Characters And Story
Undead Knights is set during the time of knights and kings, and in this case, a very evil queen. The story takes place in the kingdom of Cavalier, and has the player seeking revenge through the eyes of three members of the Blood family. The Blood family were slaughtered in their entirety whenever Romulus, a loyal knight to his king, insisted that the king listen to his people rather than bend to every will of the mysterious and persuasive Queen Fatima. In retaliation for this insolence, the King has the Blood family murdered. A dark power over takes Romulus and he uses this power to resurrect his younger brother Remus and his newly wed wife Sylvia from the dead.
Players learn more about this dark power, known as The Void, as they play through the campaign of twenty missions. The missions are split into four sets of five, with each set taking place in a different locale that brings the Bloods closer and closer to the castle of the King and Queen Fatima. In between each mission, players have the choice of using Romulus, Remus, or Sylvia. Each character is upgradeable, too. Upgrades are purchased before mission start, and you can purchase upgrades for any of the three characters, not just the one you used in the previous mission. Currency for upgrades is Dark Energy, which players earn at the end of missions by collecting lots of souls during said mission and completing the mission quickly. How many souls you collect, your mission completion time, and your overall rank for a mission is scored based on the S-E system. Available upgrades include goodies like increasing max HP, weapon damage, and each character can also learn a few new combos.
I thought Tecmo did a nice job in varying up the character types. Each character has a distinctive feel and behavior, with Romulus being the most balanced and ultimately the one I use the most. Romulus wields a large sword and is both powerful and swift. Romulus is the character on the cover and while the other two characters are well represented in the story, I got the feeling Romulus was the protagonist. His younger brother Remus wields two short swords and moves about very swiftly and acrobatically. I started my campaign with him but was just feeling a little underpowered against some of the bigger foes. Then there is Sylvia, the daughter of the King of Cavalier who married Remus on the night of the slaughter. She carries a massive scythe and uses large sweeping motions that will often knock down her enemies, although if she misses she’s slower to recover than the other two.
The King’s expansive army and the ever-growing influence of Fatima is far too large for even a lone undead warrior to destroy. In addition to hack and slash third person action from the playable character, you must also create and utilize undead knights to survive. This is done by grabbing a knight with Circle; when you do, your dark power seeps into them as a meter fills up. When full, they’re turned into a fast-moving zombie that you can control. By default, zombies will simply attack anything that isn’t you, but players will need them for other uses, too. Before I get into those other uses, let me also mention that the better way to take an enemy and turn it into a zombie is by hacking and slashing away at them until they flash red. Depending on the enemy type, this will take anywhere from a few seconds to impossible, but you can always identify the weaker knights. When they flash red, you’ve got about two seconds to get over to them and press Circle. When you do, you get a quick shot of health and the foe instantly turns into a zombie instead of having to fill up that circular meter I mentioned earlier. Most knights in the second half of the game can easily break out of your grasp long before turning into a zombie, so you have to weaken them first with attacks — besides, the health bonus you get from these flashing red enemies is vital.
Players can get up to ten zombies fighting alongside them. The zombies have a fairly substantial health system that allows them to take some bashing, but even if they haven’t died, within about a minute they collapse into dust. This isn’t a big concern though, because there is constantly a source of fresh enemies to fight. It’s good that there is this constant flow of enemies in that it feeds the zombie mechanic, but it’s also one of several play mechanics that promote a contrived, repetitive gameplay experience. I’ll explain that later on, but let me expand on the many uses of the zombies, first.
Using Your Zombies
Your zombies aren’t very helpful when they are just fighting knights as they get slaughtered (again) pretty easily. You can control zombie actions by holding down the Right Trigger and using the analog stick to sweep through objects in the game world, like enemies and structures. Wherever your red crosshair lands during this control mode is where the zombies will go. Sending a pack of them against a basic knight will often work, but most enemies are too powerful and will repel any number of zombies you throw at them. That said, there is a lot more you can do with the zombies to help even out the playing field. Players can Zombie Clutch any of their zombies by walking up to them and tapping circle. On that note, I thought Tecmo did a good job with how players grab other characters — often, there are a lot of characters swarming around you, but for as many times as I grabbed one, I rarely got the one I didn’t want to grab. In other words, it just seemed like the game sort of knew which character I wanted to grab out of a bunch. For example, it’s better to grab a flashing enemy than one of your zombies, and it seemed like just about anytime there was a chance to get either, I got the flashing enemy.
Alright, so getting back to the Zombie Clutch…when you have a zombie in your grasp, it’s worth noting that you walk instead of run and you can’t do your evasive rolling maneuver without automatically dropping the zombie. Anyway, with zombie in hand, you can throw them at objects and enemies with another tap of Circle, or Square, known as a Zombie Toss. Throwing zombies into an enemy will often stun them, indicated by them kneeling to the ground with stars above their head. When stunned, you can immediately transform them into zombies if you can get to them before they recover, just like flashing red enemies. Players can also sacrifice a zombie by slamming them into the ground, creating a circular shockwave that can stun multiple enemies. This Zombie Crush tactic is the best way to take down knights on a horse.
Tossing and Crushing zombies is the only way to open up the defenses on some enemies that wear massive full armor and shield. Also, I thought it was cool that you can (and should) throw up to three zombies on the massive enemies, including some bosses. This was another mechanic where the player doesn’t have to precisely aim at the boss to get their Zombie Toss to work, which is good, because it can be hard to get the distance and camera in order before getting smashed by the massive enemy. With three zombies dangling off of them, these big foes get stunned and fall to the ground, leaving them open for a series of punishing attacks and even the ability to (slowly) turn them into undead.
Using Your Zombies: Part Zwei
Your zombies are also capable of destroying objects. Players will encounter archer towers, large doors, walls, catapults, and cannons that can be destroyed with the control mode. Usually, destroying objects doesn’t require any set number of zombies, although certainly the more you can send over the faster the object is destroyed. Other uses require at least a specific number of zombies, and an on screen prompt will inform you of the required number. These uses include holding up a falling ceiling of spikes so that you can safely pass through, destroying certain barriers, and laying down and creating a bridge with their bodies.
Players will go through zombies quickly, and a constant supply of enemies is needed to keep your ranks filled. To compensate for that, Undead Knights uses respawns, tons of them, usually tucked away in a corner or two of a room. I’m usually against constant respawning enemies, but it’s a requirement here because zombies are needed to get passed certain areas. Without zombies, combat will quickly get to be extremely tough if not impossible and many level design elements require zombies to proceed. That much is fine, but it lends to the overall repetitive flow of the game.
Do It Again
Several other aspects contribute to what gets to be a very repetitive game. As bad as that might sound, I will also add that Undead Knights was hard to put down once I got started. While repetitive, it was fun enough and the story interesting enough that I wanted to press onward. While I may not go back for seconds, the campaign was overall enjoyable. That said, let me throw this one at you; I would describe the gameplay of Undead Knights as a combination of God Hand, Painkiller, and God of War. You’ve got the increased difficulty through more and more enemies aspect of God Hand, the room-by-room level design of Painkiller, and the hack and slash, big enemy types from God of War. I know that’s a little vague, and I don’t mean to imply the sum of the parts is something spectacular, but hopefully you get the idea.
So ultimately, gameplay breaks down to going room by room, defeating tougher and tougher challenges until getting to a boss fight. Not every of the twenty missions has a boss fight, but about half do; others will just end as you pass through a doorway, which is also where checkpoints are usually marked as well. Each mission begins with several enemies in front of you to help you quickly build up a few zombies. In the distance, you’ll generally see a formation of enemies and maybe structures that need to be taken down. Catapults are the worst for this, and fortunately they are rare. One particular part in the eleventh mission I have to mention felt so contrived and annoying — there were three catapults that had to be destroyed, and only your zombies can destroy them. Explosive munitions are being dropped around you every few seconds, with the enemy forces not taking any damage whatsoever from these blasts. Meanwhile, I’m being knocked into the air and having a tough time finding just a couple of seconds to get into control mode to order my zombies to take out the catapults (which you have to target one at a time). These catapults could also target you wherever you were in the room, even at impossible angles. This was one of the few very frustrating parts of the game, and while it was brief, I thought it pointed out some of the underwhelming design decisions in Undead Knights.
Sometimes you can avoid enemy formations by running right past them, and I started doing this around the thirteenth mission. Before that, I would stay around and bash up as many respawns as I could stomach before pressing forward, but during that last third of the game, I was eager to run through any room I could. When I say rooms, I don’t necessarily mean a room literally, as the area could be outdoors, but suffice it to say that there is always some kind of door or barrier on the opposite end of the area that you are in that you have to get through. Sometimes you can run right through it, other times you have to defeat the ‘leader of the knights’ which will be one a few different kinds of big enemies, the most dangerous and coolest being the Behemoth. The Behemoth is an elephant that is decked out with armor. Other massive enemy types include Executioners who stand twice the height of everyone else. Taking out these bigger enemies is best done in the same way, every time: find three zombies, throw them onto the enemy one at a time, and then move in for some major damage. When the big fella or, later in the game for added difficulty, both big enemies are down, the door will open. Granted, it’s not always a big enemy, it might be an Oroboros Master for example, but you get the idea.
In a lot of ways, what you experience from the start of the game is precisely what you will do all along. Without several positive gameplay elements and a stubborn fun factor, that would be enough to tarnish a game. Fortunately, Undead Knights has just enough of what it needs to continue to be entertaining in spite of the repetition and several contrived gameplay elements.
Multiplayer, Presentation, Closing Point
Undead Knights does support multiplayer in an Ad Hoc environment. Modes include Survival Race, King Battle, and Undead Battle. In Survival Race, which supports up to four players, the goal is to get your character into a final room first. From here, the players fight each other to the death. King Battle is the most co-op style mode available and has up to four players battling against a zombie horde while simultaneously trying to defeat one of the game’s bosses. And yes, while I didn’t mention it earlier, right around the halfway point of the game players will start to randomly encounter hordes of evil zombies. Lastly, the Undead Battle mode sounds pretty funny, but as with the other modes I wasn’t able to test it for the purpose of this preview. In this mode, only two players are supported, and the idea is to throw zombies at each other; using your normal attacks on your foe will actually reduce your health. When your health is at 0, you are stunned and cannot move for a short period.
In terms of presentation, Undead Knights looks pretty good. The sheer number of characters on screen at once is pretty impressive, and the frame rate stays smooth throughout. Animations are mostly nice, and the camera works out well since you can re-center it on your character by tapping the Left Trigger. I was less impressed with the sound package, though. The soundtrack is 100% generic black metal (with no vocals) — I’m a huge metalhead, although I don’t like black metal. You can turn down the music fortunately, because it’s grating and bland throughout the campaign. On the other hand, voice overs and effects were good.
The final point I want to make about this preview article is that, obviously, I was playing a preview build of Undead Knights. Since this preview was created, I have no doubt that various fixes and changes were implemented and gameplay elements tweaked. Hopefully we’ll get the chance to do a full review, so check back for that. Even at this stage though, I’m already convinced that Undead Knights is a pretty cool game that I feel comfortably recommending you try out this Holiday.
