The Gentleman's Reticule

Due to some unfortunate financial mismanagement (specifically, me getting a bit giddy and buying Modern Warfare 2 - I can’t even give the damn thing away as a Christmas present, thank you very much Steam), I am sorry to announce that The Gentleman’s Reticule has a deficit in its November games budget.  The tragic consequence is that I haven’t been able to buy Left For Dead 2 and, until I can draft a letter to my investors, cheaper zombie themed amusement must be sought.

As such, I’ve been playing the browser based MMO Urban Dead.  Set in the zombie ravaged town of Malton you are a survivor and spend your daily allowance of fifty action points searching for supplies, fighting the undead and finding safe havens within barricaded buildings.  If you die, you will return to unlife as a zombie and must seek a suitable location to be unzombified by a suitably skilled player.  Alternatively, you can continue to play as a zombie and hunt down survivors.

The limitation of fifty action points per day means that some thought has to go in to how you spend them.  Absent minded play will leave you unable to make it back to barricaded safe houses and exposed to attack.  Where zombie games often revel in headshots and frantic horde chases, Urban Dead emphasises a considered, slow-burning approach to post-apocalyptic survival.  Recently, a large group of well coordinated zombie players have been laying waste to Malton, district by district.  Every day, I would hear further reports of their devastation and relentless progress toward my safe house.  With an uncertain duration before this wave of zombies hit, I had to organise a dash to scavenge first aid at the nearest hospital, build barricades, gather weapons to fight them off and scout out a safe location elsewhere in case I needed to flee completely.  Preparing for a defence or excursion is a matter of days so planning is essential to ensure you don’t wake up with bite marks and a longpig craving.

What Urban Dead looks like - there’s a town map in the top left corner!

Still, there’s little inconvenience if you are killed, with no penalty to your experience or inventory you just lose a few action points and must find somewhere to be revived if you want to continue playing as a human.  Other ‘lite’ aspects include the absence of a trading system and fairly easy levelling which means you can get all the most useful skills very quickly.  It’s trickier to gain XP as a zomb though, if you do fancy more of a challenge.

Malton is, however, huge and the game’s wiki includes a lot of community generated background on many of the locations and buildings adding atmosphere to the game which can be quite emotive in its own minimalistic way.  As an example, and because HTML doesn’t produce thrilling screenshots, see here something which happened to my character:

Even from the bare event texts, creepy cinematic narratives can be created.

Urban Dead is more Dawn of the Dead than 28 Days Later, it’s a slow ominous shuffle rather than a shrieking charge.  I’ve found it to be a fun diversion for a few minutes a day, with enough depth to hold interest but not so much that it punishes if you don’t play regularly.  I still want Left for Dead 2 though.