spoilers

At first glance, this seems like a largely frivolous mashup, the Pride & Prejudice & Zombies of gaming, a modern successor to old b-movie fodder like 1966’s Billy the Kid Versus Dracula. Look a little deeper, though, and it’s clear that Undead Nightmare’s Weird West skin is a vessel for further analysis of the western as a genre. The ending in particular is quite damning of the whole idea of the western expansion and Manifest Destiny, the lingering effects of colonialism plunging the world into chaos. By the end, Marston returns the stolen Aztec mask which caused the zombie outbreak, and all seems well. However, the grave-robber character Seth rushes back into the crypt and steals the tribal artifact once again, reigniting the zombie plague. Even when there’s an easy, obvious solution to the problem, the settler population continues to desecrate native cultures and fuck everything up all over again, in a seemingly inescapable cycle.

One of the most striking moments in this expansion is the Sasquatch hunt sidequest. A farmer tells you that there’s a bunch of Sasquatches going around eating babies. Marston sets off in search of them, killing the mythical creatures without much second thought, as they are other and look more like animals than humans. Once you get to the final Sasquatch, though, he begs you to kill him, speaking quite fluently and maligning that his entire species has been hunted down and killed. It’s terrifying how easy it is here to dehumanise another group and wipe them out, a deeply disturbing allegory for the treatment of Native Americans throughout the western era (which continues today in a myriad of ways). It’s a totally surreal scenario, yet its underlying theme is just as real and relevant as anything the main game provided.

Gameplay wise, the basic mechanics are about the same as the main game: you have an array of bolt-action, lever-action, and semi-automatic weaponry, along with a couple of throwable explosives. The third person, auto-lock targeting system where headshots are top priority plays out basically the same as Grand Theft Auto V, aside from the different arsenal. There’s also a bullet time feature, as with the main game, but here you get it at max level from the start, encouraging you to use it far more. There’s a couple of new weapons, but most of them are in fairly short supply and don’t shake up the formula too drastically.

The other main difference from the base game in this respect is the zombies themselves. They’re slow, lumbering things that walk out in the open. Cover is basically useless here, instead you’ll be running and gunning your way through zombie hordes. The emphasis on headshots is even greater, as body shots don’t do much to keep the zombies down. I actually find this combat a lot more enjoyable than the main game, though it’s a tad too easy most of the time. The game claims that ammo is scarce and you should conserve your bullets, but beyond the first town or two that was never really an issue for me.

The main structure of the game involves you roaming from town to town, clearing out the zombies to help the survivors and then doing a variety of sidequests for them. There are a few “main” missions, and in typical Rockstar fashion some of these are quite heavily scripted, but overall this looser format gives the player far more gameplay freedom than their other recent titles. It does get a little repetitive at times, though, especially once you get to Mexico and there’s not really much further amping up the stakes. The structure of the narrative as a whole feels somewhat slapdash and thrown together, leaning heavily on established relationships from the base game, giving each major player a quick quest or two, and then on to the next town.

Even though there’s plenty of great individual moments here, they don’t really form much of a coherent whole, at least from a character or plot perspective. The one thing that ties it all together is how most of the survivors, instead of banding together, dig themselves even deeper into their own prejudices, blaming the apocalypse on everything from Mexicans to Jews to African Americans and beyond. It’s an eerie echo of increasing tensions in the world right now, decades of prejudice and mistreatment once again bubbling to the surface of popular culture.

It’s also quite entertaining to see how fed up with all this shit Marston is, he even deliberately lets a couple of racist dickheads get eaten by zombies when he easily could have saved them, and threatens people at gunpoint several times. Unlike the main game, where he was framed as a redeemable character trying to be a better person, he’s just totally done and letting his violent instincts takeover, and this characterization fits way better with Rockstar’s misanthropic satire. There were many annoying characters who I just wanted to pull a gun on and get it over with in the main campaign, and it’s very satisfying to see Marston finally line up with that (does this make me a bad person?).

If the main game drove home that by 1911, the west is pretty much dead and the cowboy life became totally unsustainable, this explores the one way in which cowboys could’ve been relevant again: a total stop in societal progress by means of a zombie apocalypse. As grim and fed up as Marston becomes, there’s a perverse pleasure in returning to the gun-slinging and horseback-riding ways of old that’s not lost on him, nor the player (nor on Rockstar, it would seem, who had to rewind time itself to for Red Dead Redemption 2 to be possible). The apocalypse destroys the very world which Marston, Dutch, and co are hopelessly railing against, giving them one last chance to be outlaws again, even if it costs the entire world.

Way back before the days of Grand Theft Auto V, Rockstar understood what DLC could do. Instead of the usual, horse armor or one extra level or some such; Rockstar instead opted to expand it's stories by adding more content or simply make a new scenario with that engine. Thus Undead Nightmare was born, and it was so good and different that it just warranted a separate release, and was my introduction to the series.
Red Dead Redemption, by and large has a lot of content, and in comparison to it's sister game, Undead Nightmare doesn't. While I don't think Undead Nightmare is bad about what it wants to do, the comparison of side missions, story, and characters simply feels more bare. Undead Nightmare has such an interesting take to it's world, and the fact that zombies and western theming is rare to began with is kinda sad. Being able to see old timey folks react to a zombie apocalypse, and try to explain it with what little they do know just makes for some interesting dialogue and test of their character. Undead Nightmare knows it's a unique scenario, and rides that fact each chance it gets with each new mission. The sad truth is though, it just isn't as long or as meaty as you'd want it because it still feels like there is more to do with this scenario than the game let's on.
Undead Nightmare being built on the same engine of Red Dead Redemption means that the gameplay is similar in every way. From shooting, riding horses, walking, talking, catching, and hunting; Undead Nightmare plays like a GTA game in the west, but this time there are also supernatural creatures about. Perhaps the only sidequests really when it comes to this DLC, The fact that their is so many new horses and creatures based off mythos, and that each creature has quite the aura about them makes for such an interesting sight when you finally see one. Add that together with the dark and gloomy atmosphere Undead Nightmare as makes for such a wonderfully subtle tone shift that is just kinda impressive to see when you compare the two games.
In the end, Undead Nightmare does what it set out to do, provide an interesting scenario for the player to explore if they already beat Red Dead Redemption. While you can play Undead Nightmare without any knowledge of the main campaign, there is just a certain interest seeing areas and townsfolk react to the infection that comes with that knowledge. While Undead Nightmare ends a bit faster than I wanted it to, it still provided an unique experience, and really that's all that matters.

Undead Nightmare has a fantastic narrative that feels like something straight out of a B-Movie thanks to a hilarious cast of characters. However, it is let down by repetitive mission design and too much time spent riding from point A to point B. There are some really interesting enemy designs and gameplay elements, but I just wish these were used in more interesting ways. What’s more I had several glitches, such as infinitely spawning headless undead preventing me from completing checkpoints without reloading my save.

This has all the pieces to reach the highs of the base game, but unfortunately it fell short for me. There are some great moments that are worth experiencing, but some weaker elements and the prevalent glitches really hampered my experience.