Zombie Apocalypse Review: flashbacks to an arcade cabinet youth

Late last week Konami unveiled Zombie Apocalypse, a top-down zombie slaughterhouse available on XBOX Live and the PlayStation Network.  As an Arcade title, this bad boy cost a mere 10 bucks and promised 55 days of intense co-op zombie survival action.  Did it live up to this promise?

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What’s Good

Pacing, Volume, and Carnage: Zombie Apocalypse is an intense, fast-paced game consisting of wave after wave of zombies.  The sheer numbers and ensuing gore make for a more than entertaining amount of zombie-slaughtering opportunities.  There are very few lulls in the action outside of the breaks between levels, and even these are quite quick.  Just as any arcade game should, Zombie Apocalypse keeps the action coming, stopping for very little.

Variety: The variety of enemies in this game is rather surprising.  It seems that every couple of levels a new foe is thrown at you, each with their own specific ability, from Big Boys who are impossible to throw off once they grab you to knife-throwing Grandmas and shotgun-wielding Sheriffs.  There’s also a good variety of game modes that are thrown the player’s way; modes like Blackout, where visibility is sharply reduced, and Chainsaws Only where you play lumberjack.  The diversity of game modes and the integration of new zombie types is an attempt at keeping the game fresh and avoiding any repetition.

Timber: Your main weapons in Zombie Apocalypse consist of an M16 and a chainsaw.  The M16 has unlimited ammo and can be upgraded to other weapons like shotguns, dual sub-machine guns, chainguns, and more.  These will run out of ammo and you will revert back to the default M16.  However, the best weapon in the game is the chainsaw by far.  Nothing beats holding the blade out while spinning in a circle, lopping limbs and bodies apart…until the later levels where you have to worry about zombies shooting shotguns.

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What’s Bad

Familiar Surroundings: Zombie Apocalypse’s main drawback is, simply put, there are not enough maps.  Seven small boards simply isn’t enough to avoid a feeling of deja-vu. The variety of game modes and enemies isn’t enough to get over the obvious fact that you keep playing the same levels over and over.  Neither is the fact that some of the levels are really cool.   Maps include environmental hazards that can be utilized for zombie destruction; wood chippers and car crushers that zombies can be pushed into.

Sandbox: In Zombie Apocalypse you are confined to a small square level.  Your task is simply to defend said square from waves of zombies that appear out of the ground and the board’s boundaries.  It’s kind of like being stuck in a sandbox.  Part of me wishes that levels had a side-scrolling path and a goal besides simply surviving.  But then I mow down 20 more undead with a few fell swoops of my chainsaw and forget.

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Worth Remembering

You never have to reload your guns in Zombie Apocalypse.  While some weapons like molotov cocktails and shotguns have a delay between throws and shots, you never have to take a long break to reload.  This is simply awesome, and probably necessary due to the games rapid pace.

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Worth Forgetting

Zombies can’t shoot guns.  Period.  If a bad guy is shooting a gun he’s not a zombie, he’s a peer.  Both Capcom and Konami need to realize this.

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If Konami’s aim with Zombie Apocalypse was a modernized co-op arcade cabinet style game, they hit the nail right on it’s undead head.  This game at times gave me flashbacks to old cabinet games like Gauntlet Legends and X-Men – games I used to play on a south Jersey boardwalk as a young kid on family vacation.  Oh man, I loved playing as Colossus on that X-Men cabinet.  Though the map issue makes it a bit repetitive, it is only a $10  download after all.  For that much scratch, it’s pretty good value compared to some of the games that come out for six times that much.  If you want a blast to your arcade cabinet past, or just wanna spend some time mindlessly mowing down zombies with bullet and chain, you won’t go wrong with Zombie Apocalypse.

*Images courtesy of Konami.

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