OMG Zombies!

Developer: Laughing Jackal Ltd | Publisher: Ghostlight Ltd | Release Date: 2014 | Genre: Action / Strategy | Website: Official Website | Format: Digital Download

A zombie outbreak has hit Redfield City and decimated the population. All hope appears to be lost until one lone cop armed with a high-powered sniper rifle arrives on the scene. Instead of overwhelming firepower, he packs bullets coated in a zombie-exploding pathogen, but will it be enough to save the day?

The plot sounds like something straight out of a B-movie, but if the name hasn’t tipped you off yet, this isn’t a game that takes its story too seriously. The game might look like a typical arcade shooter where you fend off hordes of zombies all vying to munch on your brains, but this is not the case. Instead, your lone soldier starts each level perched safely on higher ground and can leisurely pick off zombies using a sniper rifle. The catch is that while levels teem with zombies, you only have three bullets.

Ordinarily, this would be an impossible task, but as your bullets in this game are coated in a special pathogen, it causes any zombie that takes a hit to explode in a shower of blood and gore. These exploding zombies cause a chain reaction, so it is actually possible to kill every zombie on a level using only one well-placed shot. To add another strategic element to the game, there are different zombie types that all react differently when shot. The standard civilians will explode while the police zombies will fire off a single shot in front of them when they go down. Then there are the acid zombies that melt into a corrosive puddle, electrical zombies that zap nearby zombies when shot, as well as soldier zombies that shoot at random angles when they shuffle their mortal coil.

You can earn a bronze, silver, or platinum badge depending on how many zombies you kill on a level. You’ll want to kill as many as possible as you earn cash, which can be used for upgrades between levels. These upgrades can improve the firepower of your weapon, increase your initial three bullets to a maximum of six, and even upgrade the damage the zombies inflict on each other. There are 100 levels across 40 different environments, so don’t expect to rush through this game in a day. It took us about 12 hours to earn a platinum badge on every level, unlock all five endings, and earn 11 of the 12 achievements. That is some seriously good value for money, considering the low price tag of the game.

As the game is a reimagining of a PSP title, the visuals aren’t exactly cutting-edge. Some improvements have obviously been made, but each level is still a static monochrome screen filled with tiny shuffling zombies. The action is viewed from a 2D top-down view, and your character remains fixed in place.

You can toggle a filter that color codes the zombies for easier identification and switch their health bars on or off, but that is about it. Don’t worry about the lack of color, though, because by the time you finish a level, it will be drenched in red blood and guts. Levels include a school, prison, and park, as well as the city streets. There are also some nice comic book style story screens to flesh out the story. The audio isn’t too bad, with some eerie tunes that fit right in with the zombie action. The shuffling dead also have their own groans and shrieks as you thin their ranks. While the game has full controller support, it works best with a mouse.

The random zombie and explosive barrel placement mean that there is an element of luck involved, but this doesn’t detract from the addictive nature of the game. Timing is critical, and setting off a massive chain reaction by carefully selecting your target is very satisfying. Once we started playing, we literally couldn’t stop until we earned a platinum badge on every single level. After achieving this feat, you can “prestige” the game, which resets your badges and progress but adds a modifier to your score. This can be done twenty times, so if you are really dedicated, you will be spending a lot of time with this game.

This Steam release of the game has more gore and more levels and also features leaderboards as well as Steam cards. It also has some new zombie types that were not available in the original PSP release. Whatever you do, don’t pass up on this game because you think it is “just another zombie” title. It offers hours of addictive entertainment for a ridiculously low price tag.