Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare Pack

I suppose it's finally time to write about the games I got for my birthday. I already started typing a blog post about Undead Nightmare more than a week ago when I thought I'd write about each game individually, but then I got bored of writing and went back to playing games. I still don't feel much like writing so I'll just put my thoughts about each game in this one post as short as I possibly can.
This post is already getting pretty long so I guess I will indeed divide my ramblings into separate posts like I originally planned.


Undead Nightmare Pack, get it only if you think Redemption's multiplayer is a lot of fun but you haven't yet actually bought any of the DLC, as it has the Outlaws to the End, Liars and Cheats and Legends and Killers packs included. All those packs in total may be worth the purchase, but the singlepayer of Undead Nightmare would be very disappointing if you expect anything out of it. I've seen a lot of people on forums asking if they should play Redemption first before trying out Undead Nightmare, and the answer is an extremely simple two parter:
Yes with no exceptions and drop those obviously high expectations you have for Undead Nightmare.
If you think that Undead Nightmare has any actual content to add to the Redemption experience, you're already going to be disappointed because the gameplay is obviously and literally entirely about shooting zombies in the head from start to finish, and there really aren't any actual new missions. In fact, the stats screen tells me that after 100% completion I had done a whopping 4 missions. Yippee. Seriously, your goals in the game vary from walking from point A to point B doing nothing but watching cutscenes for a minute, to killing a hundred zombies over and over again (which you do the entire few hours UN lasts), to collecting herbs (as if Redemption's herbalist challenges weren't dull enough). That's literally what you do in the game as far as gameplay goes. I could seriously write a walkthrough for every missions here in this post in less than six sentences.

What's the meat of the game you ask, then, if the gameplay is so incredibly dull nonexistant? Seeing John Marston deal with the apocalypse with a pinch of comedy, of course, with basically all the main characters from Redemption making a cameo at one point or another. Even some of the lesser characters you barely even remember existing appear in zombie form, like that one entertainer you only ever read about in paper in Redemption. Undead Nightmare also pokes fun at zombie clichés as well as the original content of Redemption and has some great fanservice to offer, and the first time you spot these amusing things you'll definitely chuckle. For example the random encounter from Redemption where the guy mourns his dead friend and puts a gun in his mouth exists in Undead Nightmare as well, but instead of the guy shooting himself the dead friend rises up scaring the crying man and the man shoots the undead's brains out in panic and then just sits there in shock, so you can see that there is a good amount of attention to detail in Undead Nightmare. It's just too bad that the drunken people who were responsible for coming up with the idea of Undead Nightmare at the company party fell under the table as early as they did, because the appeal of Undead Nightmare dies too soon. The latter half of the "story" is just... it all takes a nosedive soon after you've met Herbert Moon in Armadillo, and it's really a shame. Just ten or fifteen more minutes of the good stuff from the first half placed in the latter half and it would feel more complete, but with the weight of Undead Nightmare being at the very beginning the thing feels like half finished.

Basically, if you want to experience Undead Nightmare without buying it, you can just watch Video Games Awesome's Undead Nightmare videos and after that all you're missing are the sasquatch and Herbert Moon encounters, and I'm sure both of those cutscenes are somewhere on YouTube as well. Then you're done, sadly.
Undead Nightmare singleplayer has nothing to offer once finished and I'm unhappy that the stranger mission where the old man lived with his dead wife didn't return in any way, although I can understand that his appearance would've made Seth's spotlight a wee bit dimmer.
Undead Nightmare is also incredibly easy, I only died twice, once because the game glitched and threw me in the air then made me fall for 15 seconds, and the other time while trying to torch wolves on foot for the challenge. It's for the better, though. Nobody would play Undead Nightmare if it was actually challenging, since the gameplay is so unentertaining.

Now, the multiplayer... I don't know if I'm one to talk since I'm not much of a multiplaying man myself.

Jesse Lynch, still not playable

The co-op missions from Outlaws DLC, they're alright. It's fun to play some real missions through with friends, but I feel like they mostly just boil down to competitions of who shoots the most guys, at least with random people, and I don't have a lot of friends with PS3s who'd actually play Redemption. Only one I've played Redemption online with so far has been GranTruismo4head, all my other friends on the list seem to just be playing Black Ops nonstop. Not to say that I wouldn't have had a few pretty fun games with strangers, some of those guys with mics are actually pretty awesome. At least the ones who speak English, I've had to mute about a dozen Luigis and Pierres for mic spamming in weird mumble languages.

Legends and Killers pack is made to look like something for the fans of Revolver, but it's really just for those who wanted to be fans of Revolver but couldn't. The characters it adds are Red Harlow, Jack Swift, Annie Stoakes, Buffalo Soldier, Shadow Wolf, Ugly Chris, Pig Josh and Kelley. I would've wanted Mr. Black, Professor Perry, Bad Bessie, Kid Cougar, Diego, Daren, Sheriff O'Grady, Griffon and Jesse Lynch, but I suppose asking them to put and effort into DLC and making it worth the price is too much to ask.

Oh my God, what is wrong with your face?!

Red's character looks good but sounds off and the things he says aren't at all Red Harlow-ish, same with Jack Swift. Jack sounds too grizzled and is too much of an old angry English stereotype, in Revolver he was Englishmanly polite.
Buffalo Soldier looks alright and I recall he sounds good, too. Shadow Wolf is sort of meh but has the most different things to say out of the bunch. Kelley's character is pretty good. Pig Josh looks probably the most off of all of them but I think he sounds good, and Ugly Chris looks much better than he did in Revolver but sounds pretty much exactly as he should, on par with Annie. Annie Stoakes' voice is SPOT ON, but her face looks messy and her ass is flatter than it should. One thing Revolver fans everywhere know is that Annie has a great ass!

I trust you agree, it's not round enough in the DLC.
You'd still rather stare at her ass than look at her face, though.
Yes, I know, and I would like to get a real girlfriend someday...

Liars and Cheats adds the main and side characters from Redemption, so it's rather obvious they're all exactly as they were in the game. I'm just sort of sad that Jack wasn't the 16-year-old version.
Undead Nightmare adds some zombie skins as well, and overall the three packs do add nice variety to the utterly piteous selection the regular game has going on. I mean it, Redemption's online character selection is crap, too many of the almost exact same character skins which were only added to the selection because as R* needed teams for team-based modes they already had the skins available and playable. They're mostly just filler characters, and I don't like it.

"Cause she's got a great ass!"
Yes, I'm still on about Annie's backside.

The new modes the packs add are hit and miss. Like I said, co-op is good, but Land Grab is just pointless and most players just ignore it whenever someone stakes a claim. Even the trophy related to the mode doesn't entice people to try Land Grab because we all know you'll never get eight other people to fight you at the same time. Sometimes you struggle just to get eight people on any form of free mode lobby, let alone to have 15 people on from which 8 are willing travel to your location do battle for pittance.
Stronghold is almost dead from what I can tell. I only got into one game once that had four people. One left immediately after I came in, another two by the end of the match. Two player Stronghold games are boring, by the way.
The new DLC versions of the regular gang matches and free for all matches that add new arenas are deader than Stronghold. Didn't find a single soul there. Shame, I would've liked to take a break from repeating the same 6 maps. R* should've just fused the DLC modes with the regular, because this is downright criminal if you ask me, charging for a handful of extra maps that should've come with the base game so that nobody can play the new maps. Nobody can play the new maps because the people who didn't buy the DLC can only play the regular modes with the old maps and naturally after finding out that there's nobody playing the new modes the people with new modes go back to playing the old modes because at least there's people to play with there. You can't play alone in multiplayer, which is one reason Revolver multiplayer mode will always beat this new Internet/LAN only multiplayer "experience" we have going on today. Nowadays you need multiple TVs, consoles and games to start up an offline match. Who's rich enough to do that? At least back then you could play with yourself.

Not a suggestion, an order! And use that dynamite, boy!

Undead Overrun mode gets old eventually, especially after playing Undead Nightmare since the gameplay is the exact same thing you do in Nightmare, but an online zombie survival mode seems to be mandatory in all games these days and it is a good way to level up and is quite fun in the right crowd. By the way, I managed to get to wave 23 with only two other guys once. Wasn't as awesome or hectic as you'd think. Also, people, USE YOUR FUCKING BAIT AND HOLY WATER! We have a fucking time limit to think about and you assholes sit on your precious baits and holy waters, and even hog the coffins when your inventory's still maxed out!
Poker and Liar's Dice, very nice additions, really nice if you get some good people with mics on like I did one evening. But Rockstar, raise the fucking allowance a tad or have it go up to 200 dollars if you're under. I had to spend an hour of playing to get to 0 in order to be eligible for allowance because barely anyone plays for less than 100 dollars a game and I personally just want to PLAY. Figure that, I play games because I want to play games, I must be insane. Also, I lost twice my input's worth once, but then the multiplayer of RDR is bugged like fuck in every way and it was the night I was trying to lose my money anyhow.
Races, boring. Dead and boring. Dead boring.

I think that was it. Explosive rifle, meh. Tomahawk, wish I had it in RDR singleplayer instead. And where's Scorpion revolver?!

I know my writings may seem a bit angry here, but I suppose the Undead Nightmare Pack IS worth the purchase as a collection of DLC, considering it IS just DLC on a disc and shouldn't be thought about as a full game. It did get me to spend an extra week playing RDR multiplayer and allow me a chance to finally reach rank 50. Shame bonersgamesforums don't seem to ever have RDR PS3 online events, and it's especially shameful I missed the only two they had back when the game just got released.

 I think that's it for now. Stay tuned for my incredibly insightful and indubiously lengthy post about Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell Double Agent for the PS3. No, you sit there and stare at the screen, and remember to refresh the page once every 24 hours. Eventually something new should pop up.