I really used to like the survival horror genre. I grew up on nightmare on elm street and Friday the 13th. But I wasn’t a PlayStation fan and so I missed a lot of games in the genre. When I finally played code Veronica I saw what people loved about survival horror. I couldn’t see tank controls as the best the genre could do. But I liked the jump out and scare you effect and the need to carefully use and save ammo.
When Ubisoft launched on the Wii U with Zombi U, I saw it as a revelation. Now granted I really hadn’t played many other survival horror games, but honestly, I could have but they all looked uninteresting to me. Even RE4 seemed too uninspired for me to buy it. But Zombi U had something’s going for it.
I liked how the sniper scope was on the pad with the gyroscope. Your inventory was always accessible but it was frightening to access it while in a fight. Killing a zombie felt intense the ways real fight feels, with aggression and yelling. Dying was more real because you became another prepper and stole the items from your previous corpses. All that combined with the level design that gave choice to the encounters and reasons to go back to previous areas made it the best in the genre for me.
I can’t play it anymore because it’s too traumatizing. I don’t know why I used to like it so much because now it so stressful to me. I don’t want that level of adrenaline on constantly. Was one hell of a scary ride though.
