Review: Alive 4-Ever
by Matt Fox
September 22, 2009
Overview
Looking for a survival horror shooter that's more than just kill, kill, kill? If so, Alive 4-Ever has got you covered. Finally we have a game that not only gives you a story and RPG element to it, but you can also play the game with friends over a Bluetooth connection. It's a little bit iDracula and a little bit Left For Dead. Ready to kill some zombies?Features
The game features four different characters to choose from. Each one has their own background stories and attributes for you to upgrade as you gain more experience in the game.
The game has over thirty missions included in it that range from stuff like eliminating a given amount of those pesky undead, rescuing the helpless townsfolk within a given timeframe, locating vaccines, and defeating Bosses in certain stages.
As I said earlier, you gain experience points after each completed level. These points are used to level up your characters attributes. You also collect Ability points that you can use to upgrade your selection of HP, maximum bullets, your critical hit rate, and your curing efficiency as well.
The game has over sixteen variations of weapons that you can use in the game. There's everything from your basic handgun, AK-47's, M16's, and tons more. You also collect gold in each mission and that can be used to buy more weapons.
Each level also has these great little "bonus" challenges in it as well. Think of these as side-missions to the overall goal in the stage. Complete these "side-missions" and you will be rewarded with cool special equipment that will help you last longer in the game.
Last, and my personal favorite, there is the Multiplayer option that works using a Bluetooth connection. Just make sure you are at least running OS 3.0 for this to work on your device. You can have up to three different players with you in the game at any given time.
Breakdown
The Good:
There are so many "good" things about this game it's hard to decide exactly where to start. I'll try to briefly talk about most of them so I don't end up writing an essay over here on everything this game does right. Still with me? Here we go...
Let's start with the gameplay, it's incredibly smooth and I think the devs did a great job on the controls here too. It feels very much like iDracula, so if you liked that gameplay, you'll love it in this.
The mission aspect of this game and the fact that you can level up just about every attribute of you character is a major plus for me in this game. This bumps this app up to such a higher standard of game with these elements included in it. Now it's not so much about kill, kill, kill, reload, kill, kill, kill. You actually have goals and challenges to compete as well as people to save. Nice touch.
Like the multiplayer option in Left For Dead? Good, because this game is pretty much set up the same way. Playing with three other people is definitely where it's at and I highly recommend trying that out if you decide to purchase this game. Which I of course think you should.
The Bad:
My biggest gripe in this game revolves around the zombies, they don't "feel" like zombies. The enemies are just boring enemies that you must kill in the game. This one never had that "zombie" feel too it and that really bummed me out.
I never got any sense of real survival or anything like that. I wanted to be a little scared and tense when I was playing this and it just didn't have that element in it. I realize this would be a tough thing to get down in something for the iPhone, but I just felt a little disappointed in what I was killing here.
