Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green
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| Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green | |
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| Developer(s) | Brainbox Games |
| Publisher(s) | Groove Games |
| Distributor(s) | Atari |
| Designer(s) | Josh Druckman |
| Engine | Unreal Engine 2.0 |
| Version | 1.1 |
| Platform(s) | PC, Xbox |
| Release date | October 18, 2005 |
| Genre(s) | First-person shooter |
| Mode(s) | Single-player, Multiplayer |
| Rating(s) | ESRB: Mature (M) |
Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green is a first-person shooter licensed video game based on the George A. Romero zombie horror movie Land of the Dead. Like many licensed games, Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green was made with budget-game production values.
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[edit] Story
The game is a prequel to the Land of the Dead film, and takes place during the initial outbreak of the zombie epidemic. Players take the role of Jack, a humble country farmer cut off from civilization who one day finds his farmhouse besieged by a group of zombies. Jack fights his way through the zombies, first across the countryside to his neighbour's farm, then through the abandoned ruins of a nearby city. Jack ultimately manages to escape to the City of the Living with the help of a trucker named Otis he befriended at a police station, a fortified human enclave set up by Mr. Kaufman as a safe haven from the undead hordes. Jack is hired by Kaufman to clear out a luxury high-rise, Fiddler's Green, by killing all the zombies inside so that the humans can move in.
[edit] Characters
- Jack - Simple farmer who must use all of his wits and skill to survive against the zombie hordes.
- Otis - Freed by Jack, Otis is a prisoner who assists him in killing zombies and provides transport to the boat docks.
- Paul Kaufman - Patriarchal mayor of the "City of the Living."
- Philip Hudson - Radio broadcaster who keeps Jack posted on the conditions of the zombie invasion and instructs fleeing citizens where the safehouses are.
- Unnamed Doctor - A doctor who is trapped inside a security room in a hospital who signals Jack for help.
- Unnamed Soldier - A guard who monitors the bridge to the "City of the Living" who instructs Jack to eliminate all zombies in the area.
[edit] Plot
In the beginning of the game, Jack has returned from feeding his pigs when the power suddenly goes out. He doesn't think much of it, as it is considered normal in the country. He looks out his window and sees a person standing there. Wondering who it is, he goes out to see, and discovers that it's a zombie. He immediately runs into his attic and acquires his rifle, just as more zombies converge on the house. After he kills all the zombies, he decides that he should travel to his neighbours' house. As he fights his way through the cornfield and his neighbour's house, discovering that the zombies have already reached his neighbours and killed them. He admits being not very sure about whatever was going on and "scared to death" until he turns on a television and learns the truth (Radio talks in different sections of the game also seem to update the progress of the living people). Jack returns to his house and spends some days there, but as he begins to run out of food and the zombies keep arriving (along with the fact that the isolation was starting to get to him, he decides that he has nothing to lose and drives to the city. Somewhere inside the local hospital, Jack meets the living doctor who was the one sending the light flashes of "S.O.S." outside in the city streets before Jack enters the hospital. Jack promises to free him from the security room he was trapped in to stay safe but later, as the hospital unexpectedly burns down while experiencing tremours and earthquakes, the doctor becomes a zombie himself, leaving Jack to have him killed. Soon in the Police Station, which used to be a safehouse until the zombies overran it two days previously, he meets Otis, who refuses to tell Jack why he is imprisoned. Criminal or not it was not confirmed, but he seemed quite kind in the game. Later when Jack covers Otis on the roofs of the Police Station to Otis's 18 Wheeler Truck, Otis could not afford to save Jack because of the legion of zombies that are quickly closing in, leaving Jack to head to the theater safehouse they promised to head to by himself, via the sewers for safety reasons. Here, in the sewers, although not shown, it is found that the theatre was now mobbed with all the zombies, even the radio reporter was massacred. Jack, when he reaches the theatre, successfully secures the building, before Otis arrives after a sleep period. Otis then drives himself and Jack to the docks where he had heard from his truck radio to head to the City of the Living, "completely surrounded by water". Otis manages to find a boat and hot-wires it while Jack opens the harbour gates. Sadly, halfway on the sea route, Otis is found to be infected with the zombies' plague, leaving Jack to finish him off, as of what he requested for his last favour; not wanting to be part of them, he would rather die fully instead than to be half-dead. Soon at the linkage bridge at the City of the Living, Jack is asked by the survivors to power the bridge up for supplies to be ferried across to the city, and then to use the gunner to stop any zombies who try to enter while the bridge is to be sealed off. Later in the city, he meets Mr. Kaufman, who hires him to finish off any last pockets of the dead inside the luxury tower Fiddler's Green. Jack manages this in the towers garage, atrium, penthouse, and the penthouse roof patio. As stated by Jack in the last cutscene, "Life in the city went on, Kaufman opened his fancy tower......." but he can't help but think that zombies are still out there and one day they could enter the city. Outside, a zombie finds a fire hammer and manages to smash a hole into the brick wall, at which point the game ends, which implies the remembrance theme shown in the movie.
[edit] Gameplay
Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green utilizes traditional first-person shooter game play. Players can use a variety of either melee weapons or firearms to fight through the zombie hordes. Some weapons are capable of dismembering the zombies, while other weapons are not. The zombies' jaws, heads, arms, forearms, and legs can be shot or chopped off by the player. This can very effectively save the player so as to make an escape. The zombies themselves appear in many varieties (regular, ones armed with a melee weapon, crawlers, puking ones, screamers that summon other zombies, and poisonous, exploding ones) and each takes a different amount of hits to kill, which varies upon the difficulty setting of the game.
The multi player component of the game consists of many online game types. These consist of death match, team death match, and "Capture the Flag" modes, but there is also an "Invasion" (co-op survival) mode, in which players are trapped in a small map where they must survive for a chosen amount of time. In this mode, the weapons and ammunition regenerate in the same spots each time, allowing the players to dodge the burden of ammunition shortages. Players can pick up melee weapons from recently killed melee weapon wielding zombies as well.
[edit] Weapons
Melee
Firearm
- Glock 22
- .44 Magnum Single Action Revolver
- Lever-action .22 Rifle
- Pump-action Remington 870
- M16 rifle
- M40A1 Bolt Action Sniper Rifle
- minigun NOTE: only able to obtain by using Cheat code
Explosive
Weapons Available Only in Certain Multiplayer Modes
[edit] Tools used in game
[edit] Reception
Critical reviews for the game have been overwhelmingly negative, while player review scores have generally rated the game as average. According to metacritic.com, the average reviewer score is a 32 / 100 while Users scored it 5.6/10. There appears to be a thriving modding community for the PC game, as well as a loyal fan base[citation needed].
[edit] External links
- Groove Games's official page for the game
- Official 1.1 version patch, including mod support and required for current multiplayer play for the PC version
- GameSpot's Review 1.9/10
- GameCritics review 1/10
- NTSC UK review 1/10
- Undead Games - Host page of many mods for the PC version of the game and its modding community
- Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green at MobyGames
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