A game with thousands of zombies and everything as a weapon? What's not to like?
You are Frank West, a photo journalist who is sent to cover a story of something weird happening in the town of Willamette. You start the game in a helicopter and must take pictures of the people trying to defend themselves from the surrounding zombies. Every picture gives you points but will talk about that later. After that though, you are dropped off at the mall as Frank tells his pilot to pick him up in exactly 3 days. When going into the mall, you first learn about the countless zombies trying to break in (which they do shortly after). Now you must spend the next 72 hours trapped in a mall and find out who and what caused all this.
Or at least that what the game suggests you do, find evidence on what happened and discover the truth through a series of main missions. However, if you just want to spend the 3 days just killing zombies the whole time, the game gives you that option too. The missions overall are fun with many different objectives. In your spare time, you can also wander the mall and escort survivors back to the security room. Some psychopaths may get in your way as well, bosses in the mall who have lost their mind one way or another. The only annoying thing about this though is Otis, the janitor, won't stop calling you about escort missions and psychopaths.....I mean, he really won't stop calling you.
The game follows a real time clock. The way it works is 5 seconds=1 minute, 5 minutes=1 hour, 2 hours=1 day and 6 hours=3 days. So the main game takes about 6 hours but there are many things to do so replay value is still there including an "overtime mode" which continues the story if you finish all of the main missions in the "72 hour campaign" and a survival mode which is a test to see how long you can survive. You might feel a bit rushed because all missions are set on a time; each one starts and expires on a specific time so you must keep an eye on your watch constantly. If you let just one main mission expire, then you fail the whole main story, although you can continue playing if you want. This keeps things interesting but saving your progress is very frustrating at first. You can only have one file but if you die and then go to "save and quit", you keep your experience, level, etc., but you must start the campaign over. It's not so bad once you know how it works.
What weapons does this game offer? That's the beautiful part, when the game says "everything is a weapon", it means it. You can access just about any story and grab anything off the shelves and use them to fight off the zombies like baseball bats, shovels, balls, frying pans, CDs, pieces of wood, knives and many more to combat the hundreds upon thousands of zombies throughout the mall. There are also real weapons like hand guns and shot guns as well as different clothes you can wear and food you can eat to regain some health. This is a great concept and gives you a lot of freedom, though some "weapons" are better than others (the toys suck).
Killing zombies, completing missions, taking pictures and escorting survivors will all give you experience which you need to level up. Every level improves your status like more health, being able to run faster and improving offensive and defensive capabilities. Most of the time, however, levels give you new moves which you can only use when empty handed. Too bad level 50 is the max.
How can you resist a game that's about thousands of zombies and every weapon you could ask for at your disposal? This game may seem short but the overall gameplay will keep you playing through many times afterwords, not to mention the many unlockables. If you like zombie action adventure/survival horror games, this is the game for you.