objectives, it is up to you to find the items and scripted events to make it happen. It's hard to get lost because the game will always point you in the right direction by blocking off all other paths. The physics engine is very outdated. There are numerous bugs that plague this game in terms of physics. Hit detection, zombies getting stuck in walls, and clipping just to name a few. The single player game will only last you a short 3-5 hours. The on-line play adds a lot more to this budget package deal. The on-line play covers all of the basic modes you would normally see in any other first person shooter game plus an invasion mode. In invasion mode, you and your team protect a selected location from waves of zombies. This creates a lot of tense moments when you are just about finished mopping up one wave and you see another wave of about 6 coming your way.

Audio: 6/10
Not really much to say here. It's just about personal preference. The creepy/eerie music loops over and over again with no real change from situation to situation. There are no real memorable pieces when you turn off the game but the music does serve its purpose. The sound effects such as zombie footsteps and moans are what save this category. Hearing doors being torn down after you had just closed them behind you is a scary noise, especially when you also hear footsteps coming from around the corner in front of you. The sound effects draw you into the game and keep you there.

Replay Value: 6/10
With Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddlers' Green being such a short game, you could play through it a couple of times with ease. You may get the notion to go back to single player mode one or two more times, but multiplayer is where the replay is at. Once the single player game is over, it's pretty much OVER. With any luck, the on-line mode will become a cult following and always host a few good games. With better multiplayer games out there though, I would not hold my breath for very long.

Overall: 6/10 (not an average)
It's a budget game for the fans. This is a pretty good deal packed into a $20 title. However, I would not recommend it to anyone else who has already played the top of the line first person shooters and does not have a special interest in zombie shooters. There are far better games out for the price range but don't pass this up if you are a fan or need to blow $20.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 11/21/05