Four in February: One Game Down, Three More to Go

We’re a week in to Four in February, and I’ve just finished the first game on my list: Dead Nation.

My girlfriend and I ended up playing a lot more Fallout 4 than I thought we would, and I’ve also been catching up on The Flash (the show and the Rebirth comic series), Arrow, and Supergirl, but hey, there’s one in the bank now. Fist bump!

I really enjoyed Dead Nation for the most part. Housemarque knows how to make technically sound and exciting games, and I had a blast mowing down zombies, buying and upgrading weapons, and hunting down new pieces of armor. Twin-sticks on the Vita can be tricky since the analog sticks are a bit loose, but it never got in the way of my enjoyment.

The story was nothing out of the ordinary, with your chosen survivor being immune to a widespread disease and a shady doctor fellow wanting to locate patient zero in order to develop a cure. There are some pretty rad storyboard cut-scenes, accompanied with suitable voice acting, and both did a fine job delivering Dead Nation’s message between the shooty bits. And those bits were damn fun.

My only issue with the game is the way it goes about switching weapons. Each of the murderous weapons has their own icon, but there’s no text to accompany them–rather its name is shouted out by the game’s announcer. For typical weapons like rifles and shotguns, that’s all well and good. But a giant gun that shoots electricity, or launches whirling blades? Not so much.

Most of the game is spent relentlessly shooting zombies, so if you can imagine having a conversation with someone in the middle of a war zone, you can see where this could pose a problem.

There’s also quite a few weapons to unlock, and they’re all at your disposal over the course of each stage. Cycling through 10 weapons using the d-pad is pretty cumbersome, especially when you’re knee deep in a pile of walking corpses and you still haven’t remembered their respective icons.

This caused me to pick a few favorites, upgrade the hell out of them, and use them for the remainder of the game. Fire is cool, the combat rifle has infinite ammo, and upgraded proximity mines can detonate numerous times, so that’s what I stuck with. I was fine with that. It was fun.

With Dead Nation out of the way, the next game on my list is Grim Fandango Remastered. But then there’s that whole Fallout 4 thing, which we’ve invested 50 hours in over the last two weeks. As video games tend to do, playing Fallout 4 has peaked our interest in New Vegas (which I’ve never played before), so I may end up with an entirely different list of completions at the end of Four in February.

Either way, there will be four games.