ZombiU

In ZombiU, a first-person set in London, the player is a survivor of a zombie apocalypse. They are contacted by the Prepper, a mysterious figure who tasks them to maintain his safe house in order to be properly prepared for survival in this new destroyed London, all while the survivor seeks out a cure for the infection at the behest of Dr. Knight, a scientist/doctor stationed at Buckingham Palace. The player has a number of ways to deal with enemies, and can confront the zombies with firearms, land mines, and Molotov cocktails.

They can use an unbreakable cricket bat, which does less damage than other weapons. There are several types of zombies, including those which explode, are armored, or spill corrosive fluid. The zombies are sensitive to light, and are attracted to a player who is using a flashlight or flare. Sound produced by firearms will also attract nearby enemies to a player, who can push them away with their weapon.

Four hundred years ago, scientist John Dee made what was known as the Black Prophecy. The Prepper, an ex-army, no-nonsense man, prepares for the coming apocalypse, and a secret society known as the Ravens of Dee researches Dee's predictions to stop them from taking place. In November 2012, the Black Prophecy begins to be realized in the form of an outbreak of zombies in London.

After the outbreak the player character is led to the Prepper's bunker, where he receives weapons, a bug-out bag and the Prepper Pad, a device with a built-in scanner and radar. The Prepper, a Raven of Dee, left the organization due to a difference in interpreting Dee's prophecy. According to the scientist, Black Angels would save the world; the Ravens thought that Dee was referring to their organization, but the Prepper believed that he was talking about something worse.

ZombiU was developed by Ubisoft Montpellier with an 80-person team; Ubisoft Bucharest provided additional assistance. The game's development paralleled that of Rayman Legends, another Montpellier project. It was produced by Guillaume Brunier, with Gabrielle Shrager its director and lead writer; Brunier and Shrager had collaborated on the development of From Dust. The team was approached by Nintendo to develop a mature game for their Wii U platform.

The team developed the game using the proprietary LyN game engine. Since the hardware design was incomplete, the team made a number of prototypical games and decided that the new title would extensively utilize the Wii U GamePad. Originally conceived as a tie-in for Raving Rabbids, ZombiU was described as an experiment by Montpellier in adapting the Rabbids franchise for a more "hardcore" audience. According to Guillaume, the monsters were based on the Rabbids because some people found the sound generated by the Rabbids annoying; in the game, players can "trash and destroy" them.

ZombiU received "generally favorable" reviews from critics according to review aggregator website Metacritic, with scores ranging from 4/10 given by GameSpot to 92% awarded by Official Nintendo Magazine. Although Montpellier was initially disappointed by some of the critical reviews, the studio was pleased with the game's overall reception.

James Stephanie Sterling of Destructoid wrote that ZombiU's zombies were intimidating by comparison with other zombie games. Sterling called it an "oppressive" experience, since players were diverted by the GamePad while the game continued in real time. This was echoed by Rich Stanton of Eurogamer, who thought that the system made the game experience scarier. According to Stanton, it was one of the few zombie titles which lived up to the phrase "survival horror".