I fired up the demo the recently released Zombie Apocalypse this past weekend, being a pretty big zombie game fan. I’m starting to worry that zombie games are beginning to over-saturate the market, like World War II games in the past. But hey, zombies are the “in” thing for gaming right now, thanks to quirky titles such as Dead Rising to the more hardcore Resident Evil and Left 4 Dead games.
In Zombie Apocalypse, you play as one of four “survivors”, and are locked in a “room” the size of a couple screens. In this “room”, zombies come pouring in from all over, and you need to manuever yourself in such a way that you don’t get surrounded while firing your weapon at zombies or background items to destroy the zombies. It’s a very simple game: left stick moves, and right stick fires your weapon. Special weapons spawn at random on the stage, allowing you to pick up shotguns, grenade launchers, flamethrowers, etc. The zombies differ a little bit too, as some are slow, some can fire weapons, etc. I had some issues with the aiming on the right stick, as I would want to fire diagonally at times but it wouldn’t register, and the end result would be a frustrating death. But maybe that frustration is inherent to any right stick controlled shooter?
Up to four players can take on these waves of zombies, with a total of 55 waves (or days, as the game calls it). Like the other survival modes in FPS games, there’s no real goal to playing through this except for achieving a high score for the leaderboards and bragging rights. Killing several zombies in a row increases your combo chain (probably a nod to “The Club”), and clearing levels without getting hit also merits a score bonus. After playing the three level demo, there wasn’t anything compelling me to want to play it any further since each level in the demo was really more of the same. This game may ultimately end up in the same boat as The Club, a game that has interesting scoring mechanics, but these days the general public doesn’t seem to play action games to get high scores.
One advantage that the FPS games’ survival modes have is that they use the game mechanics from the FPS game itself, allowing you to play an enjoyable mode with the sound gameplay that each FPS’s mechanics already provide. Zombie Apocalypse has little depth in gameplay design, as you’re just running around the room in two dimensions and firing your weapon. In a way, it’s almost like Geometry Wars, but under a zombie artistic finish. Some might be fine with that, but I believe Geometry Wars’ time has passed.
The timing for Zombie Apocalypse is just too late. Practically everyone has Halo 3 ODST, Gears of War 2, Left 4 Dead, or Call of Duty World at War. They’re probably enjoying one of the survivor modes from those games already – and that’s what I recommend as well. Skip over making yourself and your friends buy this and pick up one of the more complete packages of the aforementioned retail games, as they generally offer a more satisfying wealth of gameplay modes in a combat engine that’s just more fun to play. They’re a little more expensive, but if you’ve saved $10 from not buying this game, you’re already a bit closer to getting to one of bigger titles!
