The season pass ends on an underwhelming and obnoxious note.
Images represent the artistic endeavor of this game.
I personally found the first two DLCs in the Far Cry 5 season pass to be horrible, but they are genuine art compared to this one. How Ubisoft managed to bungle a FPS zombie story is completely beyond me. Not only is this easily the worst DLC of the season, it might be one of the worst excuses of a game to ever be released.
You play as various nameless (or sometimes named) protagonists trying to survive zombies in various setting. In reality, you are playing film pitches from Guy Marvel who nasally shouts over each level and alters the landscape around you. Guy Marvel is a horrible character who should have never been added to the series, and giving him this much screen time would have ruined the experience even if the game wasn’t crap.
There is no continuity between the seven levels, and each of them can be beaten in about 10-15 minutes blind. The entire DLC could be wiped in around 90 minutes—easily. Now, length doesn’t necessarily mean good or bad. A run in The Binding of Isaac might only take 30 minutes, but they are a fun 30 minutes. Every one of the levels in Dead Living Zombies is a monotonous and buggy sludge through shit.
I hated almost every moment of this game. Honestly, I am not sure where to start. The writing is abysmal. I have heard cleverer stuff from six-year-olds than the stupid “How about a fucking [insert random creature] zombie!!” being screamed each level. The shallow cash-grab meta-commentary doesn’t really work as satire when this entire series has become a vapid and hollow excuse of a series that only functions to bilk gamers out of money. The Far Cry 5 campaign shows a bare minimum of competency at least. If I saw this game being played without knowing it was Ubisoft I would mistake it for a Unity asset flip off Steam.
Let’s say you’re one of those folks who doesn’t mind a bad story—you’ll just turn the dialogue volume to zero—problem solved, right? Nope. The gameplay is bad, too. Stealth is not an option as the zombies magically know where you are the second they spawn in, so a major component of Far Cry is simply gone. Melee takedowns are also gone because fuck you that’s why.
The gameplay is shooting zombies point blank (al la Left 4 Dead) in the face. However, most zombies do not react to being shot if it isn’t a kill shot. Much like the Lost on Mars DLC, there is no way of telling how effective your shots are—not even a blood splatter like the Resident Evil games. I also found the enemies to be glitched out. Often they would magically leap through the air at you, spawn right on top of you (moving you out of the way), randomly standing still and waiting to be shot, and having horrible hit boxes. The last of that list is perhaps the most annoying as you will be hit when you are clearly outside of the enemy’s range. All of these issues are exacerbated when you are the co-op partner and not the host.
Perhaps the most annoying aspect of combat is how broken it all seems. I have had this gripe throughout the entire Far Cry 5 experience. If you shoot something in the head with a 45-70 it should go down. The zombie wolves in this can take upwards of six to eight headshots without even flinching. Pistols are basically worthless as they seem to do nothing. You never feel powerful. While a lack of power can make for an interesting experience (see: The Last of Us) here it just a reminder of how broken and rushed the DLC was upon release. Nothing is ever too hard, so there isn’t a thrilling accomplishment, but it is also not adrenaline pumping due to being a badass. Instead you have to shoot a glass tube three or four times before it breaks—and then repeat about twenty times.
The combat has no set identity. Is it meant to be hard, fun, challenging, limited resource, or over the top? I don’t know. I honestly don’t think anyone in the writing room were given a clear rationale on what type of game they were making. Instead, we have what feels like the ideas collected from a brainstorming session’s trash bin.
I tend to like Ubisoft games. Yes, I am aware that they are guilty of a lot of the industry bullshit tainting the entire medium right now, but they tend to make fun and full games (for me). I have complaints about all of their releases, but never have I thought they were completely broken before. If this is the type of quality we should expect, I don’t think I will be picking up another entry of theirs without doing serious research before hand. I was a fool when I purchased the Season Pass. I don’t think people who purchase passes are stupid, but I think we all got screwed on this one. I will never buy a season pass for an Ubisoft project again—and I suggest everyone else does the same.
Before all of this mess, I was excited for the Division 2. No longer. Ubisoft have released not one, but three horrid failures this year alone. Even people who love the base game (I gave it a respectable 6/10) should be appalled by the lack of quality here. The entire season pass, and Dead Living Zombies is a horrific and embarrassing failure that is not worth a single penny. 0/10
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