Nation Red


Zombie Driver



Just in time for Halloween weekend (and Steam's sale), we're featuring two zombie killin' PC games: Nation Red (by DiezelPower) and Zombie Driver (by EXOR Studios).

Nation Red is not about Soviet zombies. From Joamm Tall.

Nation Red is a fast-paced, arena-style, top-down perspective, zombie shoot 'em up game.  Set in a vague midwestern desert, you play a trucker-like character that goes around picking up weapons and killing zombies.  That's all there is to it.  Confined to either a small arena or forced to guard a barricade, you must face wave after wave of zombies of various speeds and abilities, some of which wield weapons ranging from simple blades to a buzzsaw. There are over fifty pick-ups that can be found, providing different melee, ranged, and explosive weapons.  There are single-player missions, as well as local and online co-op game modes.  The goal is to rack up points, level up, and earn a spot on the leaderboard.  Although it is not initially mentioned in the game's options, you can plug in the Xbox 360 controller and play the game as a dual-joystick shooter.  Playing with the mouse seemed to offer better control, however, but the option is there to play this game in a more arcade-like style by using the gamepad.  If you just want to have some fun competing with some friends to slaughter the most zombies, then this is your game.  A discounted four-pack is available from Steam.

Department of Zombie Disposal.  From mutednarayan.

Zombie Driver is an overhead-view game of vehicular zombicide and ferrying survivors around by taxi.  As a taxi-driver trapped in a city overrun by the zombie hordes, your goal is to navigate the city, mow down as many zombies as possible with your vehicle or weapons, rescue the remaining humans before they get overrun, and carry them to a safe house.  And you get paid taxi fares for doing it.  You start with your standard yellow taxi, but can unlock other vehicles, ranging from an ambulance to a limousine.  Ammo caches are hidden throughout the city, and weapon and armor upgrades can be purchased.  There are two game types: story mode, which is a series of missions revolving around finding survivors and unlocking new vehicles, and slaughter mode, in which you drive around a small arena killing ever-increasing numbers of zombies to earn points and unlock achievements.  There isn't a multiplayer mode, but you can compete on the universal leaderboard.

For some arcade-style zombie-slaughtering fun, we recommend both of these games.  Our rating: ARRRRRAAARRRRGH!

A note and a correction: take a look at this thread for more on the easily-solved technical issue I mentioned in the Nation Red video.  Also, I misspoke about the lack of a leaderboard in Zombie Driver; it's there under the menu for Slaughter.

Update: I take a look at the free expansion, Zombie Driver: Blood Race, in this post.