Are zombies passé yet? You would think we’d be tired of them by now, stumbling or sprinting through our various pop culture medias. Games especially; it seems like at least two thirds of this years big game releases from Mass Effect 2 to Call of Duty Black Ops involved zombies or zombie like monsters. And The Walking Dead, the adaptation of Robert Kirkman’s epic comic series, was one of the most popular television events this year.

Red Dead Redemption was a game notable for being both fantastic and not involving zombies. Its traditional Wild West setting was like a playable Sergio Leone film. With its first full expansion pack Undead Nightmare (as opposed to the smaller content downloads we’ve had so far) Rockstar has added zombies anyway. Perhaps this is a plot by the secret cabal that rules the world to prepare us for the shuffling apocalypse?

Jogging, the natural enemy of all zombies, when the apocalypse comes the power walkers will be the first to go, thankfully

Anyhoo, Undead Nightmare adds an entirely new campaign to the Red Dead Redemption plot that works like an alternate universe version of the original games conclusion. It’s a stormy night and John Marsten has just arrived home to enjoy the company of his fork tongued but hot wife and smart alec son. Alcoholic farm hand Uncle hasn’t returned home, but when he does later in the evening, he’s developed a limp, also a lust for sweet, tangy human flesh. Things go down hill from here as both wife and son end up bitten and infected by the zombie plague. John sets out to try and find the source of the plague and hopefully a cure for his shambling loved ones.

The new gory coat of paint over the Redemption world goes further than the excellent GTA Episodes. In addition to following the story quests players can now complete missing persons quests, instead of bounties, and free graveyards from zombie infestation instead of bandit hide outs. Each town you come across has to be saved by clearing out the undead before you can access save points and quests in town and random encounters now involve people getting attacked by the undead. Rescued towns often need to be re-rescued after time lest you lose a save and quick travel point on your map. Completing missions and rescuing settlements earns you new weapons and ammunition, the latter is important as you’ll regularly be in desperate short supple until about half way through the campaign when the difficulty evens out.

The wildlife has also been affected with zombie animals threatening John and a few surprise mythical creatures to hunt. The four horses of the apocalypse are loose in the world and John can lasso each one as a rideable mount; given these supernatural steeds never tire and have special abilities against zombies its worth the effort to chase them down.

Of course if you get tired running away from zombies horses also have legs and are capable of running, some might say even better than people

Plenty of familiar characters pop up in the quest to assist John, or in some cases give him the predictable run around. Quests usually involve riding some where and killing someone, or in this case several drooling someones, with a few interesting missions that have you capturing certain types of zombies or, less fun, gathering plants.

The voice acting and cut scene scripts are as top notch as they were in the original and the perpetually gloomy and damp atmosphere keeps your mind on the macabre far better than the original sun blasted vistas would have done. Overall the campaign is enjoyable, not too short but not too long and the dynamic of dealing with the undead keeps the game intriguing enough for fans to return to the RDR gameplay without it deviating too much from the original style.

What really hurts Undead Nightmare, as it also did for Rockstar’s other mega hit GTA IV in some of the more frantic missions of the The Ballad of Gay Tony expansion, is the controls. Red Dead Redemption, much like GTA IV is primarily a cover shooter during missions, but Undead Nightmare doesn’t play like that. Zombies are every where and you need to keep moving and keep shooting in all directions to avoid them, it only takes a handful to swamp you and flail you into oblivion. You spend a lot of time running for your life, stopping to shoot, then running again and when the sticky controls fail a simple act like jumping over a fence or walking round a table you can get turned into zombie chow pretty quickly. Shooting while riding is worth a try, but if you’re moving at anything less than a hard to steer full gallop a zombie in spitting distance can pull you from your horse.

Later in the game the sticky controls are compensated with a few unique weapons that make zombie killing extremely easy and the difficulty seesaws dramatically from ‘running for your life’ to ‘duck shoot’. The unique weapons are fun to use but you’ll find yourself fast tracked to the games ending.

Zombie horses are convenient and on hand, luckily we're not yet able to smell the games we play, otherwise zombie horses would be extremely unpopular

Multiplayer features two new game modes. Undead Overrun is your Horde Mode as up to four players try and survive wave after wave of zombie attackers and a new free roam game mode Land Grab is a territory capture game which sees players race to various locations and defend them for a certain period of time. Expect to have your horse shot out from underneath you a lot. The multiplayer offers a few new zombie skins for players to use as well. While the multiplayer component is fun, especially Overrun if you can play with friends, Undead Nightmare is really all about the new campaign.

Undead Nightmare isn’t quite the equal on the original game. The shoehorning of a different genre into the Red Dead Redemption frame leaves things feeling a little bent out of shape at times. But it’s still a great expansion to a stellar game. If you enjoyed Red Dead Redemption and have been waiting for more cowboy action (by which I mean shooting guns and riding horses, get your brain out of the gutter) then this expansion will put you in a good mood. And, you know, zombies. Everyone likes zombies right?