It’s no secret that I love Housemarque, the amazing studio behind Super Stardust HD, Dead Nation, Outland, and Resogun. Anthony Amato and I played a ludicrous amount of Dead Nation on the PlayStation 3, and now that it’s been announced that Dead Nation: Apocalypse Edition is coming to the PlayStation 4, well… let’s just say I really need to get that second DualShock 4.
In case you don’t know what Dead Nation is, it’s a top-down, twin-stick, shoot-em-up zombie game, where you’re fighting through hordes of the undead with tons of amazing weapons. You can play it alone or with a friend, local or online multiplayer, at night with the lights off or in the middle of the day with all the blinds up. Apocalypse is an upgrade visually – “you can now play in full 1080p HD, with improved textures, rendering, and effects,” according to the PlayStation Blog – but that’s not all. They’ve also “improved the controls, adding in a quick weapon select so your favorite zombie decimator is never out of reach.”
Not only is the DLC, Road to Devastation, included in this version of the game – and not only can you submit challenges to your friends and others on the leaderboard to beat your score – there’s also Broadcast+ Mode, which blew my mind:
In this mode, you can stream your game to the masses interactively, and your viewers can influence the difficulty of your game. Periodically all your viewers, whether they be on PS4 or a web browser, have the option to vote between a positive and negative effect that occurs in your game. There are a total of 30 different voting effects that can occur, ranging from spawning zombie packs to giving the player ammo, or even disabling the player’s ability to sprint. But don’t worry; as a player you can get back at the masses, because voters will appear in your game as named zombies for you to exact your revenge on.
Dead Nation: Apocalypse Edition will be available on the PlayStation 4 next week, March 4, for $14.99 for regular users, and free for PlayStation Plus members. Oh, and they also dropped a hint that there will be an upcoming announcement about the Vita version. It’s like zombie-killing Christmas in here.
