In 1968 George Romero gave the world possibly the best zombie movie created. On a shoestring budget he presented to the world his very first movie. While quite primitive, it has inspired many other movies as well as a few sequels. This movie -- filmed black and white -- introduced the first African American horror movie lead. This movie was quite revolutionary not only for the movie, but also for assisting with revolutionizing the culture of the business.

This movie went far from unnoticed, and ten years later George Romero released Dawn of the Dead, following the same theme of the first movie but putting it in the confines of a mall. All the cities in the world seemed to have been over whelmed with these zombies. The moral implications were ever present as people had to decide what to do with their dearly departed, and made us question if we could do the same. Day of the Dead followed up on Romero’s zombie legacy, and was centred on military personnel in a bunker. Sadly this movie did not earn as much respect as the previous movies, though it was Romero’s favourite.

In 1990, Romero decided to go back to his roots, and to his very first movie, and so returned to the theme of Night of the Living Dead. This movie was essentially a remake of his cult classic, but with a slightly different ending. This movie seemed to forecast the end of the genre -- at least for a decade -- and for the time being the zombie movies took a dirt nap. When it was least expected Dawn Of The Dead -- directed by Zack Snyder -- was released bringing life back to the dead. These movies happened to eat our hearts out, and learn to love the zombie all over again. This allowed Romero to develop his latest movie Land of the Dead, and because of the commercial implications they released this game to capitalize on the growing thirst for the zombie culture.

The game begins with Jack, a farmer on the outskirts of town. He seemed oblivious to the end of the world, even when the power went out in his home. For him this seemed to not be a huge problem as this was something that happened quite consistently out in the country. It was about time for him to go feed the pigs, when he noticed a man standing outside on his lawn. He seemed out of place so Jack decided to investigate them. Jack went outside and approached the man, he happened to be attacked by them in a savage and bloodthirsty manor. Previously been oblivious to the world’s problem of zombies, poor Jack was about to have a rude awakening.

After permanently killing the man outside, and then a few of his friends, Jack decided that it was best to go to his neighbour’s house. This meant he would have to travel through the cornfields, but he was adamant about doing so. After encountering a few more of those vicious beats in the fields, he made an even more shocking discovery. He found his neighbours in a pool of each other’s blood, as they lay slain together. Surprised he shook his head and turned on the radio, only to hear a piece of the puzzle. To his own horror he found out that the dead were coming back to life.

In this game you have several melee, explosive, and ranged weapons. For melee weapons they range from using a golf club or a bat, to objects like hammers, or even your fists. Also if you find the right book in the game, you can become a Kung-Fu zombie killer, which is the most deadly of all melee weapons. With your ranged weapons, you have grenades, and Molotov cocktails. The grenades -- sadly -- did not work terribly well, while the Molotov cocktails worked fantastically. You could throw these down a hallway and kill several of them. The fire does not kill zombies right away though, so their flaming corpses will pursue you. If they touch another zombie, the second zombie will be set ablaze as well. This could be considered the best weapon in the game.

In ranged weapons, you start off with a .22 rifle. This is honestly the worst weapon in the game, from terms of reloading, and the actual damage is causes. One step up -- and one of my favourites -- is the revolver. This gun can shoot a zombie’s head off, spilling their blood in the air. There is also a Glock, which fires and reloads quickly, but lacks the zombie killing punch. There is the shotgun, which reloads slowly, but packs a good wallop. There is even a fully automatic M-16 ready to gun down hoards of zombies at a time. Lastly there is a sniper rifle, which you will be required to use on several levels.

The music in the game is rather standard. It consists of lyrics less sets played continuously and looped over and over. It does do quite a good job of adding to the mood, but it would have been great to be able to include your own music in the game from your hard drive. This is just a general wish for all X-Box games to allow you to play with your own music.

This game does a great job of setting the mood of the game. The ambiance of each of the levels is spectacular. Consistently you will uncover trails of blood ending with a body as an exclamation mark. You will also find blood encrusted of bathroom stalls. Graphically the environment looks great, and really pulls you into the game. Walking through the buildings you will hear constant groans of the undead. The subtle touches will not only send a shiver up your spine, but can also have you experience a state of panic.

What also sets the mood is that the zombies move silently. So if there is nothing between you and them, you will not know about it until it is too late. There are many skins of people for zombies, and there are also several types of zombies as well. There is the standard kind that just walks after you. The second type is one that crawls on the ground scampering towards you to attempt to chew through you Achilles tendon. The third type, actively found outside, runs towards you. Some of these are special zombies, and how you can tell the difference between them is that their stench radiates off of their body in a cloud. These types of infectious zombies can vomit on you, causing you to be disoriented. They can also detonate their body, sending this vomit at you, causing the same affect.