Dead Nation

But if you have a willing friend, and don't have a history of heart disease, this is a journey worth taking.

With endless replay value, a Platinum trophy, and offline and online co-op, it puts together everything that gamers, not just shooter, zombie, or horror fans, will love.

The visuals are stunning, and the presentation will leave you rather amused, and this is all for $15. You may be tired of zombies by now, but even if you are, this is one downloadable game that is worth checking out.

Detail-drenched visuals, impressive physic effects, and online and couch co-op make Dead Nation a meatbag-slaughtering blast. [Jan 2011, p.81]

Dead Nation puts a lot of full-priced games to shame. It takes at least six hours to complete and is playable cooperatively offline as well as online. The never-ending waves of zombies are graphically impressive. Buy this, you won't regret it.

Extraordinary good PSN game. Shoot many, many zombies dead with a lot of different weapons with the classic top down view. If you want to play one of the best PlayStation Network games of the year, than this is a great one.

Quotation forthcoming.

At the close of 2010 you'd think zombies and twin stick shooters were well past their expiration dates, but Housemarque had other plans. Through Dead Nation they have delivered an experience that's ripe with tension and never content to let the player settle down.

Dead Nation for all intents and purposes is a top-down Left 4 Dead: it's taut, it's atmospheric and it will certainly get your blood pumping.

For its great varierty and frantic pace, it will please both classic action gamers and zombie game fans, providing they want to go through an overwhelming experience of massive attacks, with hundreds of enemies trying to kill you.

With its high production values, Dead Nation is a great advertisement for what can be achieved on PSN. This stylish zombie shooter rarely slows down in pace and gets the basics spot-on.

Even the normal difficulty is so insanely hard it's likely to put many gamers off. [Issue#201, p.98]

Some people treat action games of this sort as a distraction; others revisit them obsessively, always looking to beat a high score. No matter how deeply you plan to dive in, you'll be getting a lot of game for your $15 with Dead Nation.

Dead Nation is one of the few PlayStation Network games, that manages to look and feel like a full grown retail game. The mood and the gameplay just feel right and the small lack of variation never gets frustrating.

Dead Nation takes a lot of tired tropes and manages to polish them up into a surprisingly fun experience. It's best suited for play with a friend, but even alone you will get your monies worth from Housemarque.

The fixed camera isn't 100% perfect, the "sticky" zombies get a little annoying, and the dark environments sometimes have a been-there, done-that feel but this is overshadowed by the good points.

The action is exciting, the presentation is a sheer knockout, and the replay value is through the roof, especially with the "Nation" factor and the looming Platinum trophy. It's definitely worth wiping out the undead for.

Dead Nation is a top view shooter with solid gameplay and very nice graphics. The weapons upgrade system works very well and adds thickness to the whole experience, while the enemies are numerous and quite varied. What a pity the online multiplayer mode suffers from an extremely slow matchmaking and the lack of a voice chat.

A funny cooperative title, best served with friends

This one's still really good and a lot of fun; you should buy it. Partly because it's a blast, but also because I really want to see Housemarque use this engine for a brilliant sequel.

It looks great, too, with much credit due to level design; garbage everywhere, fog littering the dead city, lighting effects bringing out the horror movie in a game, and the amount of zombies onscreen at times.

Some edge-of-your-seat gameplay. [Jan 2011, p.96]

Dead Nation is an authentic "zombie killer" with entertaining combat and smooth controls.

There's a genuine feeling that the enemies can come from anywhere. [Jan 2011, p.115]

Dead Nation is a game were you have to be tactical and not just kill zombies in pure frenzy. It's not a very unique game and it can be quite repetetive at times but it wieghs it up with a great and well-made gameplay with entertaining combat and smooth controls.

Just as it was with Super Stardust HD, with Dead Nation Housemarque has again proven that even the stalest of genres can be revitalised with the right execution…and the execution here is nothing short of deadly.

Dead Nation is a long, somewhat overpriced co-op dungeon crawler, and within that extremely narrow niche, it's a good time. Do not play it alone, as its solo campaign is one of the single most frustrating games I've played this year.

Dead Nation is a polished, enjoyable, undead romp through a world laid waste by an outbreak of nightmarish automatons. With its simple yet effective control system, not to mention a colourful class of foes that can override the screen – and your senses – in their hundreds at any one time, it's a triumphant if admittedly somewhat repetitive jaunt.

Sure Dead Nation isn't reinventing anything, but it comes for a good value packed with a true gameplay intensity exceeding even some of the Holidays blockbusters. It's a really an exhilarating experience, sometimes even a exhausting one when the action skyrockets. An efficient game, simple but tense, we can thank Housemarque for.

Though it's not perfect, Dead Nation reminds us how much fun it can be sending legions of the dead back to hell.

Carnage aside, Dead Nation also looks fantastic. There's a great amount of variety in the zombies themselves, the lighting and artwork are lovely, and there's a kicking soundtrack to boot (I could have done without so much heavy breathing though).

The game makes for a great pick-up-and-play multiplayer experience. Though there's no real reason to play more than once if you are going solo, playing with friends over and over is where the real replay value lies.

Those not yet completely jaded by zombie movies and games will find Dead Nation a very agreeable game, especially those looking for a reasonably challenging top-down shooter.

In spite of the moments where I lost my mind over a cheap death, I enjoyed Dead Nation. It's a thing of beauty to sit in a chokepoint and tear apart an army of zombies or watch a maxed out landmine go off several times and clear out dozens of roamers.

Engrossing gameplay and rich environments make Dead Nation an enjoyable romp through the zombie apocalypse.

Yes, it's yet another game with zombies. That might be a bit old, but luckily Dead Nation is less about killing undead and more about racking up a high score. It's old school arcade action, and the online ranking system that pits countries against each other only adds to the addictiveness.

Dead Nation may not be perfect -- the imbalance towards co-op keeps it from becoming a truly great solo experience -- but compared to its competition, this is one corpse that still has some fight in it.

Dead Nation adds a lot to the standard twin-stick shooting affair, with welcome dungeon crawler mechanics, co-op play and social features that are likely to attract a solid little community. For anybody whose patience hasn't been gnawed to pieces by zombies this past year or so, Dead Nation is easy to recommend.

Although it's clear that it doesn't express its full potential, Dead Nation proves to be a well crafted product that will probably appeal to both fans of the genre and potential newcomers.

Dead Nation is fun for a short while, but only if you're playing it online or in co-op. The shooting stages are not exactly epic and it makes absolutely no difference which character you're playing. What a pity.

In an industry that pumps out tons of zombie games each year, there's nothing incredibly distinctive about Dead Nation.

We get the impression that Housemarque just made the minimal effort to avoid producing a repetitive game. And they've not succeeded.

It may not bring anything new or exciting to the table, but the game packs a solid amount of content in a competent package. At the end of the day, though, Dead Nation is not quite a must-play experience, just a satisfying and enjoyable one.

A fairly cynical attempt to mix Left 4 Dead with a twin stick shooter, but there are still some interesting ideas in amongst the far too familiar ones.

It's not an exceptional entry into the genre but a decent play. Fans of arcade-style top-down shooters will likely have fun, particularly if they have an itching to prove themselves on the leaderboards, but most others can probably find better ways to slate their lust for undead slaughter.

It's just a pity that a developer with the unmistakable talent of Housemarque hasn't seized the opportunity to tweak, twist or otherwise refresh an overused formula.

Housemarque has certainly put in the effort, but the twin-stick shooter might simply be more rewarding when you're skidding over the smooth-scrolling surface of one of Super Stardust's wraparound arenas than stumbling through darkened alleyways with a tangle of undead shambling after you. [Jan 2011, p.100]