Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green is a first person shooter based on the movie of
George A. Romero Land of the Dead.
History
The game is a prequel to the movie, and takes place during the first moments of the zombie epidemic.
The player takes the role of Jack, a humble farmer far from the civilization that one day finds the surroundings of his house infested with zombies. Jack fights for his way through the zombies, first crossing the farm of his neighbors to see that they were still alive, then through the nearest town. Jack finally tries to escape with the help of Otis, a truck driver who was being held in a police station at a fortified place made by orders of Mr. Kaufman whose aim is to be a place to test the undead. Jack is hired by Kaufman to clear out a luxury high-rise, Fiddler's Green, by killing all the zombies inside so that the humans can move in.
There are only two human characters in the entire game: Jack himself, and an escaped convict named Otis who allies with Jack for a couple of missions. An un-named doctor and Mr. Kaufman from the film also briefly appear in a couple cutscenes, but have no dialogue.
Gameplay
Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green utilizes traditional first-person shooter gameplay. Players can use a variety of either melee weapons or firearms to fight through the zombie hordes. Some weapons are capable of dismembering the zombies, while other weapons are not.
The Multiplayer Component of the game consists of many online gametypes. These consist of your average deathmatch and team deathmatch modes, but they also decided to throw in a co-op survival mode where players are trapped in a small map where they must survive for a chosen amount of time. In this mode the weapons respawn in the same spots every time, allowing the players to dodge the burden of ammo shortages.
Weapons
Melee
- Baseball Bat
- Golf club
- Axe
- Punch/Fist
- Hammer
- Shovel
- Lead pipe
Firearm
- Glock 26
- Single Action Revolver
- Lever-action .22 Rifle
- Pump-action Shotgun
- M16 rifle
- Bolt-action Sniper Rifle
Explosive
- Hand grenade
- Molotov Cocktail
Reception
Critic reviews for the game have been generally negative, while player review scores have generally rated the game as above average. According to metacritic.com, the average reviewer score is a 32 / 100 while Users scored it 5.6/10. There appears to be a thriving modding community for the PC game as well as a loyal fan base. This could be attributed to the fact that the game lacks any kind of protection, allowing a single copy to be ripped and used by any number of people and computers.
External links
- Groove Games's official page for the game
- Official 1.1 version patch, including mod support and required for current multiplayer play for the PC version
- GameSpot's review of Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green
- Undeadgames.com, custom maps, and mods endorsed by the original developers of LOTD.
- LivingDeadMedia.Com, a Mod and Map Resource for LOTD and other zombie games
- Dead Awake - a new single player game built on top of Land of the Dead
- Dead Epidemic - Another new single player game built on top of Land of the Dead
- BeyondUnreal's Legacy Unreal Engine page for Land of the Dead
- Rising-Dead.Com | a place to go for MAPS, MODS, And Updates about everything Zombie related
