Chicken is the greatest meat and zombies are the perfect monsters. Doesn't matter where you place them or what they're doing. Bottom line; their creepy, they're as nauseating as road kill, and dismembering/blowing their $#%$^#$ brains out never gets old. With that being said, I'm fully prepared to welcome the upcoming FPS Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green with arms so wide I could hug an entire zombie battalion at once, thus creating the biggest undead hug the world's ever seen.

Before I get into the game I have to admit that I'm quite confused because this title pretty much just appeared out of nowhere. It's like one minute there was Hip Game's and Kuju Entertainment's City of the Dead, and now all of a sudden there's this title that's being published by Groove Games and developed by BrainBox. Now from what I've cobbled together Hip Game's recent woes has resulted in City being tossed into zombie limbo, and if that's truly the case then I wish Kuju the best of luck. Its title made a small yet impressive E3 showing and it, like this game, is an FPS that lets you cut swath through armies of bloodstained freaks. Anyway, I hope the game resurfaces at a later date.

So now we come to Land of the Dead, a FPS that's loosely based on the recently-released George Romero film. In it you play as a farmer named Jack who's somehow managed to make it to Fiddler's Green, a luxurious building that houses only the most elite survivors that have yet to be introduced to the infectious zombie bite. Built by one Mr. Kaufman, the shady and powerful head honcho in charge offers you a special job that is accompanied by a generous reward. What this task is and whether Jack takes Kaufman up on his offer is a mystery, but regardless of his decision, he'll still have to hoof it across 20 levels populated with all sorts of terrors.

Twenty levels enables the developers to cover an insane amount of ground, meaning you'll start at your quaint Little House on the Prairie homestead and battle your way through cornfields, sewers, back alleys, and the city streets. Also, and because this wouldn't be an FPS without them, you'll be able to wield all sorts of weapons including a Glock, revolver, sniper rifle, shotgun, flame thrower, grenade, Molotov cocktail, lead pipe, fire axe, baseball bat, hammer, shovel, your bare hands, and a gold club.

Trust me when I say that you'll definitely need all of this stuff. The game's levels are infested with zombies male and female, fat and skinny. All of them feature those eerie white eyes, grayish skin, and blood-stained clothes, and they'll get even bloodier once you shove a shotgun up their @$$es since they feature various points of dismemberment. Blowing or chopping off the head is still the most effective way to stop the bastards, but you'll also be able to lop off arms and legs. The game has a fairly high level of gore, so planting a bullet right between a creature's undead eyes will cause its head to explode into several fragments.

A game like this just shrieks for a multiplayer mode and BrainBox will answer the call with play for up to 8 people on the PC and Xbox Live. Ten maps await you as well as the game modes Capture the Flag, Deathmatch, Team Deathmatch, and something called Invasion.

City of the Dead sounded cool but it's visuals aren't super amazingly gorgeous, but thankfully, Land of the Dead's graphics appear to be a notch or two more impressive than its counterpart. BrainBox is clearly not pushing any PC boundaries, but the zombies look menacing enough (especially the ones that are on fire) and the change of scenery (from farm to office to city) keeps things varied and exciting.

If I had to guess, I'd say that Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green is going to be a guilty pleasure but not exactly a revolutionary title. We'll run around, decapitate zombies, decapitate more zombies, call it a day, and not be any worse off because of it. However, I have my doubts that it'll be the definitive zombie survival experience, which at this point will require next generation technology and several imaginative minds to craft it. But in the mean time, I'll play Land of the Dead, and I'll more than likely have a fun time with it. Groove hasn't announced an official release date, but it's slated to debut sometime during October 2005, just in time for Halloween.

people give it 5 star and good comments if u like this game

System requirement:
32 mb video card
256 mb ram
pentium III or higher

Download: 213 MB