Dead Nation finally came out on the PlayStation 3 and it’s a game that I’ve been looking forward to since the summer after personally hearing about it. Dead Nation is another zombie apocalypse type game where you are one of two sole survivors and must fight hordes of zombies to reach safety. The game is actually very similar to Valve’s Left for Dead series except that it’s not a FPS, it’s a top down shooter. Since this is another quick impressions, I’ll just state some of my observations from playing last night.

First off, the graphics are pretty amazing. The environment is very detailed and really does look like a huge world ending catastrophe just occurred. It’s very dark and moody and the only thing that lights your way are burning buildings, cars and your flashlight. There are some flickers of light around, but not enough to really light your way. Characters on screen are quite small but pretty detailed. You can tell the difference between all the different kinds of zombies and it’s actually quite amazing the number of zombies that appear onscreen at one time.

The game is quite fun and can get really chaotic with everything that is going on at one time. You can upgrade your weapons in game from money you collect, however I am still trying to figure out how all that works as I only got to play the game for about an hour.

Now here’s the part that really threw me off guard and was a huge let down especially in this age of online gaming. There is no online game chat. Dead Nation allows you to play co-op online with another friend but there is no function to chat with this person. I played online with fellow gamer Doriftu and we literally spent the whole time trying to figure out how to implement voice chat and couldn’t because it doesn’t exist. So in a game where you really need to communicate with your buddy due to how hectic the game can get, you can’t. That is the one thing that really holds this game back from being as fun as it can be. Hopefully this gets rectified in an update because I find it pretty ridiculous that you can’t communicate with your partner.

Other than that one issue, I do recommend Dead Nation for anyone who owns a PS3 and loves zombie games. It’s fun and a proper zombie apocalypse game that is true to its genre. I recommend playing this with all your lights off and the audio way up and highly recommend using gaming headsets if you have. I also recommend playing this with a friend as it’s always nice to have someone covering you while killing zombies.