This brilliant GTA 5 zombie RP mod As Paul and I make our way through Sandy Shores towards the Alamo Sea, I can’t shake the thought of Michael’s burning corpse. I picture him terrified, trapped and tethered by his seatbelt, the undead mindlessly clawing at the stationary SUV’s windows, his backwards maroon cap melting with the car interior around him.
“There were too many of them,” I tell Paul in an attempt to both reassure him and appease my conscience. In my head, I relive the fire, the smoke, Michael’s futile screams. “It was him or us. And I sure as hell wasn’t meeting my maker by one of those monsters.”
The rain falls heavily as we start our swim towards Grapeseed. I’ve never seen San Andreas so sparsely populated, which is grossly unsettling in itself. Then again, with one less mouth to feed, we might just make it out alive. Get to the air drop, then the safe zone and we’re grand.
I’m not proud of myself. I mean, my record in Los Santos, city of crime, indulgence and debauchery isn’t exactly clean to this point, but I feel like I’ve really pushed the envelope this time. The world has gone to shit, mercenaries run the streets, the undead stalk the sidewalks… and I’m still the biggest monster in San Andreas.
Housed within Grand Theft Auto 5’s community modification FiveM, RottenV is an in-development online server that turns the game’s otherwise bustling metropolis into a lawless zombie apocalypse. Members fight to survive the bloodthirsty NPC hordes, and communicate with other human players via voice chat in a world scant in resources and rife with disease.
Those familiar with GTA Online will know mods are a big no-no in its vanilla state, and getting caught using them can result in a permanent ban. FiveM, for those unaware, isn’t officially affiliated with Rockstar’s enduring crime simulator, but is ostensibly an online mod for GTA 5, that uses the base game solely to verify ownership.
Having surpassed 50,000 concurrent users in May—against Steam’s peak of 108,557 for GTA 5 in the same month—the increasingly popular FiveM plays host to a range of servers, including a number of roleplay maps and quirky modded offshoots. RottenV straddles both camps, and, for my money, is one of the most entertaining roleplay playgrounds the Grand Theft Auto 5 RP scene has to offer
During my previous GTA 5 roleplay adventures, I’ve uncovered some cracking stories—some thrilling, some twisted, some funny and some that are difficult to categorise. From experience, roleplaying in Rockstar’s crime sim can be immensely satisfying, but with such a vast open world to explore, filled to the brim with activities, jobs and distractions, engineering wholesome RP tales isn’t always easy.
One thing I love about RottenV, then, is the structure it forces onto each session. You start off by parachuting into the map, similar to modern battle royale games, and then make your way to centralised ‘safezone’ hubs, which offer refuge, water, food, weapon and item upgrades, as well as missions and quests. The base game’s ambient traffic, civilian and emergency services background audio is switched off throughout, the weather is normally terrible, and the only bodies found wandering San Andreas are up to 32 human players and NPC zombies.
After landing on the beach, I wonder at RottenV’s familiar but isolated setting, and struggle to get to grips with its unfamiliar format. Zombies stalk me from Vespucci to La Puerta as I make my way to the Legion Square meeting point, and I quickly learn that, like many a zombie movie, these blighters won’t go down unless they’re struck or shot in the head.
Download and review :Grand Theft Zombies 0.25a – Zombie mod gtav