But for all the zombie bashing and photo taking you are going to do, there is an actual point to the game. That being your story. Remember, you are here to break a big story and that’s exactly what you want to do.
OK, so let me see if I can set this straight for you:
You end up meeting up with a few other survivors, two of which are government agent types. These agents are initially reluctant to work with you but through a series of events, realize you would make a much better ally then pain in the butt, so, the core storyline has you helping these agents discover the mystery of all these damn zombies. Now, there are several missions that must be accomplished in order to move the primary mission forward, that being your big story. But as you play you discover that there are many other missions that come up that don’t have anything to do with the main storyline. Think of it as an RPG, with side quests that are not crucial to the main game. Still, these side missions will have you running around the mall in order to rescue other human survivors and escort them back to the mall offices (a sort of base of operations).
Your contact in the offices is an elderly mall employee names Otis who calls you on the radio and informs you about possible survivors in the mall. Now I’ll tell you, this mall is really, really large. It’s almost like it was designed after all those giant supermalls around North America. It is essentially a giant circle shaped mall with a large park in the center and some fringe outcroppings. When you receive a call from Otis you can activate a menu that pulls up your wristwatch. There, you can select any of the current missions that are available, each mission has a timer bar connected to it, meaning you only have so long to complete the mission or it will be gone forever. Basically its a way to make things more real, if a person was hiding in the back of a bookstore, it would only be a matter of time before the zombies found them. So the timer bar is a good idea in my opinion. Now, this does make for some tough decisions because, eventually you will find yourself torn between running to one side of the mall to rescue a mother and child, or to the other side of the mall in order to keep the game’s core storyline afloat, remember, if you fail any part of the core storyline, the game will continue, but the main objectives are all gone.
Now from what I have read, there is a way to rescue every single person in the game, but I can’t imagine how to do it. I guess if you get the walkthrough guide you can do it, but otherwise I just don’t see how it can be accomplished. I’ll explain. Let’s say you are in the center of the mall, in the park. You have three missions in your log, all three are ticking down in terms of time, (just so you know, each mission doesn’t have the same amount of time given to it, some have plenty of time while others do not) and you do have plenty of time to accomplish them. But then Otis calls, and informs you of something else happening in the mall, it’s clear on the other side of the mall from your other missions and the timer is really short. Do you stop what you are currently doing and go try to accomplish the short timed mission, or do you ignore it and try and save the ones you have more time for? Of course, this can all be sorted out by merely not answering the radio when Otis calls, because if you don’t answer, then the clock doesn’t start on the new mission. It’s all about time management in this game and I stink at time management. But since the 72 hour clock still moves forward, people in trouble the first day simply won’t be around the second, whether you answer the radio or not.
