October 26, 2010

Six years ago the acclaimed western video game Red Dead Redemption unleashed the walking dead in the awesomely bizarre Undead Nightmare DLC. The new adventure took the serious cowboy drama we all know and love and injected a bit of ridiculous fun into the Old West setting.

When coming up with potential DLC for Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar San Diego put emphasis on the add-ons being side stories, rather than extensions of the main game’s narrative. This priority seems to have opened the door for more outlandish scenarios to play out in the Red Dead world, including a zombie outbreak.

Separate from the original game’s timeline, Undead Nightmare‘s story begins when dead bodies spontaneously reanimate into hungry zombies with a hankering for human flesh. Events take a turn towards the even worse when John Marston’s wife and son are infected by the undead disease. It’s then up to the player to find a cure to the infection as well as help others to fight off the terrifying ghouls.

Gameplay in the extension remains relatively unchanged from the original’s gunplay focused objectives. In addition to hunting down enemies with various rifles and handguns, Undead introduced a new blunderbuss that fires exploding zombie parts for efficient elimination of the undead threat.

Rockstar also saw fit to include many humorous easter eggs in the DLC in the form of various mythical creatures that can be found in the game’s environment. Bigfoot, El Chupacabra, the four horses of the Apocalypse, and even a unicorn can cross paths with John Marston at one time or another.

So, what did you think of Red Dead Redemption‘s zombie adventure? Are there any other great DLC out there? How many zombies do you think are in this game? I’m guessing roughly infinity.

I await your answers in the comments below!