Review by: Brandon "Undead Sharpshooter" Cackowski-Schnell

These days, zombies are everywhere. They're on our televisions, in our movies, in our comic books and all over our videogames. Heck, you can't swing a dead cat in a AAA title these days and not hit a member of the undead horde. Unfortunately for the residents of New Austin and all points south, zombies have invaded Red Dead Redemption as well. The content pack boasts plenty to do, both in single player and multiplayer, and some hilariously satisfying reunions with characters from the main game but frustrating controls and a lack of mission variety make riding the plains of New Austin less entertaining than it could be. Sometimes zombies don't make everything better.

The content pack takes place during the time in the main game between when John is reunited with his family and the end game so if you haven't gotten to that point then you're going to want to hold off. Actually, if you haven't completed the main game, you're going to want to skip this one as there's a pretty big spoiler at the very end of the game, and people who did every last stranger mission will get more out of this pack due to how it ties into your various travels. The game is accessed as a separate menu item as the main game so there's no worry about corrupting your game progress by doing some zombie killing in case your'e the type of person that worries about such things.

The story is a typical zombie plague yarn that we've seen time and time again. John returns home to the farm during a bad storm to find that Uncle hasn't come home from the same errand yet. As this is Uncle and Uncle is an incompetent drunk no one is concerned until later in the evening when Zombie Uncle shows up and chows down on Abigail. Soon she's a zombie and after she gnaws on Jack he's a zombie too and it's up to John to lasso both zombified family members and leave them hogtied in the bedroom so that he can head out back into the world and find a cure for what ails them. As the closest town is Blackwater, this is his first stop and also the first place we see two of the game's most prevalent mission types: saving towns and clearing graveyards.

As this is the zombie apocalypse, every town that you used to be able to fast travel to, and a few others, will come under zombie attack as you enter them for the first time. Each town has several progress bars indicating how far towards safety the town is and those bars are filled by killing zombies. In every town there are survivor leaders on high ground that you can talk to and give ammunition to so that they can help you kill zombies.

As you help survivors and kill zombies ammo caches will appear on your map allowing you to restock. Get the progress bars filled all the way and all of the remaining zombies will be shown on your map allowing you to finally kill them all and cleanse the town. Once the town is safe you can save your game there as well as use it to fast travel to other saved towns. It's an interesting mechanic the first time, requiring you to decide if you want to give ammo away to get the town cleansed more quickly or save it all for yourself and instead use something like your torch to kill zombies, saving ammo in the process. The problem is that once you've done your third town, the fun wears off and it's nothing but a grind. Unfortunately, rescuing towns is necessary not only for fast travel and save points, no saving out in the zombie filled wilderness for you, but saving towns also increases your arsenal.