ZombiU Story Revealed; Wii U Killer App?

The Wii U is arriving in a couple of weeks and along with it a highly impressive launch lineup that is sure to make its case among hard core gamers. But while 'Batman: Arkham City' and 'Black Ops' are great titles to begin with, Nintendo's secret weapon may be an unknown new franchise.

ZombiU is Nintendo and Ubisoft's response to no Resident Evil 6 on the Wii U. Based on the reviews RE 6 garnered on other consoles, ZombiU may be the best zombie game on the market during this holiday season.

For the uninitiated, ZombiU is a remake of Ubisoft's first commercially published game Zombi, which was released in 1986.

In a video released by IGN, the developers elaborated on the game's story and characters. The story takes place in modern 2012 London during a zombie breakout. Gamers will play one of the survivors and set out to find and decipher the writings of 16^th century scientist, John Dee, to find out the root of the current Zombie Apocalypse.

The development recreated major sites of the great city such as Buckingham Palace.

Among the main characters is the Prepper who guides characters. Sandra is one of the leaders of a secret organization known as the Ravens of Dee that spent years studying John Dee and wants to help survivors escape London. Doctor Knight has survived in the Palace and has searched out the cure for years. Gamers will also run into other survivors to see how they survived the Apocalypse.

Watch the video below:

The game works as a first person shooter that takes complete advantage of Nintendo's Gamepad tablet controller. According to a trailer previously released, the Gamepad gives players a wide range of abilities including functioning as a sonar scanner. It will also allowing gamers to change their inventory on the fly. Another neat feature is that while gamers try to unlock a door using the gamepad, the camera on the TV shows the zombies chasing after you to create tension.

In another sequence, the gamepad zooms in as the sniper scope. It also serves more immediate functions. If a player gets caught by a Zombie, simply pressing a button will not do the trick; they must shake free with the gamepad. It also seems that melee moves will depend highly on the gamepad as another sequence showed players going into the inventory, picking up an axe and then swinging it with the gamepad to kill the zombie. No information has yet been revealed as to whether this game is compatible with the regular classic game controller.

The other interesting aspect of the game is the fact that if a player dies, their character is permanently dead. Once they die, the player controls another survivor and can either kill the previous character's zombie form to retrieve items, or inject them with a special cure to return them to human form. The game will also have a multi-player mode in which friends can go to the spot where their friends died to retrieve their equipment.

The game launches alongside the Wii U and for the time being it is the exclusive killer app for Nintendo's system. If this game turns out to be what many are hoping, then it alone will sell a lot of Wii U consoles.

Trailer