Review: Zombie Shock
by Staff Writer
May 28, 2010
Overview
Zombies, zombies, and more zombies are invading the App Store every day. Zombie Shock is the newest addition that looks to bring even more action to the zombie genre. The game has a story of why there are zombies explaining that the main character Abel developed a cure for AIDS, but there was a strain of the virus that mutated, which causes the zombie infection.
Abel had a bizarre mental disorder, but with the zombie rampage he was able to escape from the institute, and now needs to ratify his mistake. The game is a 2.5D side scroller with a dimension to move laterally. RPG elements are also included with weapon upgrades as well as skill upgrades.
Features
The game includes 50 stages in total with ten per environment, and each one concluding with a boss battle. Once you complete the story mode you unlock survival mode to try to last as long as you can. For control you have two sticks to control movement and aiming, and then you tap anywhere on screen to fire.
There are six types of weapons including pistol, shotgun, machine gun, crossbow, and bazooka with each one having three upgrades each. There are six status upgrades including health, attack power, money earned, defense, and speed. OpenFeint is included for online high scores and achievements.
The Good
Zombie Shock is action packed to say the least. In every level you are running from chasing zombies, and you shoot them as you’re running. There are always a few zombies on screen, and there is only so much room to maneuver.
Despite all the action this game isn’t just mindless killing, and requires much more strategy than you would expect from looking at the screenshots. You have three weapon slots at your disposal once you earn enough to buy three weapons, and each weapon has limited ammo. You will need to fire off a round from one weapon, and then switch to the next because you don’t have time to wait for a reload.
As you progress there are more and more zombies you will have to make it through, and they’re tougher to kill. You will need to upgrade your weapons and skills at the appropriate time or you simply won’t survive. To further add to the strategy you need money to buy upgrades, and you can earn money by doing consecutive head shots. You will need to decide if you want to just mow down enemies, or try to get a head shot of each and every one.
Playing through all fifty stages is plenty enjoyable, and will make it well worth the minimal price of $1.99. Then there is a survival mode as well plus OpenFeint to give you a lot of time with this title. Further you will lose a number of stages, but you can continue just resting your score to zero so you can continue the story. The story itself is quite intricate for an iPhone game, and at least provides a little reason as to why you’re blasting away zombies.
The game has a wonderful art style with a graphic novel type design, and most reminiscent of “Watchmen.” The art is intricately deluxe whether it’s Abel, the zombies, or the various backgrounds. The animations are exquisite with the various gunfire, and the zombie kills.
There is a deluxe action packed soundtrack to go hand in hand with the mass zombie killing. Every new environment presents a new small zombie, and concludes with a lengthy boss battle. The controls work well to move, and aim where you want, though they do feel cramped at times.
The Bad
The controls are good, but definitely present a few problems. The main problem is that there is cramped space, and sometimes when you’re trying to tap to fire it picks it up as adjusting the aim. Also switching weapons is a little pain because they’re such little buttons. Nothing you can’t deal with, just a little more convoluted than you would like.
One problem with the game is that if you exit in the middle of a stage it counts it as death so you will have to restart the stage resetting your score to zero. The gameplay is relatively the same for every level with zombies chasing, and you firing behind yourself. The new zombies, environment, story, and building to the boss battle help though.
