GAMES REVIEW: All Zombies Must Die

Unfortunately All Zombies Must Die, the latest offering from Doublesix isn’t one of them. It is what is known as a top down shooter meaning that the game view is from above, and can be fun to play, for fifteen minutes, after that it becomes pretty repetitive .

When I first cranked it up I thought nice graphics, fluid movement and not too annoying music all pluses, then the actual game started and I realised the aiming element for the shotgun isn’t up to much, (the right stick) which resulted in my reverting back to punching the life (or is it death) out of the endless onslaught of zombies.

Weapons can be modified and upgraded as you progress, and these are earned by completing various tasks usually involving killing a specific type of zombie in a specific way, do this and you get a variety of upgrades science kits and megaphones for sonic like attributes.

This is known as status effect, basically fire, shock, radiation and sonic effects will change the kind of drops you get when killing zombies, whilst certain quests and crafting items require zombies to be killed under certain conditions.

The actual game looks a little over cluttered and tends to distract from the game play which is pretty standard stuff, you roam around, you kill zombies and you collect things.

The barriers can be a pain as well because you cannot pass through until you have completed a certain task, I don’t really see the point of this and would rather just move on.

I did find the location of objects a bit of a nuisance as they are usually in small locations that end up with you getting mobbed as you try to open them.

The getting sent back and forth through areas you have already been through I found irritating and somewhat pointless, these fetch quests just became a bit of a drag after a while.

Of course if you die then you are sent back to the beginning of the area you started from, losing any progress and upgrades you have just spent ages accumulating, now that is annoying .

Fortunately the multi-player element is more fun with up to four players, but is not available online, so you can only play when your friends come around.

Frankly this game would have worked better as an app for a smart phone, it needs to be shorter and less cluttered.

The graphics and overall feel of the game is good, it just tends to trip over itself after a while and I found myself getting bored after the first fifteen minutes.

It did win Game Of Show at the recent MCM expo so there are obviously gamers out there who like it, and is apparently the spiritual successor to the hit 2009 arcade game Burn Zombie Burn.

The storyline is the usual zombie scenario; it is set in the town of Deadhill. There has been a zombie outbreak and a small number of survivors must fight and live to save the world.

The usual (note, I use this word a lot for this game) characters are all here, the wise-cracking hero, his annoying ex-girlfriend, a brainiac type scientist and some kind of weird alien guy.

All Zombies Must Die is available as a download from XBOX ARCADE for 800 Microsoft points.

Summary

As zombie killing (aren’t they dead already) games go I have played worse but I have also played better.

This is a tough genre to break into and I think Doublesix have given it their all and it nearly succeeded.

Unfortunately, repetition and cluttered game play let the whole thing down, as a short app this game would be great but, as a full game, it just doesn’t do it for me, and it doesn’t have that draw to revisit it over and over to better your score.

It does redeem itself as a multiplayer game but lets itself down again by not having an online element.

There are plenty of better zombie games out there, my advice is try the demo and take it from there.

I give this game 6 out of 10 as it is fun in multiplay but tends to be repetitive and overly complex.

Review by Dayvid Ryan.

All Zombies Must Die

Genre: Action/RPG

Publisher: TBA(XBLA) DDP(PSN,Steam)

Developer: Doublesix

Age rating: 17

Xbox 360 live arcade

Playstation 3 network

PC (steam)