I think Zombi has some really good ideas as it is essentially soulslike zombie game with survival and kind of roguelite vibes mixed to it, but mixed with some frustrating mechanics and clunky controls it is sometimes rather frustrating experience. the overall vibe of the game was perfect and I liked/hated the stressful survival adventure (I feel like I have to play something casual afterwards) in different environments in London. I think it's definitely worth of a playthrough, but don't expect any mindblowing experiences from the game.

also it was kind of awkward to listen to God Save the Queen playing at the credits. yikes

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Games I Like That Everybody Else Dislikes

Phenomenal zombie crusher with some of the most unique gimmicks I've ever seen in a horror game. Clearly a product not afraid to take risks, and it's all the more nuanced because of it - its atypical quirks which, at the time, were read as blemishes now seem like highly original and bold moves. This includes but is certainly not limited to its terrific use of setting, moving keenly from the grimy slums of post-apocalyptic England all the way up through Buckingham Palace and beyond (each level as excellently designed as the last). It's got great scares, devilishly fun combat, tons of definable setpieces, and - a must for any good horror game - backtracking that actually seems tense, strategic, and enjoyable. Can't sing the praises of this criminally under-respected curio enough. It's wonderful - plain and simple.

I wanted to like this more. However, the game is far too broken, with progression-blocking bugs preventing me from beating the game. The game is also far too short, with too few areas, and some hubs are only used once for a major objective or two and never used again. The devs also needed to decide if they wanted special infected or not, since there are so few of them, and two were only seen once and then never again. The quests needed more meat on their bones as well, as well as the story. I wanted to know more about the Prepper, Sondra, et al. Nothing is really ever explained in this game. The Prepper, Knight, and Sondra do a lot of talking, but it's mostly "move to this location and do 'X'" lines.

I will say that the oppressive atmosphere and feel of the game is very good, and kept me playing until I literally couldn't progress any further. I wasn't expecting an award-winning story, but the mood was good, despite the game's bugs never have been fixed since it released in 2015.

really nice to see a game move off of the platform it was exclusive to but you can tell some elements of the game needed the Wii U gamepad as a quality of life feature. For example when looting it is obvious the camera angle behind the inventory UI is there in an attempt to scare you from oncoming zombies that you may notice when you're focused on the game pad. the overall gameplay is pretty straight forward, nothing inherently special about it. very short story so its a shame the multiplayer aspect was not ported over as it would've made a major difference

One of the most atmospheric zombie games. Fantastic sound design and gritty environments. Especially when players encounter the Tower of London and Baconfield Nursery. When you get the Prepper Pad, the device even scans vermin such as Rats and Crows, causing the player to believe there are zombies on the map when they may not be there. There are a lot of jumpscares added to the game, with zombies literally appearing through the woodwork and small cutscenes where the player will be jumped unexpectantly literally out of nowhere.

Unfortunately while the game has great atmosphere, it is plagued with many glitches, some game breaking.

Bad gameplay choices, such as animal meat having a 50/50 chance of healing or damage. Unable to use weapons when crossing waist high water. Or complete change of gameplay design especially later with the Arena level. Enemies are also very annoying. One will summon a horde, one is heavily armored, two are instant kills, one is projectile based.
If the player is killed they respawn as another survivor, but they will lose all their items they had previously obtained. The player will need to backtrack to their original location and retrieve it. Whether the player succumbed to a death or zombified. However if the player dies on their long trek back to their belongings, they will lose everything for good.
There's also No hud or audio options, and sluggish item management and reload animations.

If you can get this game cheap, try it for yourself. But remember this game is meant to be played with survival in mind, not run and gun action shooter like Left 4 Dead or Dying Light.

Jogo EXTREMAMENTE underrated. Jogasso da ubisoft que foi desenvolvido com o Wii U em mente, mas o port não fica muito pra trás não. Consegue ser um jogo de zumbi com uma atmosfera incrível, momentos realmente tensos, uso de mecânicas bem feitas e não se prolonga mais do que deve. Se for jogar rushando, não leva mais do que 4 horas provavelmente. Única parte chata é que é basicamente obrigatório fazer umas trocas de arquivos pra poder dar um bypass na uplay e jogar essa obra. No mais, super recomendado. 4/5

So I recently saw a Youtube video that said this game was underrated and explained why, I wasn't fully convinced the game was good but I was motivated to try it. I never had a WiiU but I did start playing it once on my PS4 but quit after 1 hour and thought hey I wanna finish it this time around so I did. I'm gonna be honest, this game is no masterpiece but I did enjoy playing it, weirdly enough it's something fresh if you're sick of all the repetitive open world ♥♥♥♥ Ubisoft keeps pushing out lately. In short this is a linear zombie survival horror experience which lasts about 6-8 hours, you play as a random survivor but the twist here is if you die you get to play as a new survivor and now have to kill your former zombified self to claim all of your goods back. Sadly, and I really mean sadly I didn't die so I couldn't kill my previous survivor which looks like something fun. Ok but enough sidetracking, the game takes place in London and it's honestly a really interesting location for a zombie apocalypse, you get to play in the streets of london, tower of london, buckingham palace, underground metro tubes,... It creates a unique atmosphere talking about atmosphere this game does a good job of keeping you on your toes with it's creepy vibe. You have a lot of guns to choice from, gunplay is OK, melee combat is very basic but you will use it frequently. Story is forgetable tbh, just like the characters. I also experienced a few crashes but besides that everything was fine. Honestly im just surprised I enjoyed this as much as I did and what kinda tone the game set. I really hope Ubisoft doesn't give up on this IP and actually makes a sequel for all platforms. I think they could create something awesome this day and age but please do keep it linear or linearish. We already have too many open world games as is... Still here huh? What are you waiting for wanker! Buy this game alright chap? ;)

This review is a coda to my other piece on ZombiU. Although reading it may not be necessary, it will help to address anything I leave out here.

Inspired by the movie 28 Days Later, a small team within Valve, formerly contracted to work on a Counter-Strike spin-off with a long and notorious development cycle began to work on a side-project for the company that involved surviving against hordes of the undead. The project originally used Counter-Strike as a base. The final product was anything but.

Left4Dead, along with many of the other zombie games inspired by famous movies, ultimately comes down to a power fantasy draped in darkness and horror motifs. You and your friends are the only ones who can withstand hordes of the undead, special undead that can maul you in about five to six different ways, and gym bros who never let death keep them from lifting. If you struggle, it's something to laugh at with your friends.

ZombiU stands out over a decade later for a few reasons. Among them being how evidently rushed its production was; you don't need an episode of What Happened? to tell you that canceling one launch title for a console that's barely a year off before announcing another one by the same team obviously meant a fair bit of ambition had to be left off the table. But for as janky as it can be, it gets what made 28 Days Later tick. There's a layer of vulnerability present in its game mechanics that you just don't get in Resident Evil, and a lot of that comes down to just how fucking cumbersome it is to use the Wii U gamepad for anything. I've heard a lot of people call it a basic controller gimmick in the past, and I've said as much to appease them. But if you want my honest-to-god opinion (formed through my playtime and that of others I've viewed), I believe it's a great example of video games as an art form. It takes moments from similar movies that instill fear and adds a layer of context to them that makes it that much worse. The Wii U gamepad, as a storytelling device, was pitch-fucking-perfect for horror games, but sadly got overlooked due to its home console's target audience, poor sales, and even worse marketing. ZombiU, for all of its unfortunate downsides, is not something that has been replicated since, and will probably never be replicated again.

Case in point? That time they tried to replicate it.

I'm going to contradict my past self here, but this rerelease absolutely reeks of desperation. Although ZombiU eventually sold a million copies, it was almost immediately cited as a financial disappointment by Ubisoft's (shady) CEO. Any plans for a sequel became a stillborn dream. Hoping to squeeze some money out of it, Ubisoft contacted Straight Right, a studio whose only other non-Wii U game was a port of Need for Speed: Shift 2 for iOS. Prior to Zombi, their only other work consisted of Wii U ports for Mass Effect 3 and Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

The end result? For an uncomfortably long time, you literally could not play the PC port without circumventing its DRM, even if you owned a legal copy of the game through Steam. That guide I linked to was originally posted in January of 2021; the actual patch came out ten months later. During that ten-month period, they were still selling the game for at least twenty dollars without any warning on the Steam page.

Let that set the precedent for what I am about to tell you. Zombi is the absolute worst way to experience ZombiU. This is a bottom-of-the-barrel port that makes a few welcome quality-of-life changes, but otherwise absolutely guts what made the original game unique, to begin with. I'll start by saying that, fundamentally, they've done fuck-all in terms of approaching this as a remaster. It does run at higher resolutions, but that's about it. If ZombiU's visuals had aged gracefully, this wouldn't be a complaint. If they aren't touching up the visuals, maybe they're doing it to preserve a classic. Here's the thing: ZombiU isn't a classic. As I said, it has issues. Most, if not all, of the things it gets right have to do with the Gamepad. By awkwardly merging both screens onto one without any of the thought or care that the original game had toward cultivating a tense and uncertain atmosphere, at best, they've turned a potentially terrifying game into a funny one. At worst? You'd be hard-pressed to see a zombie popping up. Rushed to market as it was, ZombiU was careful about divvying up what it showed you, lest one screen become too cluttered to navigate. In a game about situational awareness, everything being on one screen borks the entire experience. Zombi is the theatrical cut of ZombiU, Harrison Ford's narration and all. And boy is it not the experience you'd want to have playing this game.

A good solution would have been to maybe enforce a second screen mechanic, like on your phone or on another device like a laptop. Think of how Fallout 4 has a companion app that lets you dig through your Pip-Boy in real-time. But it would be foolish to assume that such a thing would be properly maintained when this port was so rushed that not even the haphazardly implemented multiplayer mode from the original could be carried over.

I'm still proud that this is the game that gave me enough attention to keep wanting to write these reviews. But all of these years later, it's... not good.

When this game was announced, it was one of the few games that I've ever been interested in on the Wii U. But the few games the console had, that I actually was somewhat interested in, didn't wanna make me buy the console, so I only got to play this game, when it was ported for the then next gen consoles and PC.

I got this game as either a Christmas or birthday present on Steam, can't remember anymore which one of both... Only to learn that I had to install and create a uPlay Account. I love this weird cases, where you buy a game on launcher 1 but have to install launcher 2, because why not?
The game looked absolutely amazing, and I loved that it was set in London, because I always wanna know how these apocalyptic scenarios play out outside the US. One feature that I liked a lot was that when you died, you would respawn as another survivor, that just randomly found your old shelter and you had to find your old, now zombified you to get your old loot back.
I remember hating the circus part of the game a lot, but now that I just watched it online again, it looked so easy. Maybe I wasn't just a good player back then. Well, whatever, I finished the game anyway.
Towards the end, the game became less and less polished. When I entered Buckingham Palace, I entered a room, that I wasn't meant to enter yet, killed a special zombie, that I wasn't meant to kill yet and got his loot early and when I really needed to go there, I had to do some trickery, to get this zombie back to spawn, because I only got half his loot. Also, I found a jump scare trigger wall, that I could trigger endlessly. A zombie crashing through something... Well, at least, that was what it was meant for, but all the other times it only played the sound.

Still a good zombie game.