Red (Un)Dead Redemption

I'm just wondering who else -- if anyone -- purchased the Undead Nightmare add-on for Red Dead Redemption.

If you haven't, you should check it out. I had done (most) of the stuff in the main campaign, but I'd been looking for a reason to put RDR back into my disc tray.

Someone needs to say it. Undead Nightmare is Rockstar at its finest. It's cheesy, it's corny, and it is a hilarious parody of B-movie thrillers and modern Halloween pop culture. The opening cinematic -- if you've ever seen the typical introductions to horror films -- will likely have you rolling on the floor with laughter.

The opening cinematic makes fun of nearly every cheesy horror cliché: the narrator's spiel ends with a creepy laugh, it's a dark and stormy night (surprise, surprise), the undead are quite spritely considering they're... well... undead. Oh, not to mention the fantastic out-of-house shots that you get in the opening cinematic of zombie arms shooting up in front of your window.

For $10 (800 MSP), you get about 10-12 hours of gameplay (depending on how much you want to do and how long you spend exploring -- I have 32% completion, having played for about 5 hours). That's not bad. As is common to Rockstar's DLC, this is an entire new game with a new story, new weapons and mounts, new voiceovers (many provided by characters you'll remember from the story). Hell, the game even has a completely new soundtrack!

Actually, I want to talk about the soundtrack briefly. The original game engine created an awesome new system of scoring a game -- 160 hours of music was recorded of various musical instruments, then the game engine added and removed loops as things occurred (there's a wonderfully detailed video on the score on Rockstar's website).

Well Undead has an entirely new soundtrack. By that, I mean it has a new soundtrack split into loops in the same way the original soundtrack was. This means that, playing Undead Nightmare you might have entirely new music accompanying your adventure or you might have old music. And often, you get some new melodies accompanying familiar music from the original game.

Additionally, the "mission complete" sound has been replaced with this sleek, sexy, and ever-so-tacky chord played on an organ... yeah, a diminished chord that you've undoubtedly heard if you've ever watched an older horror film.

There are four types of zombies that you'll encounter -- the standard stumbling zombie that sprints at you when it catches your scent, the super fast zombie that races across the ground on all four limbs, the fat zombies (um, there were never any fat people in RDR!) that take a few more shots to kill, and finally the gross-out zombies that spit green slime at you (ARGGHHH it BURNS!). These all sound rather familiar, because they're pretty much standard zombie classes nowadays.

Undead is -- as you'd expect from Rockstar -- very polished. It's an entirely new game. You can't go wrong for 800MSP ($10). It's great fun, although there are still the same frame-rate dropping issues that were present in the first game (mostly around Tall Trees).

I'm not going to lie. The game is rather difficult until you get back into the groove of Red Dead (I know -- it's going to feel really awkward at first since you're probably used to how Halo: Reach and Medal of Honor handle). When you first start playing, it's ruthless -- you have only the most basic revolver, a double barrel shotgun, and a very limited supply of bullets. Luckily, as the game progresses it starts to get easier: you get better weapons, ammo becomes more readily available... but you still will want to try and avoid hordes of undead as they can drain your ammo very quickly.

It's hard to die in this game. You have to let a ton of zombies get really close to you, but you can still get killed. So be careful.

Overall, it's a great game and it's definitely worth the $10 -- it will tide you over to Black Ops at the very least.

*Currently there's a special offer on Xbox Live. You can get "Liars and Cheats," "Legend and Killers," and "Undead Nightmare" all for 1600 MSP ($20). Essentially, it's Buy Two Get One Free.*

I agree, this is easily the best DLC to come out for a game. I bought it day one and it's very addicting.

I still haven't played RDR, But I am aware of the DLC as I was checking it out on LIVE the other day. Im a bit of a game completionist, So when I do play, I will go for that package you mention where you get 2 for 1. Right on...