Review: Zombie Crisis 3D - Another Laboratory Mutation
by Felix Xiao
November 6, 2010
Overview
A large bio-accident has happened at the Arco Company and there have been reported sights of violent organisms. Logically, the government sends in a single female mercenary soldier to investigate the situation. Zombie Crisis 3D takes you through Dana's adventure as she is confronted by hundreds of mutated beasts.
Features
The game has 21 levels, each on a different map, with 4 boss fights that take place at the end of selected missions. Dana's goal is to reach a certain location inside the laboratory, and to do so, she needs your help to extinguish all the zombies in an on-rail shooting experience. The 3 weapons your character can wield are the pistol, shotgun, and machine gun. Throughout the maps, there are boxes that you can destroy to reveal extra ammunition. Game Center leaderboards and achievements are included as well.The Good
Being a rail shooter, the camera shifts by itself and you have no control of Dana's movement. Instead, you get to tap the screen whenever a zombie is spotted and reload your guns. The breakable crates that appear frequently in the game add something else to think about. By getting several kills or headshots in a row, you build combos that improve your total score. The controls are easy enough to learn, as you just tap on a zombie when it appears.
There are 21 levels that are each quite lengthy, with the exception of the very first one. Fortunately for you, thousands of zombies roam around in this abandoned lab, so you won't ever run out of monsters to shoot. Some of the graphics and sounds are decent, and there are many blood effects present. The boss fights are probably the most enjoyable parts of the game, as you have to shoot a massive zombie in its weak areas many times before it will die.
The Bad
Zombie Crisis 3D simply doesn't have an adequate firing system, a critical part in any shooter. First off, the game fails to notify you when you run out of ammo, and instead, Dana just stands there wondering why the zombie in front of her won't die. When reloading, you can't do anything else, which leads to many deaths in this fashion. If you need to put some extra bullets in that shotgun or machine gun, then prepare to be completely vulnerable for several seconds.
The weapons themselves have strange effects as well. You receive unlimited ammo with the pistol, as it is the basic weapon in the game. However, the pistol is so overpowered that you can get instant 1-hit headshots on zombies across the room on the floor below you. The shotgun seems to work poorly at close range sometimes, and it'll take several shells to kill a zombie compared to only 1 pistol bullet. In a good zombie shooter, the basic weapon should not be the most useful, and the game is in desperate need of an expanded arsenal, as well as a melee attack.
Somehow, Zombie Crisis 3D is both too simple and too difficult. Killing the zombies is a piece of cake, as you just tap on their heads with a pistol for gratifying headshots regardless of distance or level. However, the levels are lengthy and have no checkpoints, meaning that you'll be required to start from the very beginning if you die. When surrounded by a group of zombies, they will attack at the same time and wait for 5 seconds before striking again. The graphics look terrible at close range, as the zombies are all chunky and sometimes pixelated.
