It’s not often you see a product that’s as brutally honest and direct about its identity and content as the endearingly-titled Zombie Shooter. Imagine going to the movie theatre and seeing “Moronic CGI Trainwreck” on the marquee instead of “Transformers 2.” Wouldn’t that be great? Then you could finish up the evening with dinner at the new “Generically Bland Bistro” down the street and still make it home to catch the season premier of “Painfully Derivative Sitcom.” Wouldn’t that be great?

Ok, maybe not. But I still congratulate the makers of Zombie Shooter for their choice of an almost postmodern title that tells you everything you need to know about the game. Believe it or not, this is the same brain trust that brought us the equally declarative Alien Shooter. They don’t waste a lot of precious dollars on a bloated marketing department out at Sigma Team.

The “plot” (such as it is) of Zombie Shooter is pretty much right there in the title. There are zombies that need shooting. There’s only one man for the job, and that’s Nameless Protagonist! That’s right, your on-screen avatar doesn’t even have a name, let alone a backstory. Who is this guy? Where did these zombies come from? Forget it. All that is really beside the point in a game that is essentially an update of old-school arcade shoot-‘em-ups like Robotron, Gauntlet, and Smash TV. Big Money! Big Prizes! I love it!

Ok, there are no prizes. But there is money to be picked up from the battlefield. The cash comes in handy between levels to buy new weapons and upgrade old ones, as well as purchasing powerups like armor, combat drones, or even extra lives. There is also a light RPG element to the game, where experience points earned by slaughtering the undead legions are spent leveling up Nameless Protagonist’s various characteristics (speed, health, accuracy, ammo capacity, etc). The effects of these attributes are fairly subtle, though you’ll certainly want to invest in some health boosting before the latter part of the game when the end bosses start handing out some serious damage with every hit.

After choosing either a male or female version of Nameless Protagonist (hereafter “NP”), the player is thrust onto the battlefield to defend humanity from the undead hordes. Control is via the classic mouse-and-keyboard combo, using the WSAD cluster for movement around the isometric battlefield while aiming and shooting with the mouse. For laptop enthusiasts, the game plays just fine using a touchpad, though it’s perhaps a bit more difficult when things get hairy.

And things WILL get hairy. Much like its spiritual brother FPS shooter Serious Sam, Zombie Shooter is all about throwing massive waves of enemies at you to be pulverized in satisfyingly gory fashion by your arsenal of astoundingly devastating weapons. After expiring is a shower of gore, the shattered corpses of defeated enemies stay around instead of fading away in conventional fashion. This can mean that by the end of some especially intense levels the floors and walls of the battle zone can sometimes be completely obscured with blood. To say this is not a game for the squeamish is a massive understatement.

Your major advantage over the undead (in addition to a massive array of weapons and magically regenerating health), is your brain. The enemy, to be kind, are not rocket scientists, even though judging from the many labs you’ll be assaulting an awful lot of them were SOME kind of scientists before they were zombified. Every enemy in the game pretty much uses the “scream and charge until death” attack routine, which only varies when some of them get lost and/or trapped behind scenery. This doesn’t happen too often, but does pop up again and again throughout the game.

The levels of Zombie Shooter mostly consist of large collections of generic rooms and hallways. The occasional outdoor section inevitably features fences, pipes, or other obstacles to create room-like confined battlespaces. This gets a bit dull after a while, but it’s tactically essential, because in a big unconfined space the undead mobs would easily overwhelm NP despite his arsenal. The game’s essential skill is to maneuver around the board and use the chokepoints of the maps to your advantage.

The levels quickly grow to rather large sizes and develop Doom-style checkpoints or tasks that need accomplishing. Instead of “You need the blue key,” you may discover that you need to turn on the power to open a door to access the next part of the level. This can involve some fairly extensive backtracking across the generic, repetitive maps. Without a minimap or navigation arrow as a guide, it’s easy to get lost and frustrated on the labyrinthine later levels.

Blasting various kinds of zombie with your massive weapons is a rush, but gameplay never really varies from the basic formula and after a few levels the game starts to become a bit of a grind. I’ve found that Zombie Shooter is best enjoyed in short one- or two-level sessions to keep the experience fresh. It’s a great way to kill ten or fifteen minutes, but I just don’t see playing it hour after hour.

In the end. Zombie Shooter delivers what it promises. Obliterating waves of undead scum with NP’s vast arsenal is a visceral rush, and the RPG-lite elements add a nice element of customization and a strategic layer to break up the mindless mayhem. This isn’t a ground-breaking state-of-the-art masterpiece of a game, but it’s a fun time-waster. You’ll be hard pressed to have more fun for a measly $19.95.

Pros: Furious action, Decent RPG and inventory management elements, Only $20

Cons: Maps can get repetitive and confusing, AI pathfinding occasionally lacking, One-dimensional gameplay

Final Verdict: 4/5

MSRP: $19.95

Source: Sigma Team

Popularity: 6% [?]

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