Review | Death Road to Canada

Cana­da always seems to be the goal of post-apoc­a­lyp­tic trav­el­ers seek­ing respite from the assault of the undead. I sup­pose the rea­son­ing is that it’s cold-enough up there that the zom­bie hordes won’t be able to cope, but Death Road to Cana­da offers a much more sil­ly and awe­some expla­na­tion for this. I won’t dis­cuss this here, you’ll have to make it to the bor­der your­self to find out. Instead, let’s talk about the goofy jour­ney that Death Road to Cana­da puts you through in this pix­el-based brawler.

Start­ing off, there are a lot of dif­fer­ent jour­neys to choose from in Death Road to Cana­da based on the length and dif­fi­cul­ty you’re look­ing to under­take. You can take a short­er route, which gives you less time to pre­pare, but does­n’t take as long. You can increase the like­li­hood that cus­tom or rare char­ac­ters will show up to make things a bit eas­i­er as well. If you’re feel­ing like a chal­lenge, there are also a large num­ber of options for increas­ing the dif­fi­cul­ty, though the game is plen­ty tough on its own mer­it. Once you’ve picked a mode and select­ed a start­ing char­ac­ter, then it’s time for that cold and zany dri­ve north.

There are two major por­tions of the jour­ney in Death Road to Cana­da, bro­ken down by dif­fer­ent sorts of game­play. One is where you are on the road, mak­ing deci­sions about deal­ing with ban­dits, camp­ing and fix­ing the car. This sec­tion reminds me more of The Ore­gon Trail, in that most of your deci­sions are made via text and then the con­se­quences are suf­fered auto­mat­i­cal­ly. Thank­ful­ly, no one has died of dysen­tery ran­dom­ly in any of my playthroughs, but death can still come swift­ly and unex­pect­ed­ly if poor deci­sions are made here. One of my favorite run­ning gags with this sec­tion is that you almost always have the option of just yelling “COOL IT!” in every sit­u­a­tion. It works about as often as you might think, almost nev­er, but it was an amaz­ing­ly hilar­i­ous moment when it did work once for me.

The oth­er part if the jour­ney involves loot­ing and sur­viv­ing the swarms of the undead. These sec­tions play more like a beat ’em up style game, where you’re using var­i­ous weapons you’ve acquired through­out your trav­els to plow through the zom­bie mass­es. The thing that struck me most dur­ing this sec­tion was the catchy and cheery music play­ing dur­ing these loot­ing sequences. It actu­al­ly fits the goofy them­ing around Death Road to Cana­da quite well, but it felt a lit­tle off in terms of a bleak zom­bie apoc­a­lypse. That is, until I stayed out a lit­tle too late and let the sun go down dur­ing one loot­ing sequence. The music shift­ed and the tonal change hit me like a ton of bricks, send­ing me pan­ick­ing back to my car as the zom­bie horde grew to an immense size and my sight was blocked by the darkness.

In most jour­neys, when the orig­i­nal hero has been felled, the jour­ney has come to an abrupt end. Death Road to Cana­da dis­agrees with this phi­los­o­phy and argues that if there is even one per­son remain­ing, why not con­tin­ue along to the end. Any time the sur­vivor you con­trol dies, if you have at least one com­pan­ion with you, then con­trol will be shift­ed to a new sur­vivor to com­plete the quest. Com­pan­ions do require extra food, but can be handy in com­bat­ing the zom­bie hordes and car­ry­ing on if you become chow for the undead. These com­pan­ions can be found ran­dom­ly, or active­ly recruit­ed in camps found along the road. Not all char­ac­ters are made equal­ly how­ev­er, and often the com­pan­ions you find will have cer­tain strengths and weak­ness­es. In one run, I found a very handy mechan­ic, who saved my car from break­ing down mul­ti­ple times, but they were ter­ri­ble in a fight.

Though each jour­ney starts off fair­ly fresh, Zom­bo points can be earned through­out your runs to unlock bet­ter traits for your char­ac­ters that you use. This is the one aspect of pro­gres­sion made through­out the game. It’s a lit­tle tough to get your head around this sys­tem and I wish it were a lit­tle eas­i­er to see what you’ve already unlocked, but I like the idea that there can be some pro­gres­sion, but each run is still basi­cal­ly fresh.

The humor in Death Road to Cana­da is prob­a­bly on its best traits. The goofi­ness is ever present, but does­n’t over­stay its wel­come. There were mul­ti­ple gen­uine laughs out of my var­ied runs through Death Road to Cana­da and the writ­ing is quite clever in the dri­ving sec­tions. It can be a lit­tle cheesy at times, but noth­ing too egre­gious as to war­rant much more than an eye roll here or there.

Pros:

• Tough dif­fi­cul­ty makes a win feel so much more sweet
• Clever and fun­ny writ­ing through­out the dri­ving sections
• Music tonal shift from day to night floored me

Cons:

• Game is VERY hard, which could turn some peo­ple off
• Zom­bo Point sys­tem is a lit­tle hard to under­stand and dif­fi­cult to manage
• Jokes are occa­sion­al­ly cheesy

Death Road to Cana­da is a goofy and fun romp to the Cana­di­an bor­der in a zom­bie-filled world. The dif­fer­ent game­play sec­tions are han­dled well and the writ­ing is sharp and clever, enter­tain­ing through­out the jour­ney. The ran­dom events that hap­pen through­out each playthrough make them all inter­est­ing in their own way and there’s a good amount of cus­tomiza­tion that can be done to add the play­er’s own spin. Now make sure to COOL IT and go grab a copy of Death Road to Cana­da today on PC, PS4, Xbox One, Nin­ten­do Switch, iOS and Android.

Final Score: 9 out of 10

PS4 review copy pro­vid­ed by Plan of Attack.