DLC Review: ‘Undead Nightmare’ for ‘Red Dead Redemption’ for XBox 360

We recently got the chance to get our first hands on with Red Dead Redemption’s DLC pack Undead Nightmare. Now, after its full release, Undead Nightmare has proven itself to be one of the most fun and valuable pieces of DLC to be released in recent memory.

The events of Undead Nightmare follow those of the regular Red Dead Redemption storyline so be warned. There are some minor spoilers about the fate of certain characters if you decide to play Undead Nightmare before going through the full RDR story.

Unlike some pieces of DLC like the quests in Fable II or The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion which add new missions to your current game, Undead Nightmare is its own separate story so players can skip back and forth between a regular Red Dead save file and an Undead save file without the two affecting each other. The only negative to this is certain items and steeds then don’t come back with John to Read Dead proper which is a shame since riding through the desert on the steed of War can make someone feel pretty bad ass.

After seeing the outbreak first hand, our hero heads out to find a cure only to find the undead plague has spread throughout the frontier with all cities being overrun and even animals being infected. After seeing bodies reanimate themselves from grizzly deaths, John uses his gun to put them back down with some well placed headshots. What follows is a screwed up path through memory lane as John encounters friends and acquaintances from Red Dead who are now all being struck by the zombie plague as he searches for a cure.

The way the story unfolds is incredibly fun as such an unreal approach is given to the gritty and realistic world that players became familiar with during Red Dead Redemption. There are many instances where it even becomes slightly fulfilling seeing various characters fall victim to zombie attacks. In the already mad world of the wild west, people fall further away from their humanity after seeing the events of the outbreak including turning on each other and becoming wildly racist. Seeing these people get torn apart or descend further into madness, it’s hard not to uncomfortably chuckle at them.

There is a lot of content with Undead Nightmare as well. For just a ten dollar price tag, players get hours of new missions and a host of new multiplayer options as well. The voice acting is just as well done as the original game’s and the revised animations and textures over the characters are also great additions. New weapons alongside a new more close combat style of play keep the game feeling fresh after the forty some odd hours that the game originally took to complete.

There are lots of little Easter eggs in Undead Nightmare as well, many being hints to the original Red Dead Redemption but also many that don’t have to do directly with the zombie story. Some great examples of these come in the hunt for Sasquatch as well as the mythical beasts roaming the land in the forms of the four steeds of the horsemen of the apocalypse. Rockstar did a fantastic job of changing this realistic world into the surreal.

Undead Nightmare is a must buy for anyone who was a fan of the original game. Luckily for those who don’t have internet access on their console, they can also purchase a disk containing the Undead Nightmare content as well. Forget cowboys and Indians. Grizzled old west bounty hunters and undead hordes is the new game we want to see more of.