Previews// Red Dead Undead: The Multiplayer

In each wave, a coffin will be placed randomly on the map. They'll be signified by a yellow dot. Inside the coffin, your team will find ammunition for your weapons and extra time to add to the clock. The only thing is, one man has to open it to get the goods, and doing so takes a fair amount of time. You have to put your trust into your friends – who let's face it, aren't always reliable with a shotgun.

Other times, you're blindsighted by the distance of the wave's coffin on the map – it could be just a few paces behind you – and you reckon you could handle getting bonuses on your own. So out you plod, with your friends following miles behind, and just as you are about to open the box some lanky bugger pops out of the dirt and starts nibbling on your arm. Finished.

Of course, you can pick up new weapons on the field from time to time – they appear as green icons on the map – and all of the tools you can use as John Marston in single-player can be used to your strategic advantage in multiplayer. Lure some zombies away by chucking some Bait over to the side, then lob some dynamite to clear the pack.

When you reach your inevitable end (amidst never-ending taunting by the creepy voiceover bloke) your score is tallied and your wave number displayed for all to see. So in six or so games, my team went from reaching Wave 12, to barely getting through Wave 5. It can be that harsh sometimes. But I love it.

The second multiplayer mode introduced in Undead Nightmare is called Land Grab. This doesn't have anything to do with zombies unfortunately, and it uses the main game's Free Roam mode – to avoid fragmentation of online play (apparently), there's no Free Roam mode in the Undead Nightmare expansion, so you're going to have to jump into the original game for this'n.

It's essentially a zone capture mode, with each player assigned a piece of land at the start of each match, and the aim being to control as much territory as possible whilst defending your hard work from opponents. The longer you hold a piece of land, the more experience points you get, and the same is true for killing incoming land-snatchers – cap off your foes and you get XP for defence. This works with posses too, for some team-based fun.

There are seven maps for Land Grab - Armadillo, Blackwater, Chuparosa, Escalera, Las Hermanas, MacFarlane’s Ranch and Thieves Landing – and you'll need to visit those respective towns and find the special marker to initiate a game.

Rockstar tells me that anyone can jump into a Land Grab game, regardless of whether you have purchased the Undead Nightmare DLC or not – but only those who own the expansion can actually start a game. It's a nice way of doing it without shutting anyone out, I reckon.

Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare is going to be released on PlayStation Network and Xbox Live Marketplace on the 26th October for £7.99/800 Microsoft Points respectively. There's also going to be a disc-based retail release featuring the Undead Nightmare, Outlaws to the End, Legends and Killers, Liars and Cheats and all Multiplayer Free Roam packs on one disc.

Just in time for Hallowe'en, and I wouldn't be surprised if this is the one game everyone's going to jump online with come the 31st.