We Hate Zombies

Title: ZombieSim (click to open in iTunes)
Style: Top-Down Zombie Simulation
Source: JCLMSoftware

I recently had this little gem shared with me. In the spirit of a good zombie simulator, equipped with all the usual death and pissing of pants, ZombieSim brings the classic simulation to the iPhone. In ZombieSim, much like the zombie simulator we all know and love, the basic game is a crap your pants awesome zombie simulation. People run around like dumb bastards without a clue, some still get guns and go on killing rampages, and most still turn into dirty stinking zombies. Pretty standard stuff, but it’s awesome now that it’s mobile.

There have been additions to this whole simulation thing, like the ability to have fine-grained control over how the city is generated and how many people there are. I particularly liked some of the pre-sets on the Options screen. There was also the ability to tweet results, which I would have, if I had a twitter account.

Arguably the most important change is the ability to drop bombs on the nightmarish ant farm. Yes. Bombs. There are two kinds of bombs, with big ones and little ones, and the one you drop depends on how you caress your electronic desire. You can carpet bomb, you can blow up the armory, you can try to go in and cut out the infection like a doctor with a laser gun, you can just blow crap up. It’s pretty cool.

Problems? Well, I’m used to playing games with objectives. Aside from killing all the humans or zombies or whatever, this game doesn’t really have a way to “win”, but that’s just the same as any zombie simulation. It’s not about you, it’s about them, those poor meat-bags trapped in a city of walking dead.

I’m also used to a ton more weapons. Sure, there’s a limit to how many ways you can sex up the touchscreen, but come on. A little bomb love can go a long way to lubing up a good night of drinking. I’d like to see more death and destruction in future versions of the game.

Nonetheless, the game is an awesome addition to my mobile game collection. Now, wherever I go, I can study the ways of zombie infection while having the power to kill large numbers of crappy zombies. Which I’ll do every time I start to think about how much I hate zombies. God damn zombies anyway.

Game Score:

Graphics:		2.0
Sound:		?
Fun Factor:		4.5
Satisfaction:		4.0
Total:

Title: Boxhead the Rooms (click to play)
Style: Top-Down Shooter
Source: Crazy-Monkey Games

You might have thought we would have covered this classic zombie game sooner than now, but it’s because it’s a classic that we didn’t. Really, why review a game that everyone has already played and knows about anyway? Well, we figured the time was right for just such a thing, because it’s about this time that everyone has forgotten this game and what started a spree of some of the best original zombie games. And stuff.

So, Boxhead the Rooms, in case you didn’t know, is a hopeless struggle to destroy the endless multitudes of walking death-sticks. Hopeless not only because you are guarenteed to die, but because you can only move in the four cardinal directions. Up. Down. Left. Right. That’s it. One of the unfortunate things about going back to study the masterpieces of old is that you can’t help but compare them to the industry standards of the modern time, to the contemporary undead-murdering slaughter-games of today.

I like moving diagonally. It’s hard to shoot things only at right angles.

Good thing you get to blow them up. What makes this game addictive is that there’s a quick progression of weaponry that regularly gives you upgrades or new weapons to add to your arsenal. Undoubtedly one of the finer points is learning to use barrels and grenades and land mines together to form a cohesive strategy of multiple explosions. Smells like fireworks and anal sex.

All in all, I can’t say it’s my favorite game, but I can appreciate it for what it is. I can enjoy killing the zombies in a dozen different ways, though you don’t get the gore or destruction a lot of games these days have. There’s not quite the same level of satisfaction in it; on the other hand, it’s fun to see what a good idea and a proper execution can turn into.

Game Score:

Graphics:		2.0
Sound:		?
Fun Factor:		2.5
Satisfaction:		2.0
Total:

Scenario:
It is late summer. The air is stagnate and boiling hot. Your field hasn’t seen a drop of rain in about a month. The corn is underdeveloped but completely dried out and ready to harvest. You are out in the field taking samples to make sure it isn’t too soon, or too late. You are about to take a break and smoke your tobacco pipe when you hear a faint rustling in the corn a few rows over. What could it be? Your wife died last year from the cancer and Ruddy, your brown lab, died ten years ago when he got kicked by the horse. The kids have all moved out and you don’t have any friends. It can be only one thing. Zombies! What do you do?

What you should do:
You’ve been farming this land your whole life so you know where you are and where you can run, but the zombies have the advantage. They just have to follow you and you don’t know where they could be hiding. You can’t see far in the corn across the rows, so you need to run down the row that you are in. You can see all the way up and down the row so you only have to worry about a zombie flanking you on your way out.

But which way do you go? Do you head back to the house where the zombies could find other people to attack or do you head farther out into the fields? Heading home would give you more tools to dispatch the zombies, so you should head that way, despite the danger to other people. Remember, you don’t have any friends, so if they get bite, just finish them off with your chainsaw.

Once you make it out of the corn, grab your rifle and pick them off as they saunter out of the fields. Hopefully you get them all, but you’ll never know.

What I would do:
Above all else, I am a zombie hunter. I am not a farmer, a brother, or a human. Keeping that in mind, I want to make sure that I get every last one of those bastards. Making the assumption that the zombies are all in the corn field, I only have one option. Light a match and watch the mother fucker burn.

But how do I make sure that I get them all and that they don’t escape the flames by going the opposite way? Well, it is simple. I have to start the flames toward one of the corners of the field that I am in. Since the zombies are likely to blindly follow me around until they catch me or they die, I will stay in the field and continue to light the corn in various places. The eventual goal is to spiral toward the center of the field so that they corn is burning in all directions and the zombies are trapped. Since the corn is dry as week old dog shit, it should burn pretty damn fast. Then all I have to do is sit and wait.

Why kill yourself brave zombie hunter? Considering that I am an old man with nobody to spend my life with and I just burned my entire years work (and paycheck), it really does seem like the easy way out. And, if I get all of the zombies in one shot, what better way to go down? I could live out the rest of my life and eventually die of liver failure, on account of the drinking, or I could sit in the middle of a burning cornfield, all zenlike and shit, while a horde of zombies closes in on me just as the fire closes in on them. It is like choosing between a bratwurst and cow penis: the choice is clear.

Title: Zombie Tower Defense (click to play)
Style: Top-Down Strategy
Source: ZombieHead.org

Considering everything, I thought today would be a good day to review a game that could get your juices flowing. Mind juices, that is. A little bit of a strategy game is what I’m saying, so that makes today Strategy Friday. (For all readers from the Future, today is Friday. If you don’t agree because of your time warps, you can go f#!@ your self.)

So what does the Strategy Friday Stork bring to our door step? Zombie. Tower. Defense. … ! Like the build up there? Good, because that’s the most excitement you’ll get out of the game.

Zombie Tower Defense is your typical tower defense game. You just shoot at zombies, and by you, I mean your towers, strategically placed and upgraded. There are some different types of zombies and blah blah, but really it’s just the run-of-the-mill tower defense game. There isn’t a whole lot of special stuff going on, as in none. You could be shooting at anything, anything at all. Babies, Marshmellow men, boxes of crackerjacks. Anything, and this game would still be the same.

Which, fortunately, is alright, because all tower defense games are fun as long as you feel like you’re winning. Unfortunately, this game doesn’t really bring with it the whole satisfaction of annihilating zombies thing, so it loses points there. Oh well, at least it doesn’t crash my computer.

Game Score:

Graphics:		2.0
Sound:		?
Fun Factor:		2.0
Satisfaction:		1.0
Total:

Title: Zed Town (click to play)
Style: Top-Down Shooter
Source: http://npgam.es/

In ZedTown, or Zed Town, or whatever, you get to play a guy with a gun. This is actually not unusual for zombie games; in fact, it’s pretty standard. As this standard guy, you move around some maps and shoot zombies in the dark because you’re apparently a vampire and can’t hunt zombies at sun-up. Or there are no windows in this town, I don’t know, but every map requires a flashlight and is dark as hell.

As this quite standard guy running around dark standard houses in Zed Town, you’re task is to clear the building/town of zombies and otherwise rock out. I don’t know why you would want to cleanse a village with no other survivors, so the whole premise is kind of dumb to me. Why not go find some other survivors, then clear a town? Why take the risks on yourself? Why be so standard? And dark? And alone?

And hopeless?

Shooting zombies is good fun, I suppose, but every zombie game has some good-fun-shooting-zombies thing going for it. And, at that, there are only a small selection of guns that aren’t terribly exciting. Standard, really, except reloading some of them requires reloading one bullet at a time. Kind of a pain, actually.

Unfortunately, I kind of hated this game because I couldn’t have any fun running around in the dark with a flashlight. Maybe if I was playing at night it would be a different story. Maybe if I had the sound on I would have been able to hear the direction of the zombies without having to see them. But I doubt it. No, I think this game is just a good try at making a better game, and if killing zombies is the most enjoyable thing your game has to offer, why make it so hard to do? If realism was the goal, who would realistically choose to fight in the dark?

And what the hell is with that white box on the left side? Could the contrast be any more painful to stare at?

The only thing I did like was that each building had a little sub-story blurb you could read before jumping into it. This didn’t really help set the mood or anything, but it was kind of fun to see other people write about zombies. And the end of the world. Like me.

Game Score:

Graphics:		1.0
Sound:		?
Fun Factor:		1.5
Satisfaction:		1.5
Total: