AW is still far from perfect, but provides more fun and forward momentum than its predecessor...
The game’s humor received a small but nice bump upward in quality, as well. I got a pretty good chuckle out of the idea that the greatest, most entertaining level ever designed for a shooter was culled from AW due to budget limitations. Other features that appeared in the expansion were appreciably surreal and even a touch frightening on occasion; the Mad Cow Zombies actually shocked the heck out of me the first time one of them got all up in my grill after unexpectedly rushing at me from about ten yards away. Even though their Tourette’s-affected mumblings made their presence amusing, the decaying visage of each zombie was so well-designed as to deliver a few chills when they shambled up nice and close. Dude’s occasional fugues – when he saw through the façade of the visible world to the underlying char, rot, and slime of reality – reminded me of the similarly revealing visions in Clive Barker’s Lord of Illusions and, to a lesser extent, the fleeting glimpses of demons in Jacob’s Ladder. I also enjoyed the Tasmanian Cats and their deadly buzz-saw attack as well as the scythe and sledgehammer, the latter of which was helpful in bursting the noggin of those personal space-invading zombies.
AW inherited its share of problems from the original, mostly in the area of technical difficulties. The environmental sound was a bit wonky and tinny even on a decent Audigy 2. The game also crashed a bit more frequently than its predecessor whenever large groups of bots grew trigger-happy, especially – much like the original – during the town-wide free-for-all near the end of the game. Apocalypse Weekend’s gameplay, however, clearly reflected Running with Scissors’ attentiveness to fan feedback with more spit (among other fluids) and polish in its walkabout-free layout and eschewal of passive alternatives to problem solving.