Ok, go to the Xbox section of Gamespot and find and read the review of a certain late-in-the-year gem called Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green.

...Ok, now you're done. And I know that you're thinking one of two things: either "Wow. Just wow," or "How the f*ck to games like this get produced?" I know that I was actually in both boats.

It goes without saying that Land of the Dead was bad. Really bad. In fact, it was so incredibly bad that it's almost unbelievable. It's almost as if its unknown, ill-fated developer Brainbox Games took every good idea for a zombie-shooting FPS and coded the complete opposite of each one. This is one of those games that's so remarkably bad that you just have to rent it with you're friends and play it for kicks. It's just that good (read: bad).

But despite the initial shock, sheer hilarity, and eventual disbelief that comes from playing Land of the Dead brings into the light for me another issue with the Industry that new developers can't seem to understand and publishers love to exploit. People think that a game can be bad as long as it's kept afloat by its "liscense". Just because a game has a certain ring world in it or has "Star Wars" in the title means that it must be gold, right?

Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you see things), this isn't the case. As liscenses grow and budgets bloat themselves, the actual games themselves get worse and worse. Just because Land of the Dead was based on the cult classic zombie films created by George Romero means that Romero fans everywhere will excuse the game's problems and buy it anyway? Unfortunately (and this doesn't change depending on viewpoint), this indeed IS the case. But I'll leave "the gamer is deteriorating with the Industry" rant for another time (mercifully).

So in conclusion, Land of the Dead: Road to Fiddler's Green is a symbol of degradation, a sign of collapse, and a mark of change. But, most of all, it's an astonishingly bad game. Just looking at the game box on the store shelf can induce seizures and cause the eyes to bleed. Stay very, very far away.

~N