Home

 › 

Articles

 › 

Stop Porting Every Damn Game on the Market

Stop Porting Every Damn Game on the Market

ZombiU was one of the Wii U’s most distinctive games. It made use of the GamePad in a way that made sense. It wasn’t a controller. It was your backpack. Your command center. It wouldn’t be too far off to say the GamePad was your best friend in ZombiU . It was a game made for a specific system.

Alas, it was also your worst enemy. Because ZombiU was a roguelike survival game. If you weren’t in your bunker and thought you were safe, odds are you weren’t. The zombies were always there, and the precious moments you needed to change equipment, restore health with food, or find a location to run to on the map could cost you your life.

Now, ZombiU is coming to the PS4, Xbox One, and PC as Zombi , and I just can’t see it being the same. What made ZombiU special was that sense of tension that came from diverting your attention away from the screen. It was the realism. If there were a real zombie apocalypse and you were all alone, time management would be critical. You would need to weigh the options of stopping to check a map or dig through a backpack against constantly moving. Already with the Zombi port, it feels like that’s being stripped away.

It’s been confirmed that the minimap will be appearing onscreen. There are no images yet, so we don’t know if it will appear covering the full screen or as a small symbol in a corner of the screen. Regardless, it breaks the immersion. A big part of ZombiU was feeling as though you were living the game. Porting it to PS4s, Xbox Ones, and PCs breaks that.

Stop Porting Every Damn Game on the Market

It isn’t that Ubisoft isn’t trying. The company has already confirmed that Zombi isn’t going to pause the game when someone goes into their backpack. It’s attempting to preserve the nature of the beast. But saying it isn’t going to pause while you push a button to bring it up on screen and forcing someone to actually look away from said screen to manage items on a second touchscreen are too very different things. The latter is more of a conscious decision that carries greater weight.

ZombiU was a great and special game. It deserved a larger audience, because it did some amazing things and made people feel like the threat was real. It’s good that more people are going to experience it, but they won’t be seeing it the right way. My fear is that this won’t be a great port and people will come away from Zombi not understanding what made ZombiU so good.

To top