Review: Zombie Wonderland - Shoot Zombies, And Clean Your Mess
by Staff Writer
June 22, 2010
Overview
There are so many zombie games, what’s left to do to be original? Well the developer behind Zombie Wonderland has a few tricks up his sleeve to attempt to have it stand out from the crowd. The game gives you a 3D house with a top down view, and zombies are coming from multiple angles to the open windows of the building.
The game gives you multiple gameplay types as you shoot zombies, board up the windows, and clean up zombie guts if you kill them in the building. You’ll go from your aunt’s house, to the bar, to a mechanic’s garage, and finally a cemetery. You will need to help the main character Chuck, defend until 6:30 AM against regular zombies, flamies, grannies, and meanines with some having special abilities
Features
The game includes a story mode with four different types of buildings to defend, and five stages per building giving you 20 in total. Once you complete the five stages of a building you get survival mode for that building. Crystal is included for online high scores and achievements.
The Good
Zombie games are a dime a dozen in the App Store with all of them seemingly melding together, but thankfully Zombie Wonderland breaks the mold. It’s a fun experience tapping from zombie to zombie scrambling between each window. Then you need to manage the number of boards you have, and decide where to place your machine gun, while still keeping the place clean. As you progress you get upgrades to your shotgun, machine gun, and cleaner to make everything easier to handle the greater onslaught. When you’re cleaning the floor, hammering boards, or repairing the machine gun the game will work at a certain pace, but you can rapidly tap or swipe to do the job faster. Once the zombies get in the house you will need all the seconds you can spare to blast them away before they bite you, because you can die quickly.
The game starts relatively easily, but if you continue through the simple monotony you will soon reach the real challenge of the game, and will be scrambling to survive. The game has a wonderful scale of increasing difficulty so that it starts simple and gradually increase in difficulty, and yet you're so prepared you don't notice as much. Soon you'll be defending six windows from tons of zombies with special zombies, but be fully ready to do so.
That's not to say you won't lose at multiple stages, and be replaying a lot. The game has a great ability to keep you coming back for more, and you’ll want to make it through all 20 stages. The game gives you so much bang for your buck it's amazing as you get an intricate story, and four different survival modes that will keep you entertained for hours.
The graphics style is outstanding with the 3D perspective of the buildings and the various zombies. The zombies have a great green style, and then there are e flames, grannies, and meanies all looking great. There is an action soundtrack with a little country to it, and there are a few nice lines by Chuck.
The Bad
The game is on the simple side, but the problem is the repetitiveness. Every level plays the same as you tap and tap to bustle about the building always blasting away zombies, boarding up windows, and cleaning up some mess. The only change is the number of windows and the amount and types of zombies.
That’s not to say it’s still not plenty of fun with the increasing challenge. It’s a little simple in that all you do is tap, and Chuck runs around, and fires so you don’t control much. This game is definitely more for the casual user, but there is still tons of fun for hard core gamers.
