The zombie apocalypse is upon us, and you are humanity’s last hope for survival. Today, we look at the unique PS5 experience, Night of the Dead Simulator, developed by Unkown People Lab, and published by Wild Sphere, S.L. Let’s not waste any more time and get stuck into everything on offer.

Our story is a simple affair. The end of the human race is near and the zombie attack is threatening the very future of humanity’s survival. With the cure in your hands, it is up to you, a DELTA team soldier, to deliver it and save humanity from extinction. Your helicopter has been taken down, crash landing en route, and now, you must journey far to the East and deliver the cure to the military base. With hopes of humanity’s survival fading, the military has decided to pull the trigger on the nuclear option. You are now running out of time and need to deliver the cure before time runs out and the bombs drop.

While there certainly isn’t great depth to this story, there is still plenty of silly fun to be had throughout the massive 17 km2 map of explorable terrain. On top of the main objective – delivering the cure and saving humanity – you also have the optional objective of securing communications at various waypoints around the map. Achieving these simple objectives can quickly become quite annoying, especially if you intend on making a beeline straight for the Military base.

Your journey will often be interrupted by the wail of the air-raid siren, an indication of an incoming zombie horde, and you must wipe out a set number of zombies in a certain amount of time. This will give you a brief reprieve from the masses, allowing you to gain more ground as you make your way towards your objective location. Should you not thin the numbers in time, the siren will sound once more, drawing the attention of another horde, and the number you need to slay will dramatically increase, and this can be quite frustrating.

With your six weapons at your disposal, and an abundance of ammo to be found, either in ammunition boxes or dropped after taking out zombies, you will quickly feel like a Lord of Destruction. At first, this seemed like a whole lot of fun, but then I realised that I barely even needed to aim, if at all. As long as my weapon was pointed in the direction I wanted to shoot, I was hitting something. It’s certainly great for those who like bullet-hell games, with mindless shooting and mowing down the masses, but as someone who thrives on the challenge, I was more than bummed out by the zero skill needed to play.

Zero skill level aside, I was completely sucked in by the unique body-cam viewpoint. It is such a cool and unique view, and I barely switched to 3rd person perspective. I loved how the view would shift as I moved around, particularly while running around, strafing from left to right, but I wish that the aim had been given some more attention. It would have made for a match made in heaven, and it would have provided the much-needed challenge.

With bombs exploding in the distance and flashes of gunfire, the game feels quite lively, making it appear as if there are other survivors still making their final stand against the zombie invasion. Zombie models are pretty gruesome in appearance but lack variety, with the same few models repeatedly appearing. The huge size of the map, while great and offering plenty of places to explore, sadly sees the same fate as the zombie models with most assets being reused way too often. I also came across several instances where objects didn’t appear to have been correctly placed, with many of them floating above the ground. It left me feeling as though the terrain and scattered items were a bit of an afterthought.

For the most part, the audio effects are serviceable. Weapon sounds are on point, with gunfire, reloads, and explosions in particular, sounding incredible. In contrast, however, the moans and groans of the zombie masses were laughable at first, but after a while, listening to the same few sounds began to wear very thin.

Night of the Dead Simulator is a zombie survival game that uniquely uses a body cam as the main perspective, and it does this well, but it sadly falls apart due to lacklustre gameplay that requires no skill. Looking at it from a different perspective, if you want to switch off with some mindless violence, hordes of mindless zombies and an abundance of ammunition make it a fantastic option.

Written by: Gary Nielsen