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- Aug 8, 2004
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Zombies have become popular in most media forms in recent times. Often the un-dead provide a foil for the carelessness and brutality of those still living, movies like Romero's 'Of the Dead' series are brilliant examples of such. In some cases the threat of the walking dead provide the catalyst of a full blown Apocalypse, the world thrown into chaos, best portrayed by in my mind by Brook's novel 'WWZ'. However it seems that the Gaming Industry only assigns Zombies the gory and horrific honour of being the shambling fodder.[br]Story and the question of Darkness<hr size="3" noshade color="#ED761C"></strong>[br]After selecting one of eight characters, the game opens without much real introductory plot, you seem to need to find your sweetheart in the city engulfed by the un-dead. However it is only attached very loosely, so much so that it bears no real impact to the game as you continue to blast the head off those shuffling towards you. The voice acting of the various NPCs you come across is almost idiotically bland and fails to give any weight to what they are telling you. In a gory top down shooter like this, one could muse that you don't need much of a story line, simply stuff to shoot at, but for me the good few hours of creative effort to add a loose plot could have helped this game along nicely.[br]
[br]The darkness is a fear that is played upon within the best of the horror genre. Who knows what horrors creep beyond the reach of the flashlight's beam. However the absence of daytime environments in Zombie Shooter 2 fails to add fear to the equation, instead brews a certain level of frustration as the enemies fail to register with the lack of colour within most maps. Everything seems to be the same shades of grey, only the blood, tracers and odd friendly soldiers really add any colour to the game as a whole.[br]Gameplay and RPG Elements<hr size="3" noshade color="#ED761C"></strong>[br]The gameplay is nothing overly sophisticated, you simply point at the things you want to kill and shoot. However much this might be enjoyable in the first instances, it does tire quickly. While the first few missions of the game are challenging and enjoyable, as the game draws on the only dynamic that abruptly changes the difficultly is the HP and number of Zombies on the screen at once. By the later sections, the term Zombie is used loosely, as un-dead soldiers run towards you looking more like Space Marines from Warhammer 40K than anything else. The gameplay presents no bell curve of difficulty and forces no adaptations of tactics, just gives you more enemies to shoot and more shooting at you.[br]Most of the 'quests' are Fed-Ex or recovery missions and involve, you guessed it, killing a horde of Zombies. A nice addition are the vehicle missions, but they tend to get old after the third time. I know it shouldn't bother me but the 'machine gun' mounted onto the first vehicle section looks more like an anti-material sniper rifle than a machine gun.[br]
[br]The RPG elements consist of levelling up your character but none of the other RPG staples, such as having conversation trees or any way that you can change the role you play. Resupply bases along the way give you access to a futuristic terminal which holds an armoury that could outfit a small army for Zombie killing. Instead, the player exchanges their hard earned cash, notes just found lying around, for better weapons, first aid kits, hovering assault drones and whatever else you need to make short work of a Zombie horde.[br]The side-games of 'Stand Firm' and 'Gun Stand' are quite enjoyable for a quick session, although play for too long and the limitations of the rest of the game are as apparent as ever. They do hit the spot when all you need to do is shoot stuff for a while without thinking much. Overall a quick, simple and fun addition to the game.[br]
[br]At times it seems like Sigma Team have simply copied resources from their other game, Alien Shooter 2, without properly changing the values. Instead of shambling un-dead, the game gives us behemoths with plasma weapon fire. The cut and paste can be seen chiefly with the description provided for the Freeze Cannon: "This cannon shoots a special chemical that transforms aliens into aliensickles instantly." The lack of polish extends to the lack of testing of the margins within the menu and other screens such as the inventory, as you can see from the screenshot below, the text overwrites other text and the whole thing looks a mess. When I find 'wheh' instead of 'when' while selecting my character perks, it puts me off a game from the start.[br]Bottom Line: It does what it says on the box.<hr size="3" noshade color="#ED761C"></strong>[br]As much as killing Zombies is always something I greet with reckless abandon, this game just felt too much like the simple flash games that I played when I was younger. It is enjoyable in parts but as a whole it just begins to feel like someone is slowly destroying my intellect with a cheese grater.[br]The market is flooded by Zombie games at the moment, so don't let the label of RPG fool you into dreams of a Romero style epic that stretch the moral barriers that have held Zombie styled computer games back from day one. This is a simple shooter that is filled to the brim with Zombies. If that's what you want then enjoy Zombie Shooter 2. It does however get points for reminding me of my younger days, playing flash games copied from floppy disks during lunchtime at school. I have come a long way as a gamer since then and Zombie Shooter 2 does not in the least tick the boxes that I conjure while playing a game.[br]
[br]Reviewed by Sloth with thanks to Danimal, Kupocake and AJ Rimmer
