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Zombie Apocalypse
Do we have a game about a zombie apocalypse yet? No? Okay, we'll call it "Zombie Apocalypse"!
September 28, 2009 | 1:04 PM PSTKombo's Review Policy: Our reviews are written for you. Our goal is to write honest, to-the-point reviews that don't waste your time. This is why we've split our reviews into four sections: What the Game's About, What's Hot, What's Not and Final Word, so that you can easily find the information you want from our reviews.
What the Game's About
Okay, guess what game I'm describing. It's a shooter that pits up to four heroes against hordes and hordes of mean, hulking, puking zombies. Take them down with standard issue weapons like shotguns and rifles, or blow them to bits with Molotov cocktails and bait-like explosives! No, it's not Left 4 Dead, it's the new Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network release: Zombie Apocalypse.
To be fair, however, Left 4 Dead wasn't the first zombie game and Zombie Apocalypse won't be the last, and when taken for what it is, rather than the overpopulated genre it represents, Zombie Apocalypse is actually quite a fun little game. Most importantly (to me, at least) is the price tag. Zombie Apocalypse will only set you back 800 MSP, or about $10. In a time when nearly every video game costs $60, it's a lot easier to take a chance on a game like Zombie Apocalypse.
What's Hot
The very first thing I noticed when I booted up Zombie Apocalypse was the soundtrack. The music in the game has a very lonely, dark feeling to it, and I felt that it set the mood perfectly. Zombie Apocalypse then wastes no time before dropping you right into the action. Within a couple presses of the A button you'll find yourself on Day 1 of the zombie takeover. You start off in an eerie graveyard with a standard assault rifle, but it's not long before you find a shotgun or some other more powerful weapon. To your right is an excavating shovel set to auto-pilot which looks like it's been digging the same spot for days. Wouldn't that make a handy zombie-crusher? Yes. Yes it would. The levels in Zombie Apocalypse are all just as detailed, each with several environmental hazards at your disposal, zombie disposal that is. You use the left joystick to run, which you'll be doing a lot of, and the right joystick to shoot, which you'll also be doing a lot of. In fact, from the time each level starts to the time it ends you have no downtime to speak of. You'll constantly be spraying bullets into the mass of zombies chasing after you, searching for a hole in their ranks to dodge through so you can live long enough to take down just a few more. Sounds hectic, right? Well, Zombie Apocalypse's multiplayer is even more frenetic. With up to 4 players occupying the screen, simultaneously blasting away at the walls of encroaching zombies, chaos is the name of the game. I found the chaos to be rather enjoyable and more fun than taking on the end of the world alone.
You have a set number of lives, but if you run out, the only penalty you'll suffer is the resetting of your score. You won't even have to restart the wave you were on; you just pick up right where you left off. This is really a blessing because with all of the one-hit-and-you're-dead zombies out there, you'll be dying regularly. If there was a larger penalty for dying, the game would probably get too frustrating to play. However, if you do find yourself getting overwhelmed, you still have an out: zombie bait. Tap either bumper on the controller and you'll toss out a cute, cuddly, and explosive teddy bear. This lovable stuffed animal is a pretty shade of pink and sounds dead-on like the Pillsbury Doughboy as he proclaims, "I'm stuffed with love… and C4." Don't ask me why zombies are always so attracted to explosives in video games, just go with it! After a few seconds of luring in zombies the bear detonates and sprays zombie guts everywhere. Don't worry, your explosions can't hurt you, and neither can your teammate's weapons or the environmental hazards. Actually, the only dangerous things in the whole game are the zombies.
What's Not
We all know about the rise in fame of zombie movies and games set in a post-apocalyptic world. This formula has become so common that many movie/game fans now recognize the genre "zombie apocalypse." Thus if there were a game or movie released entitled, Zombie Apocalypse, you would expect it to be a satire of the genre that pokes fun at its most common stereotypes. Well, it just so happens that there is a video game named Zombie Apocalypse, but it's not a satire at all. It does, in fact, use nearly every stereotype of the zombie apocalypse genre, but not in a satirical fashion. Zombie Apocalypse instead applies all of these overused techniques in a serious manner. Nothing is done tongue-in-cheek resulting in a mix tape of zombie themes rather than an original game. I mean, it wouldn't be fair to say that every zombie apocalypse movie or game should be a satire, but when you give your game such a generic title, it shouldn't be backed up by such a generic game.
There are 55 Days, or levels, in Zombie Apocalypse, which sounds like a lot of action in a lot of locations, but after you finish Day 7 you find yourself right back in the same eerie graveyard as Day 1. In fact, every 7 Day week you complete, you find yourself back in the graveyard. This 7 level cycle was obviously implemented to save the developers some time on a title that wasn't designed to make a large profit, but unfortunately they didn't do much to cover their time-saving techniques. Occasionally you'll play a level in near-total darkness with just a few feet of a light radius around you which helps to break up the monotony, but by the time you get to Day 55 you've seen all the levels so many times… Fortunately the game does a good job of throwing you some new zombies with different abilities to fight every once in a while, but again, once you get to Day 55 it's headed back in the direction of monotony.
While there is a lot of fun to be found in the simplistic nature of the game, it could have benefited from any kind of a feeling of progression. The characters you play as are exactly the same on Day 55 as they were on Day 1, the only difference is that more powerful weapons spawn on Day 55. The upside is that you can start on any Day you want without a handicap, but the downsides outweigh that perk from all angles. This lack of gameplay depth detracts from the replay value and gives you no real incentive to play the game through more than once other than to try and get a higher score on the leaderboard. Also missing from the game is any kind of boss fights. You simply kill enough of your standard zombies and then move on to the next Day. The result is a less gratifying and anticlimactic game.
Final Word
Zombie Apocalypse is a fun little shooter game with a few flaws, but most of those flaws don't seem too glaring when you bear in mind that it's a $10 Xbox Live Arcade title. There are better arcade titles out there, and even better shooter arcade titles out there (Geometry Wars, anyone?), but if you're looking for some multiplayer zombie mayhem that won't break the bank look no further than Zombie Apocalypse!
What the Game's About
Okay, guess what game I'm describing. It's a shooter that pits up to four heroes against hordes and hordes of mean, hulking, puking zombies. Take them down with standard issue weapons like shotguns and rifles, or blow them to bits with Molotov cocktails and bait-like explosives! No, it's not Left 4 Dead, it's the new Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network release: Zombie Apocalypse.
To be fair, however, Left 4 Dead wasn't the first zombie game and Zombie Apocalypse won't be the last, and when taken for what it is, rather than the overpopulated genre it represents, Zombie Apocalypse is actually quite a fun little game. Most importantly (to me, at least) is the price tag. Zombie Apocalypse will only set you back 800 MSP, or about $10. In a time when nearly every video game costs $60, it's a lot easier to take a chance on a game like Zombie Apocalypse.
What's Hot
The very first thing I noticed when I booted up Zombie Apocalypse was the soundtrack. The music in the game has a very lonely, dark feeling to it, and I felt that it set the mood perfectly. Zombie Apocalypse then wastes no time before dropping you right into the action. Within a couple presses of the A button you'll find yourself on Day 1 of the zombie takeover. You start off in an eerie graveyard with a standard assault rifle, but it's not long before you find a shotgun or some other more powerful weapon. To your right is an excavating shovel set to auto-pilot which looks like it's been digging the same spot for days. Wouldn't that make a handy zombie-crusher? Yes. Yes it would. The levels in Zombie Apocalypse are all just as detailed, each with several environmental hazards at your disposal, zombie disposal that is. You use the left joystick to run, which you'll be doing a lot of, and the right joystick to shoot, which you'll also be doing a lot of. In fact, from the time each level starts to the time it ends you have no downtime to speak of. You'll constantly be spraying bullets into the mass of zombies chasing after you, searching for a hole in their ranks to dodge through so you can live long enough to take down just a few more. Sounds hectic, right? Well, Zombie Apocalypse's multiplayer is even more frenetic. With up to 4 players occupying the screen, simultaneously blasting away at the walls of encroaching zombies, chaos is the name of the game. I found the chaos to be rather enjoyable and more fun than taking on the end of the world alone.
You have a set number of lives, but if you run out, the only penalty you'll suffer is the resetting of your score. You won't even have to restart the wave you were on; you just pick up right where you left off. This is really a blessing because with all of the one-hit-and-you're-dead zombies out there, you'll be dying regularly. If there was a larger penalty for dying, the game would probably get too frustrating to play. However, if you do find yourself getting overwhelmed, you still have an out: zombie bait. Tap either bumper on the controller and you'll toss out a cute, cuddly, and explosive teddy bear. This lovable stuffed animal is a pretty shade of pink and sounds dead-on like the Pillsbury Doughboy as he proclaims, "I'm stuffed with love… and C4." Don't ask me why zombies are always so attracted to explosives in video games, just go with it! After a few seconds of luring in zombies the bear detonates and sprays zombie guts everywhere. Don't worry, your explosions can't hurt you, and neither can your teammate's weapons or the environmental hazards. Actually, the only dangerous things in the whole game are the zombies.
What's Not
We all know about the rise in fame of zombie movies and games set in a post-apocalyptic world. This formula has become so common that many movie/game fans now recognize the genre "zombie apocalypse." Thus if there were a game or movie released entitled, Zombie Apocalypse, you would expect it to be a satire of the genre that pokes fun at its most common stereotypes. Well, it just so happens that there is a video game named Zombie Apocalypse, but it's not a satire at all. It does, in fact, use nearly every stereotype of the zombie apocalypse genre, but not in a satirical fashion. Zombie Apocalypse instead applies all of these overused techniques in a serious manner. Nothing is done tongue-in-cheek resulting in a mix tape of zombie themes rather than an original game. I mean, it wouldn't be fair to say that every zombie apocalypse movie or game should be a satire, but when you give your game such a generic title, it shouldn't be backed up by such a generic game.
There are 55 Days, or levels, in Zombie Apocalypse, which sounds like a lot of action in a lot of locations, but after you finish Day 7 you find yourself right back in the same eerie graveyard as Day 1. In fact, every 7 Day week you complete, you find yourself back in the graveyard. This 7 level cycle was obviously implemented to save the developers some time on a title that wasn't designed to make a large profit, but unfortunately they didn't do much to cover their time-saving techniques. Occasionally you'll play a level in near-total darkness with just a few feet of a light radius around you which helps to break up the monotony, but by the time you get to Day 55 you've seen all the levels so many times… Fortunately the game does a good job of throwing you some new zombies with different abilities to fight every once in a while, but again, once you get to Day 55 it's headed back in the direction of monotony.
While there is a lot of fun to be found in the simplistic nature of the game, it could have benefited from any kind of a feeling of progression. The characters you play as are exactly the same on Day 55 as they were on Day 1, the only difference is that more powerful weapons spawn on Day 55. The upside is that you can start on any Day you want without a handicap, but the downsides outweigh that perk from all angles. This lack of gameplay depth detracts from the replay value and gives you no real incentive to play the game through more than once other than to try and get a higher score on the leaderboard. Also missing from the game is any kind of boss fights. You simply kill enough of your standard zombies and then move on to the next Day. The result is a less gratifying and anticlimactic game.
Final Word
Zombie Apocalypse is a fun little shooter game with a few flaws, but most of those flaws don't seem too glaring when you bear in mind that it's a $10 Xbox Live Arcade title. There are better arcade titles out there, and even better shooter arcade titles out there (Geometry Wars, anyone?), but if you're looking for some multiplayer zombie mayhem that won't break the bank look no further than Zombie Apocalypse!
November 20, 2009
