The game was designed ground-up to have both of Carnby’s hands controlled via the mouse, while his movement is controlled using the keyboard. What this means is that when you pick up an object, you have to move the mouse around in the direction you wish to flail it. While this may sound good on paper (it certainly seemed interesting in the trailers), all it manages to do is make the controls highly disjointed. It's an excruciatingly laborious challenge to do even the most basic things like swinging an axe or moving a corpse – stuff other games allow you to do just by pressing a button or moving your mouse.
In fact, the control scheme got so unbearable for me that after a few minutes, I just couldn’t take it anymore and had to quit the game. After a spot of yoga (to calm down and get rid of the frustration), I got back to the game, which I wouldn’t have bothered doing if I weren’t reviewing it (that’s right, I'd never have continued playing it out of choice). The controls didn’t get any less anal, but after an hour or so of misery, I finally started getting the hang of things.
This doesn’t mean the controls were good in any way; on the contrary, instead of being easy to pick up, the game requires you to sit and learn the way to control Carnby, and even after that it doesn’t feel natural. The way the controls are designed is completely counter-intuitive to the point that they actually have a key assigned to things you would never think of. For instance, one is assigned to ‘Leave Rope’ (which is ‘Print Screen’ by the way) while another is assigned to ‘Blink Eye’!
All’s not lost though, and midway through the game it did manage to redeem itself (a bit at least). As I mentioned earlier, the action takes place in Central Park; a small chunk of the game allows you to free-roam through the devastated region. As pointless as it is where the plot’s concerned, it’s a lot of fun to scour through the totaled cars and annihilated dustbins, salvaging materials you can use to kill the undead. This is the game’s best feature by far.
For instance, if you have an empty bottle and a screwdriver, find a totaled car, pierce the gas tank using the screwdriver, and then fill fuel into the empty bottle. Once that’s done, you can do a lot with that bottle of yours – you can stuff it with a piece of cloth and ignite it using your lighter to make your very own Molotov Cocktail (drinks anyone?), or you can pour some of that fuel on your gun’s ammunition to make your own incendiary rounds!
@ Praveen
