Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare Pack

It's a testament to Rockstar's confident design work that they've been able to drop zombies, that most played-out and over-exposed cultural meme, into their epic western landscape without the end result feeling like a silly distraction or gimmicky Halloween mash-up.

This is, to all intents and purposes, a sequel, albeit one that takes place in a twisted alternate timeline where John Marston returned home to his family just as the dead rose from their graves. Where other developers approach downloadable content with a weary, obligated mindset that asks "Is that enough yet?", Rockstar throws itself into the process with an enthusiasm that asks "What else can we add?"

This, then, is an entirely new single-player campaign garnished with a couple of multiplayer extras, some new Achievements or Trophies for your OCD needs, and a bunch of fun new weapons and features. And while everyone else seems to be creeping up to the 1200 Microsoft Points barrier and tiptoeing beyond, this all comes with a remarkably reasonable 800 Point price tag (£7.99 / €9.99 on PSN).

Right from the start, it's clear this was never intended to be a quick zombie-themed reskin. As with GTAIV, five months on from the release of the original game the Red Dead Redemption experience has been refreshed, relaunched and reinvigorated by a robust, polished spin-off storyline, complete with lengthy cut-scenes and full voice acting from all the major characters and most of the supporting cast, too. Even the little dialogue asides that trigger as you ride past have been updated to better reflect the Gothic malaise now afflicting the frontier.

The thrust of the story is that John Marston must discover what has caused the undead plague and find a cure for his infected wife and son. As always, this seemingly urgent mission is easily postponed as you help out random strangers, undertake ambient challenges and reconnect with old friends through a scattering of optional side-quests.

Save points are in the same places as before, but now must be kept free of zombie infestation if you're to use them. Once you've helped the survivors of places like Thieves Landing and Blackwater fight back an incursion, it'll remain as a safe haven for a few in-game days at least. With over 20 such save points to manage, there's a danger that too much time is spent rattling between old locations for no good reason, but it never becomes distracting and it brings a welcome hint of Dead Rising's panicked time management into play.

Rockstar's mission design is starting to look a little threadbare these days – there's a lot of fetch-questing and shuttling between waypoints to trigger cut-scenes – but the addition of the undead changes the game world so completely that it's easy to forgive the familiarity of some of the overarching scenarios.

The undead also, sadly, make the less elegant features of the game's combat engine rather more noticeable. Red Dead Redemption was, as far as action goes, very much a cover-based shooter. Cover is useless when hordes of slobbering zombies are lunging towards you, so you'll spend more time back-pedalling, using Dead Eye pretty much constantly to ensure a steady stream of instant-death headshots. This makes it easy to get tangled up in scenery, lodged in doorways or just stymied by a pile of corpses that wrap around your feet like so much fleshy spaghetti.

Thankfully, the ghouls are not the sharpest tools in the shed and can be outsmarted by finding a convenient rooftop vantage point from which to pick them off. This, of course, can also leave you stranded as more and more of the bastards come moaning out of the wilderness to see what the fuss is about.