Night of the Dead [Review]
Night of the Dead is a zombie survival game published and developed by Jackto Studios. The game is generic and reminiscent of many other zombie games before it. While very similar to 7 Days to Die in gameplay, it also reminded me of Project Zomboid because of the character customization. Next to creating a character, you can assign both negative and positive skills to your character. You can add negative traits to gain more points for positive traits. Things like a skill in pickpocketing allow more drops from zombies you kill but can be combated by making your character overweight, making them slower and not able to run as often.
The character customization is somewhat deep when it comes to character attributes but, out of everything you can change about your character it’s frustrating that you can not change the eye color. It may be a small issue but it’s still strange, especially in a game with as in-depth customization as this one. It also seems like the devs only had a woman in mind for character creation because all of their options are better and more in depth. Unfortunately, this oversight is just the first in a series of them.
The game doesn’t have much of an identity compared to better and more popular titles similar to it. The only thing I could mention is that you are guaranteed to get a companion when starting the game. Every player will get one when completing the tutorial, which just doubles your team of survivors. With a group of three, we turned it into six because of our companions. Who are ruthless and will instigate and attack anything and everything on sight. There doesn't seem to be a consequence for allowing them to fight till they drop, it doesn’t take anything but standing next to them to revive them. They are overpowered if you wish to exploit them. Though be careful not to tail them too close, there is collision between players and NPCs and it’s easy to get stuck on them when frantically escaping the undead.
The game feels convoluted to play, you don’t have an inventory button because when opening the menu it brings up a screen with ten different menu options. From here, you can access the map, inventory, settings, build mode, and more. It feels cluttered and annoying that the menus aren’t mapped to specific buttons. Luckily, you can change the entirety of your control scheme in the menu. Which is a necessity if you are going to use a controller.
As mentioned, the game does have a build mode. You can build your base up from the ground as long as you have the materials. The building is simple enough and allows for creativity if you're willing to put in the effort.
In my opinion, the most glaring issue is just how long the day and night cycle lasts in this game. It took over three hours to go through about 24 hours of the game and then we had to endure the same length but at night with double the amount of zombies. It’s far too long of a time to be spending hiding in the corner of a supermarket.
In the end, Night of the Dead is just another zombie survival without any identity to set it apart from other games like it. To me, I would rather be playing a different game which is why I would personally rate the game at 3/10. Night of the Dead is currently available on Steam.