I really should have seen this coming, another game cashing in on all the apocalyptic and Mayan hysteria, with the usually-can’t-miss addition of zombies, in 2012 (240 MSP). And no, faithful reader, this isn’t the puzzler I played earlier in the month. This 2012 is a completely different entity, blending Legend of Zelda-style overworld exploration and dungeon crawling in an occasionally effective, often obscure, manner.

Frank Mors is a disillusioned archaeologist that finds himself at ground zero (Guatemala) on December 21st for the Mayan zombie apocalypse, cut off from the rest of whatever civilization is left by the plodding undead. Dragged back to town, both the residents and stranded tourists bestow Frank with savior-status and ask him to single-handedly solve the mystery of what’s happened, take down a cult, and save everyone he comes across in the zombie-infested countryside. No sweat.

And Frank is a ladies man, or so we’re to believe, as all of the women he rescues are eager to ‘repay’ him. Pro tip: Archaeology is where it’s at, fellas, the panties drop almost instantaneously. Joking aside, progression is sometimes vague, and the quests are anything but clear-cut. Take the first one, which asks you to find a missing girl (there’s a lot of that to come). The game says to head North, but North is vague and quite a bit of ground to cover. If I hadn’t wandered into a temple and stumbled onto the girl about to be sacrificed, I’d have looked in vain forever. Exploration is nice, dumb luck isn’t.

But my bigger question to the developer is, how do you manage to make a game where you’re shooting zombies this boring? That I’d run out on the undead, not from fear or moral ambiguity, but boredom? Even a reasonably-written design document could have allotted more sense than to drop dozens of recurring enemies on each screen that slowly box you in, then laugh in your face at three shotgun blasts per zombie. Math time! Say I encounter 300 zombies between any one temple dungeon and the town, which could easily be the truth. Am I really going to enjoy slow-firing a 1000+ rounds? Not likely. Even after you get a machine gun, they’re still sponges and combat becomes this little circular dance you have to perform every few seconds.

‘Ladies, feel free to swoon while I dispatch these zombies and fanatical cult types. We can talk repayment later.’

The game world is huge. There’s plenty to see, and ancillary side quests are available, but they too, fall prey to bouts of wandering. Pay attention to the starter conversations, kids, as they’re usually your first and last mention of an important location or element in your mission. Your journal (somewhat) tracks the current main event, and the helpful mini-map fills in as you explore, but more should have been done to prevent the inevitable head-scratching.

That’s not to say that the core game is rotten in 2012, it just needs weapon / enemy balancing and the occasional hint or objective marker. I like the basic idea. It’s got a little bit of everything. As it’s put together currently, though, it’s a diluted sort of fun that’s a tad more trouble than its $3 worth; not broken, but not quite how you want your zombie apocalypse about the Mayan apocalypse to play out.

Developer Strange Games Studios quietly released avatar-centric FPS Paintball War (read the review here) just a few months ago, and that game has continued to do pretty well for itself despite my opinion that it fell short of other first-person shooters available. The studio took my criticism and others’ thoughts in stride, not just addressing the issues raised with subsequent patches, but actively-seeking feedback from the community on how to make the game better.

That attention to improvement looks to pay off with their next FPS, the ambitious (and certainly tongue-in-cheek) Zombie Strippers Stole My Heart Then Ate My Brains. The title conjures a certain immaturity, no doubt, as do the visuals (impressive, and teenage boys’ll love it) but the game aims to be more than the sum of its parts. A wave-shooter that takes place over 20 levels, ZSSMHTAMB splices in bits of story before and after each stage, focusing on the repartee between protagonist Dean and his pal Jake after they find themselves in the middle of a zombie apocalypse.

The premise may be typical fare, but the gameplay looks to evolve itself as you go, with half the waves focusing on shooting, while other levels will have you guarding an ally. The zombies themselves will come in multiple flavors, which should keep things interesting and prevent the game from becoming just a skin-heavy shooting gallery. Multiple weapon unlocks will give you something to work towards as well.

Something that combines strippers and zombies lends itself to co-op, I would think, and Strange Games Studios intends to comply in a future update (a week or two after release) with online and system link co-op options. Right now, their focus is on bug-squashing, making sure the game runs smoothly, and then the peer review process. If all goes well, you’ll be killing barely-clothed zombies by the end of the year.

Zombie Strippers Stole My Heart Then Ate My Brains will run you 80 MSP when it releases.

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With a mouthful like Zombie Strippers Stole My Heart Then Ate My Brains (80 MSP), you can be guaranteed of two things; you’re not in the land of highbrow setups anymore, and naked zombies will factor prominently into the gameplay. True enough, if you’re certain you’d do well in a real apocalypse and you suffer from an addiction to ladies in a constant state of near-undress, ZSSMHTAMB will surely scratch that perverted itch of yours with zero apologies.

The story is a trifle about security guards working a convention for the recently de-clothed (‘Stripper Con’), who happen into the epicenter of the zombie apocalypse. There’s some dialogue between stages that elaborates on their situation (the voice acting runs from boring to cheesy), though the focal point is clearly on the convention attendees and sending them to the after-afterlife. You’ll start off with a pistol and work your way up from there. Each round contains limited ammo (you’ll never run out; there are always random drops to find), and all of the action takes place in a single medium-sized arena, fighting through 20 waves of girls that were formerly just trying to pay the bills.

Unfortunately, the game’s commitment to boobs can only carry it so far before it gets tiring. It succumbs to its own machinations, namely the vaunted variety, which boils down to the same gig that retail games love to put the player through; the helpless NPC that needs to be defended while he / she completes an objective. In Zombie Strippers, that character is Jake, and while his health is low and his waves tend to be the most frustrating, they are a necessary evil, as Jake is the procurer of all things dealing with weaponry. Those shiny, fully automatic solutions to the walking dead that are locked away at the beginning? Protect your pal for a few rounds, and you gain access to those guns one at a time.

This could have been the end for the game, but luckily the difficulty never strays far from ‘shooting gallery’ levels of challenge, even when new zombie forms (severed torsos, and an acid-spewing type) are introduced. While Jake will surely manage to get himself killed a few times, it’s easy enough to continue (wave progress is saved) and stick with it, especially with the promise of new guns just over the hump. From a stronger handgun to grenades, to an LMG that skips lengthy reloads entirely, these unlocks are perfectly suited for the larger crowds you’ll run into. It’s not hard to fathom then that stocking up on ammo and cutting loose is the pinnacle of the game’s fun.

A few other issues crop up. Zombie spawns are a tad sketchy at present, and can assemble an army behind you (yes, even after you’ve cleared it) without notice if you’re not careful. And though hit detection is mostly fine, the same herky-jerky controls present in Paintball War persist here. Adjusting the sensitivity works, though it’ll still be a complicated adjustment for some. On the plus side, there is the promise of online co-op coming eventually. As the adage goes, ‘Never fight undead strippers alone’. If you have a friend, it’s something to look forward to.

Even with copious levels of skin and a formidable arsenal with which to eliminate the undead, Zombie Strippers Stole My Heart Then Ate My Brains rests squarely in the ‘not good, not bad either’ category. It has some fun, and you’ll easily manage a dollar’s worth of entertainment out of it, but Strange Games Studios will have to change things up for the obligatory sequel if they want to keep my business.

In the recent spate of zombie wave shooters to be released, which has seen five games built around the concept in less than two weeks, Sick Kreations‘ End of Days: Survivor (80 MSP) still manages to be more of a surprise and anomaly than the others. Up until now, I’d been previewing Aliens Vs. Romans (also from Sick Kreations), what I had thought to be their next project. And though this game might be meant as a tide-you-over until Aliens Vs. Romans (itself poised to be a wave shooter), it instead runs the risk of souring some gamers’ expectations.

Both zombies and wave shooters have seen their worth stretched before, but Survivor is a case of recycled materials. It takes the map from the developer’s previous effort, Infected Vs. Mercs, and drops two of the larger aspects that made that game a fun and replayable shooter; online play and leaderboards. It does feature a host of score-based unlockable weapons (that are all curiously light on ammo and capacity), though in substituting the undead, it finds itself sandwiched between doing too little and just enough, satisfying the trendy crowd with the fatal expense of ditching key components.

The game runs a total length of 20 waves, but it’s the bonus rounds that hit every three waves that are easily the most enjoyable points in the game. You’re handed a grenade launcher with unlimited ammo, each shot of which sends the zombies flying in all directions. The round doesn’t end until the timer runs out or you die. It’s fast and fun, and should have been the kind of quickened, arcade gameplay the rest of the waves strived for. Alas, it’s not to be.

It doesn’t help that the zombies skip out on intelligence and run en masse to your gun, relying on their numbers and you catching an odd corner or dead end to provide challenge. Failure doesn’t mean failure, either. If you die, you simply pick up where you left off, no penalty. In fact, the biggest challenge in End of Days: Survivor is simply to survive the boredom that sets in, as outside of the bonus rounds or unlocking a new gun, each wave plays out the same, with you running around, refilling ammo far too often, and shooting one nondescript zombie after another.

The helicopter sequence at the end is a just reward, but as a wave shooter, End of Days: Survivor loses the player’s interest far too quickly. Once you all unlock the guns (twenty minutes or so), they remain accessible for that playthrough, eliminating goals and turning wave progression into a lifeless chore. Coming on the heels of so many others, which sees those games doing the same thing but better in certain instances, it fails to impress. All of its parts are in working order, and the developers do weaponry particularly better than most, but I’ll admit my anticipation for Aliens Vs. Romans had dulled a bit. This should have been an add-on to the existing game. Try harder, guys.

Yeah, okay, I know. I bet you’re really surprised. Another zombie wave shooter, and of course I’m at the concession stand, popcorn and a ticket, please. To be honest, I’m not sure how I end up in these predicaments myself. Zombie Splatter (240 MSP) does zero things new, and never even considers straying from the preset formula of walking dead and purchasable weapons. Why give it a mention?

Originally, that question was answered with the game’s zombies. These shamblers are the prettiest bunch of brain eaters I’ve seen on XBLIG. The models are detailed and varied (there’s actually visual differences between them), and animate better than any other game’s version of the dead dance. It’s bothered me of late how many developers have put so little time into making their ‘star attractions’ believable zombies, recycling the same style throughout and using as few frames of animation as they could get away with (the ‘sliding’ zombie is the worst; Yeah, Quarantined, I’m talking about you).

However, rather than insert new types of enemies as the waves proceed, Zombie Splatter subscribes to the 28 Days Later school of thought that a faster zombie is a better zombie. Within reason, sure, I’ll agree, though the game tends to accelerate its zombies to ridiculous speeds, having them sprint around the arena like rabbits in the higher rounds. And then there’s the issue of them possibly being suicidal; the quicker zombies will sometimes run into walls and off themselves, or just collapse (re)dead in the middle of the arena. Hmmm. Curious.

Extinguishing zombies and gaining multipliers (by avoiding damage) gives you money that you spend on health and ammo between waves. Besides the starting pistol, eight weapons are on sale, including the requisite shotgun, assault weapons, and sniper rifles with scopes (seriously, is there a preset list of guns that everyone uses?). Though here too, the game decides to develop a quirk, perpetually locking me out of using both the shotgun and P90, despite having permanently purchased them. Even stranger, the next time I booted up the game, the rest of the guns after the P90 were magically unlocked and available to me (!?). Still no dice on the other two guns, though. Hmmm. Curious-er.

Beyond those bizarre happenings, it’s just not very fun once you’ve unlocked all the guns. ‘King of the Hill’ is okay for a secondary mode, tasking you to stay within the yellow rings to score points (money), but the game handles it all wrong, tracking your time survived instead of using that concept of time against you. There’s no penalty for leaving the circles; in fact, it’s encouraged to chase down ammo crates that occasionally drop. Given that you’re already fighting off zombies in a small, usually wide-open space, why not add a timer to things, forcing you to stay inside their boundaries to stop the clock, asking you to trade off between ammo necessity and precious seconds? It’s a missed challenge…

…in a series of misses, some near, others far. All said and accounted for, I cannot recommend Zombie Splatter in current form. The price is higher than it should be ($3 for one tiny square arena? Really?), and the weapon / enemy woes and ‘small potatoes’ offerings only make it all the more obvious its appetite exceeds its reach.

To me, the Undead Empire series (yes, there’s two games now, which qualifies as a ‘series’ for my purposes here) has been a surprisingly fun (well, up and down) zombie shooter in a well-traveled format. Conscious or not, every game of this type has aped on James Silva’s success with little deviation, which makes Undead Empire: Hellfire (80 MSP) a very curious upgrade, considering the visuals and character roster haven’t changed from the original.

That’s a valid point, and even though the purpose of a twin-stick shooter is in the shooting, you can’t help but feel the deja vu creeping up at every turn. UE: Hellfire sees the continuing odyssey of Dr. Hubert Von… you know what?… it doesn’t matter. You came here to shoot things.

And shoot things you will. Hellfire is strictly about the action, and gifts you a cornucopia of undead and undead-dispatching weaponry and turrets, some of them new to the sequel. Guns suck ammo from normal or elemental stockpiles, and every character has a different starting loadout (all of them have a pistol with unlimited ammo as backup), allowing you to choose your ideal weapon, such as a shotgun, SMG, sniper rifle, and perk unique to that character. Those bonuses include things like increased damage or cash pickups.

Regardless of choice, money accumulated during the rounds (enemies drop cash and ammo) can be spent in the shop between levels in typical wave-shooter fashion, so a new gun or turret type is never far away. For a further cost, each weapon / turret can be upgraded, often meaning the difference between a nice toy and lethal tool (upgrading the shotgun gives it a wider spread and more damage; hasn’t steered me wrong yet).

Story mode offers fifteen levels (waves), which will throw a lot of undead your way quickly. If you’re playing alone, you will definitely need to put your first monies into some variation of a turret within the initial two or three waves. Beyond that, you’ll be overwhelmed. The game doesn’t suffer hermits. Playing with others would obviously makes things easier, and UE: Hellfire encourages (read: requires) you to go that route, with up to four players locally or on Xbox Live.

Screw zombies; it’s the crows that’ll get you every time.

Beyond the campaign and online sessions, there’s a returning survival mode that gives you a primary weapon with unlimited ammo to do as much damage as possible on a shoestring life-span. Online Leaderboards also return, and go a long way in convincing zombie-stalwarts to continue playing. It covers all the bases, with player lists for every mode and a lifetime kills tracker.

While I still recommend taking a look, Undead Empire: Hellfire is one those games that could go either way depending on how you play, and it hasn’t changed much from its last outing. Solo, it’s a nice challenge for a few rounds of short-lived fun, whereas in multiplayer (local or Live), the added muscle from friends or strangers makes it a much more surmountable and richer experience.

Last year’s ‘bumper-car RPG’ Battlepaths won me over with its quirky charm and unique graphical style. Oh, and the chance at epic loot. Now with Undead Legions (80 MSP), Developer Key17 Games takes a step back and turns its attention to the oft-used sub-genre of zombie wave shooters. Hey, if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em, right?

Eh, it can be wrong. The art style and eccentricities do make a return, along with the main character from Battlepaths (here representing the ‘Gunner’ class). He’s complimented by three additional allies / classes (Rogue, Mage, and Priestess; all equipped as you’d imagine). Naturally, each character comes with his or her own boosts and shortcomings to stats, and their very own special attack (grenade drop, spike trap, etc.) in two forms; a standard casting to provide some room / temporary relief, and a stronger, wider version of the spell that requires a full bar of mana.

Modes come in Classic and Survival. While the latter plays out exactly as it should (fight until you die), Classic takes the… ahem… classic approach to wave variations, sending lines of zombies and other monsters for five rounds, throwing in a hulking boss type, then repeat. Killing anything that’s walking / flying around will occasionally leave behind health and mana, keeping you focused on the hordes and continually stocked.

You’re additionally buoyed with temporary powerups (spread shot, speed) and permanent stat-boosting upgrades (by swatting at the sack-carrying goblins between rounds) that will gradually transform your chosen avatar into the epitome of a zombie slayer. All stuff you should know from prior experience. Enemies cover the familiar spectrum as well, from classic shamblers to those with ranged attacks, brutes that take more damage, etc. A boss round every few levels further distinguishes the zombie ranks, though even they’re just larger brutes to go with a larger area of attack (or a cheap bomb spread, grrr). …It’s a zombie wave shooter. You’ve seen this all before, and you’ll start to feel remarkably blasé within the first fifteen minutes of booting it up.

And though enemy variety is always appreciated over rote waves of twin-stick nothingness, some of those types can be grating to single-players. Depending on your character and / or reserve mana, you can quickly find yourself surrounded by bats or explosive spiders that like to box you in before detonating, dealing huge amounts of damage you really have no defense against. This would be less of an issue with the local multiplayer (to spread out targets and damage among), though solo runs won’t benefit from the friendly intervention.

Pretty, yet familiar.

Despite competency, solid controls, and some fun moments, Undead Legions is still just a Battlepaths-themed version of every zombie wave shooter that’s ever been released. To be fair, taking it on with friends would no doubt extend the enjoyment (add points accordingly). Maybe worth it if you’ve somehow been living under a rock all these years, but it’s otherwise the same type of game you’ve seen over and over again, with precious little to separate it from the zombie pack.

Poor Jimmy. He had it all. A successful band, a brainy girlfriend, and an awesome guitar. Too bad that ‘evil spawn’ Nathan envied that shiny music-maker, so much that he conjured up a spell to make the dead rise from their graves, purely to steal that fabled axe. Such is the story behind Jimmy Vs. Zombies (80 MSP) a modern day parable for not coveting thy neighbor’s guitar, or something.

Imagining itself as a cross between a run & gunner and a zombie wave shooter, Jimmy Vs. Zombies brings to the table much of what you’d expect from the pairing (2D art, co-op, zombies, fire / plasma gun upgrades that last a limited time), and a little bit of something you wouldn’t; Grandmother Tower Defense (yes, setting up a defensive perimeter around a wheelchair-bound grandmother).

It’s not quite run & gun, though, more a stand-in-place & gun. Stages take on the appearance of being fully-explorable but are really just glorified arenas that last a line of eight continuous waves. The later rounds tend to go on a little longer / get a little crowded, but your chosen zombie killer has some backup in tow (deployable turrets and mines). The threat isn’t strictly limited to the standard zombie types (walker / acid spitter / brute) either, as bat variants can become an aerial nuisance. A watchful eye and careful use of weapons / allies is needed to hold back the staunchest group of walkers.

Smart play is good for business. Building and maintaining a high combo during the waves will net you more cash, with the money earned able to be put towards permanent prizes in the ‘shop’, like extra health, continues, or costumes for the two main characters, Jimmy and Andrea. Other neat extras, like an additional character or a Survival mode (a quick way to earn massive cash, FYI), help extend and give purpose to the playtime. And it is fun, for a short while.

Strangely, the game undercuts the player that chooses to play alone. While it’s probably best (and more fun) to play with a friend, it’s evidently balanced with that local co-op in mind, as solo slayers will find it quite literally an impossible task, at least without fully-upgrading the health and fire rate of either character first. Even then, the zombies vastly outnumber you, and you’ll need to make every shot / turret / mine count after you’ve reached the third or fourth stage.

That kind of difficulty is made worse by the lack of any interesting particulars (minus protecting the grandmother; that bit was novel, if unexplained). The idea behind the game is somewhat sound, but the execution is flawed. What’s left isn’t enough to get anyone excited. At best, Jimmy Vs. Zombies is a roguish gamble for solo players, or a repetitive shoot em’ up for two friends to spend a few sessions on.

There’s quite a few things in life that I dread doing. Public speaking, tax preparation, jury duty, dentist appointments, to name a few. Reviewing another zombie wave shooter is a recent inductee to that list. There’s just… there’s just so many of them. Deserved or not, The Co-Op Zombie Game (80 MSP) caused a reflexive sigh upon startup, another dreaded event I’d have to man up and tackle.

Turns out that’s being a little too dramatic, and I have since rescinded my sigh. Moving on. It’s not fully intentional, but Strange Games Studios’ newest bears a striking resemblance to The $1 Zombie Game, a bizarrely-popular (and I’m stressing ‘popular’; I still don’t get the fascination) wave shooter that staled after ten minutes (yes, in my opinion). The Co-Op Zombie Game adopts the literal naming both for ease of recognition and truth in advertising. Your assumptions are correct; it’s all about battling the undead, and supports up to four players online.

Though the game promises almost twenty levels, it is, in fact, one sprawling piece of real estate, broken up by piles of debris that transfer you from one area to the next. The layout runs from narrow lanes to open intersections, with plenty of room for a party of four to spread out and cover their respective ground. Things will start to look and feel a little same-y and sparse, but there is a definitive design for each stage despite the reused urban environment. Monotony is held at bay with some handy explosive barrels and ammo / gun crates, giving the level some much-needed interactivity and you a reason to explore every nook and cranny.

Your starting pistol aside, you are saved from ‘wave shooter fatigue’ by the chance of finding new and stronger guns (shotguns, assault rifles, and scoped variants). The game graciously allows you to carry two weapons at once, with the ability to swap out whenever you happen upon a better situation. Ammo is generally plentiful, though melee weapons can bypass the trouble of reloading in a tight spot, with the trade-off of being up close and personal with your attacks. You’d do better to equip two guns, though, as the amount of zombies in each wave predictably increases as you go along.

Online co-op or free-for-all modes also take a potentially pedestrian task to a higher level, making the game far more dynamic and fun whether you’re playing with or against friends / strangers. Cooperative’s rule set is the same as solo. Free-for-all makes everyone a target, zombie and human alike, fighting towards a preset score with extra points awarded for killing other human players. While there are a few minor hiccups and inconsistencies (players passing through walls / barriers, for instance), overall, the matches I encountered were solid.

There isn’t much new to the formula here, though the environmental interactions and online play carry what otherwise would be a standard zombie vehicle. With a full party, The Co-Op Zombie Game is good fun. It means well, plays well, and ends well. That’s probably the highest praise you can get from a wave shooter cynic like myself.

Despite my (completely justified) reticence to play another zombie shooter, Dawn of the Fred (80 MSP) has been a long time in the making. So long, I’d kinda forgotten about it. Developer Sticky DPad Games was running previews on other indie sites in an effort to promote the name and idea literally years before its release. Want more aging trivia? Dawn of the Fred was to be the survival-centric prequel to the more-fleshed out (with a story campaign, side missions and such) Night of the Fred, which I’m not even sure on the status of. Look for it in 2016, maybe?

I kid, I kid. The important bit is, Dawn of the Fred is here. It exists. And, yes, it’s a survival game featuring those loveable shamblers, popularly known as the zombie wave shooter. The game posits an unlimited number of rounds and brings together a varied roster of undead in familiar archetypes (think Acid, Screamer, Tank, and Regenerating zombies) on two maps. Waves play out according to different sets of rules. In some rounds, you need to defeat a set number of enemies. In others, you’ll face off against larger groups, or more of a certain type. Zombies drop cash, which you can then redeem for ammo or health at vending machines scattered around the battlefield, or visit the gun shop.

With a generous stockpile of 70+ weapons and numerous combinations thereafter (you can equip two guns at once), it aims to be more Dead Rising-lite than traditional wave shooting, which definitely works in the game’s favor. Granted, a good chunk fall into the usual weaponry suspects (SMGs, shotguns, pistols, just with increased stats), though you do get a more diverse set of guns on offer in the ‘wonderful’ and ‘weird’ categories (…a toaster, for instance).

While those beefier (or bread-ier, ha!) options don’t typically come cheap, the key to survival is in trying different loadouts; something ventured, something gained, if you will. The ideal setup for me was alternating an SMG / rifle with a launcher of some sort, trading off firing speed for area-of-effect whenever a crowd or the heavy hitters gathered. This improvisation works out well, as the mix-and-matching amounts to most of the fun you’ll have in Dawn of the Fred.

There are some small concerns. Occasional depth-perception issues with the background pop up (it can be hard to discern doorways and paths, especially with the gore filter at max), and with health refills locked away behind an absurd amount of coin ($5000!? And it doesn’t top you off for the trouble!?), I struggled to even reach the fifteenth wave on some playthroughs. This is less of a critique should you play it locally with a friend, no doubt the best way to enjoy and progress in the game.

Still, Dawn of the Fred makes the best of its lengthy development cycle, separating itself from the rest of the pack with dozens of unique weapons. The gameplay and a few shortcomings here and there remind you that at its core it’s just a gussied up zombie wave shooter, albeit a fun one with a piranha launcher. Not very many can say that.

Though the original review for Jimmy Vs. Zombies meandered around the bush, finding both the good and bad to be about even, a recently-released update for the game looks to correct some of the mistakes I had mentioned and inject some new modes and weapons.

Patch 1.2.2 adds Rush mode, a slimmer, four-wave-per-level campaign package (the original Arcade featured eight waves per stage), as well as ‘Extreme Rush’ and ‘Extreme Arcade’. The ‘extreme’ stands for more zombies, which is good or bad depending on your state of mind regarding zombies. All four modes come with an additional seventh stage, too, having players explore a warehouse in a forest. Finally, this update introduces ‘Granny Unleashed’, a side-scrolling shmup featuring those lovable geriatrics from the local retirement home, mowing down the zombie apocalypse from their souped-up wheelchairs.

Meanwhile, single-player difficulty has been addressed in the most definitive way possible— adding a bazooka with a high drop rate and higher damage output. Yes sir, problem solved, with the trade-off being that the game is now ridiculously easy if you continue to snag said plentiful bazookas. On the upside, this renders my previous argument void, emphatically void. Store prices have been reduced as well, allowing you to access bonuses and unlocks sooner. Solo players should now have very little problem advancing through the game, so go ahead and make the dead… dead, again.

In the year whatever of our ongoing war with anything versus zombies, I have to say I’ve seen it all now. With Dwarf Madness ($1.00) and its cast of four color-coded, gold-seeking, cave-exploring little-r people, we’ve officially exhausted every option for a sparring partner against the venerable undead. There can’t be any form of man or animal, real or fanciful, that’s yet to take its turn on the front lines.

Dwarf Madness is a twin-stick shooter. Yes, it forces me to drag out the much-despised ‘zombie wave shooter’ tag, but zombies play only a marginal role in the game, one of several different types of enemies (it’s not even the most dangerous; that honor belongs to those damn flying cherubs). And while the levels are labeled in successive waves that contain ever-increasing amounts of baddies, the main objective is collecting loot and upgrading your weapon / character RPG-style when you visit the store after each run.

The standard arsenal applies; pistol, machine gun, shotgun, sniper, and launcher. Ammunition is infinite, so go ahead and fire away. It’s playable with up to four in local co-op, sharing lives (but separate HP) and the camera, while competing for the same finite gold reserves. Although it’s undoubtedly better with friends, single-player is a fine alternative, thanks to random gold layouts and tricky AI with a mob mentality. On the higher waves, you’ll have to carefully clear out rooms and corridors.

Taking the place of a traditional story, the shop and its enterprising owner are your keys to the kingdom, in terms of progression. Acquiring gold and buying out his stock advances the game in ‘chapters’, accompanied by some generally witty writing. It’s nothing too deep or groundbreaking, mind you, but the style compliments the action without taking up too much of your time. With these story bits usually comes fresh unlocks, that enable you to max out your preferred gun or offer permanent stat boosts and perks, like reduced weapon recoil, an extra life per run, etc.

You only ever fight on the same solitary map, but once you’ve progressed enough in the shop, Hard mode becomes available. This allows you to show off your upgraded weapons and dwarf against a tougher set of re-skinned foes, with twice the gold to collect per wave and a higher percentage of gold drops from defeated enemies. It can’t take the place of a new environment or mode, but it’s a nice way to extend playtime and scale the difficulty. With the frantic arcade gameplay and multiple online high scores to chase, it’s not disheartening enough to disappoint.

Dwarf Madness doesn’t have the most inspiring title, and may turn off some with the mention of zombies, but the game is genuinely fun and easy to pick up. It’s more than worth your time until the next unlikely protagonist (Dinosaurs?) takes up the never-ending fight against those flesh-eating moneymakers.

When it comes to the Undead and first-person shooters, Strange Games has now hung its hat on a variety of poles, both figurative and literal. It was a club full of unfortunate strippers to start with, then they moved onto a more serious co-op affair. With the new, generic-sounding Zombie Defense Squad ($1.00), the focus once again is ‘zombie wave shooter’. This time out, its dead denizens are of an exaggerated, comical style, a la Stubbs the Zombie or Plants vs. Zombies.

In sticking with the Stubbs’ theme, the large-ish map and assets mimic the classic, 50s / 60s slice of Americana; you know, when people were a lot nicer (or at least hid their insanity better), it was safe to leave your doors unlocked, and zombies weren’t yet a part of the culture or a semi-legitimate threat. Other than the trip down a retro suburban lane, though, it’s your typical shooter setup…

…with some minor enhancements. While the zombies still come in waves for you (and up to three friends online) to mow down with your choice of significant firepower, your progress— and the end of the game— are predicated on you leveling up Call of Duty-style. You’ll gain some automatically-equipped perks as you go, giving you the usual bonuses like faster reloads, increased speed, etc. These modify your avatar ever so slightly, to even the odds at higher waves that increase the number of zombies you have to clear out.

Experience doubles as Money, which you can spend between rounds to buy one of the game’s numerous guns (Assault rifles, SMGs, all the way up to an RPG) and as much ammo as you can carry. The game ensures you’re never really light on cash, so it’s beneficial to buy the heavier weapons and keep them fully-loaded. With a secondary pistol and a few clips / health packs scattered around the map, there’s always some contingencies in place.

There isn’t much challenge or variety to the game, though, as the same few zombies repeat throughout, none of which switch up their attacks or pattern. Depending on your initial spawn point (it occasionally likes to pin you in a corner surrounded by foes), it’s simply a matter of ‘leading’ zombies around the neighborhood’s circular track. And with their complacency added to the been-there-done-that gameplay, it’s no wonder that the thrill is soon gone, making Zombie Defense Squad just another corpse to add to the burn pile.

Although they’ve long passed the threshold for burnout and outstayed their comeback, you just can’t keep the Zombies down. Not even with a headshot. They’ve come in all shapes and sizes, all manner of decay and speed. As the whole story, or as the backdrop for a larger one. In novels, in movies, and in video game form. And certainly combined with Minecraft. Though like many others before it, the Minecraftian look in ZDQ II Ghost Dogs ($1.00) is merely there as a means to an end; to get you to mow down a bunch of block-headed zombies.

I wouldn’t call it a full-fledged sequel to Zombie Death Quota, either; more an update to take advantage of Activision’s most recent Call of Duty title. While dogs play a large role in that game (often as allies), the canines in ZDQ II are anything but your furred friends, relegated to a spirit form that will occasionally spawn to attack you. Hence the title. Inspired stuff. What is new for this game is the two-player offline co-op.

Which helps to alleviate an otherwise-identical zombie wave shooter setup. As large parts of this game are carried over from the original, you’ll find yourself on a pretty familiar island map, using the same HUD and weapons. Your objectives remain the same as well; killing a set number of zombies, and collecting a few crates that are scattered around the level, after which you wait for extraction and advance. The ‘quotas’ for completion vary, as does your loadout. A fogged-over version of the map is also used in rotation, mimicking the settings from the first.

Not your best friend. Not at all.

Rampant déjà vu aside, the game still features excellent controls and enough variety that you don’t necessarily feel locked into the same cycle each playthrough. Enemies are crafty and quick, meaning you’ll have to pay attention and use the environment to your advantage. The level itself has plenty of terrain, alternating from the high ground to beaches, interiors and caves. The guns feel different from each other, and are satisfying to use (you also get a brief infusion of Dubstep whenever you roast an enemy with the flamethrower).

It all comes down to how many zombies you can stomach. If you haven’t played the original, then ZDQ II Ghost Dogs is certainly the version to buy. For everyone else that has, and is already suffering from undead fatigue, the lack of new content here might make this version of the game a trifle bit unnecessary.

Survivalist ($4.99, EDIT 3/5: currently on sale at $2.99 for a limited time) will be notable for two things. The first, sadly, will be its higher cost. Gamers are a risk-adverse bunch when money is involved, specifically when it comes to XBLIGs. To some, spending five dollars on an indie game is tantamount to dropping sixty dollars on an unproven retail title. Most will simply never take the chance. To those that do, the game’s second notable quality will apply: Survivalist is one of the most impressive XBLIGs ever produced.

The game puts you in the top-down viewpoint of Joe Wheeler, a rich snob (with his own private desert bunker; how nice) turned reluctant savior, trying to live in a world that has been decimated by several different strains of a terrible zombie infection and society’s subsequent collapse. Think of it as a cross between Fallout and last year’s excellent State of Decay. Survivalist follows in that latter vein, putting the emphasis more on building / being part of a community and securing relationships, over the undead and outright gunplay.

Even with overwhelming firepower, combat is dangerous.

Though killing zombies is a part of it, for sure. The mid-western United States never looked so desperate and sparse, and in-game, it’s a large open-world wasteland teeming with trouble and treasure. Singly, the undead don’t pose much of a threat, but in packs, they can catch you off guard and overwhelm. Depending on the strain of infection (green is mild, white is instant death), traveling unprepared and alone into unknown territory (the map fills in as you explore) is generally not advised.

The good news is, you won’t have to, as the game features a robust economy based on gold and a cast of hundreds willing to do anything for you provided you have said gold. Or medicine. Or weapons. Or just a safe place to crash. You’ll carry out plenty of story missions and side quests in your time, but basic survival is the goal. To do that, you’ll recruit other survivors, scavenge (and scavenge, and scavenge some more), and build a functioning home base, complete with buildings, crops, and protective fencing as you see fit.

The characters that you meet and team up with, too, are a complicated sort. They each have their own motivations and desires, and actually react to you and remember the decisions you make. Show you can handle yourself in a firefight, and people will take notice, looking to you as a leader and joining your community if you ask them to. Threaten a trader or a townsperson, and be prepared to get the cold shoulder from your constituents. Take on a former looter after you’ve killed his friends, and of course the dude will harbor a deep hatred for you. This kind of interaction (and their consequences) within the world of Survivalist happens regularly, and it’s truly awesome to see it all play out, dependent on your choices.

Missions can be dealt with in a number of ways. You can go solo, or roll up with your entire posse if you so wish, to even the odds. Play it smooth, or as a chickenshit, and you can avoid a fight altogether. Don’t like your current quest or your benefactor? Lure them away from town, then kill them and loot the body, if you so desire. You may be at war with an entire town afterwards, but it’s your choice. The human condition is reduced to its more feral form in Survivalist. Zombies play host to the game’s overall storyline, though they are hardly the real enemy.

Like The Walking Dead has prophesized before, the real danger in any post-apocalyptic scenario is the people around you. Traders won’t take pity on you or your concerns, and villagers won’t automatically trust you or readily give you work. Zombies are capable of plenty, but looters, often surly and well-armed, can take out your entire party in a hail of gunfire if you don’t play nice and / or have the proper loadout. Bandages are your friend, yes, but having party members with higher skills in medicine, weapons, etc., is just as valuable.

Conversations can play out multiple ways.

So if it seems I’m painting a somewhat romantic portrait of this apocalypse, be forewarned— Survivalist is a massive undertaking, a game of extremely-incremental progress. Food, water, medicine, and supplies are always at the forefront of your community’s mind, and are absolutely essential to its survival. Residents will set off in search of these items as they are needed, though it’s always helpful to send search parties out to gather whenever possible (you can direct them to known stashes via the map). The vast distances between viable supplies, towns, and missions, though, can make this a risky proposition.

The game is difficult. Death waits around every corner and barren desert outcrop. Humans and zombies alike will track you and pursue you across the land. Staying put and resting on small successes is just as deadly. Both you and your people need constant upkeep (there’s a character that needs insulin on a regular basis), and that perpetual foraging means the game can start to feel unfair and more like a chore of micromanagement than actual fun.

Of course, it could be argued that this IS the end of the world as we know it, so, naturally, life would be unfair. And I guess you could always banish the weaker links from your community, because choices, man. That said, I would have liked the constant fear of starvation, thirst, and infection to be a little less, well, urgent. There’s plenty of other things in Survivalist that can kill you just as easily. Why spoil all that fun?

Looking past all the hardship, this is easily one the best survival-focused zombie games I’ve played. Save for some minor hiccups and issues, there is not a single serious reason to balk at the price. Survivalist is an intense experience, one of the most content-packed, feature-rich games on the indie channel. It is not to be missed.

Two out of those three features guarantees a certain amount of success on XBLIG, so adding some actual ‘thinking’ to the mix is a welcome bonus! Above is a playthrough from the first chapter of Dead War, developer Bandana Games’ upcoming squad shooter.

Due to be executed that day, a death row inmate instead finds herself in the middle of a zombie… incident. How convenient! The good news is (well, aside from being ‘not dead’), you’ll get to mow down plenty of undead as you search for answers and try to curb the outbreak. You’ll do this on your own during some stretches, while at other times, you can recruit others— and their firepower— to help you.

Thankfully, the game looks to break up some of the ‘shooter monotony’ by giving you plenty of objectives (both optional and story-based) to tackle. Between that and the potential for some tactical firefights, Dead War just might convince the world it needs another game about zombies.

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Dead War is simply ‘coming soon’ to Xbox Live Indie Games. You can follow the developer on Twitter here, or keep an eye on the development blog here.

Massive Cleavage Vs. Zombies ($1.00)… I have to admit, I had a good chuckle at that one¹. Coming from Awesome Enterprises, they of Lifeguard and Flappy Monkey fame, among others, I didn’t have particularly high expectations. You’ve got the title to start, the requisite pandering to a younger ground, the all-too-typical zombie fodder; all the familiar elements of a cash-in. It’s certain to find some kind of audience regardless of anyone’s blessing.

The game stars a blonde with massive cleavage² and some fairly-decent ‘meat cleaver skills’ as well, on a mission to score some rare and tasty BBQ sauce³ during the zombie apocalypse. This plays out over 20+ same-ish levels, with her slicing up the undead and the living alike, anything and anyone that gets in her way. MC Vs. Z doesn’t shy away from its gratuitous violence, either, tossing in plenty of zombified children and dogs. Cute.

Gameplay is the simple arcade stuff, moving back and forth on various, single-screen ‘cityscape’ backgrouds. Enemies come at you in extended waves of so-so quasi-animation, with success coming only after you’ve survived a set amount of time. You’ve got two attacks at your disposal, a high and low swing, corresponding to the ‘height’ of the enemy that’s attacking you at that moment. That’s the extent of the game’s strategy, really, but as the pace and length of each stage increases, things do start to get busy.

It’s nothing spectacular to play, though it is buoyed somewhat by the crazy dialogue / premise, one that places our heroine(?) in one over-the-top, ridiculous situation after another. The hack n’ slash arcade levels are mixed together with these short, static cutscenes that occasionally delve into QTE, asking you to hit the right button on a timer to continue on. The cutscenes and the story itself ranges from slightly humorous to slightly-more racist to incredibly gory, liberally splashing blood and stereotypes everywhere.

Makes The Walking Dead look tame. Also, bewbs.

All that gore might almost make you forget it’s incredibly repetitive too, though it’s serviceable, for what it’s worth. Beating the game (roughly an hour) unlocks a New Game+ of sorts, sending you through the whole thing again with sped-up QTEs / enemy attack rates, and quicker combat animations of your own. One could argue this should have been the default mode.

Something tells me no one is coming into this looking for stellar gameplay or a New Game+ of any kind, though. Yet if you can get past the massive cleavage in Massive Cleavage Vs. Zombies, you’ll find a simple concept that does just enough with its insanity, with some added challenge during your (theoretical) second time through.

Just by exiting the starting gate of marketplace publication, Avatar of the Dead ($1.00) has a huge advantage. I mean, sure, zombies, but if the continued popularity of ApocZ is anything to go by, then people can’t get enough of the PvE¹ / PvP these types of open world games specialize in. That said, while the undead are more of an afterthought or bonus in games like ApocZ and the like, with players focused on robbing and killing each other², Avatar of the Dead runs into the same fate as all online-based XBLIGs do these days…

… with that being that nobody’s home. So, despite the potential (or murderous free-for-all) of eight-player co-op, odds are you’ll only have the offline, single-player portion of Avatar of the Dead to play with. Just you versus a horde of bloodthirsty zombies. How does that work out, you might ask? Well, sometimes… not so good.

Awkward, occasionally-broken combat aside, the setup here is straightforward and well-traveled; survive against a world of zombies, scrounging weapons from the surrounding exteriors of homes and barns. Don’t mistake that self-supplied mission objective for an actual objective, though. There is no statement of purpose, no score-keeping in Avatar of the Dead, no progress markers, no HUD even, to clue you in on what you’re supposed to be doing. You simply exist, slay some zombies until you die, then respawn next to a lonely van in the middle of nowhere and repeat.

Weapons consist of the usual melee tools, like a shovel or hatchet, and a pistol with unlimited ammo³. The ‘open world’ itself is quite limited in design, mostly featureless prairie in all directions. The few buildings that do dot the landscape may harbor a weapon, but there’s otherwise nothing of interest to see here. While ApocZ at least had the ‘survival’ part of its plan down, gathering supplies and watching out for your health, Avatar of the Dead is really just an arena to test out some weapons in. Sadly, it’s not even very good at that.

The zombies lack any kind of killer instinct, sometimes not even bothering to come after you. When they do, it’s relatively easy to dispatch them with whatever is at hand (your fists do just fine). Unfortunately, your sense of accomplishment at doing so will be muted at best. It’s not your fault. Any kind of tension or fear is lost when the walking dead wear bright, neon clothing(!), which is just as ridiculous and undercooked as the rest of the game.

Try as it does to be relevant and timely, Avatar of the Dead is a mess of a game, a shadow of the much better games it’s based on. While the scarcity of online players on XBLIG is something to lament, in the case of this game, I’d like to think of it as a blessing in disguise.

Doubtless we’ve all had our fill of zombies in one form of media or another¹. Not enough to go ‘cold turkey’ and disavow them altogether, mind you, but enough to start turning away the newcomers that are (very) late to the party. From the developer of all those ‘creepy, plastic-looking women set on a mysterious island‘ games, Zombie Purge ($1.00) falls into that unfortunate category.

Stop me if you’ve heard this premise before; a twin-stick shooter where you take down a horde of bloodthirsty zombies in a wave-based format, the difficulty and enemy numbers increasing as you— oww, what was… okay, okaaaay, you’ve heard it before. And, as cut-and-paste as that gameplay already is, Zombie Purge commits the further deadly sin of doing absolutely nothing new with the idea, beyond dragging its set of plastic characters into the mix.

Each game starts off with two walls of sandbagged ‘defenses’, which amounts to your objective. Survive the wave, and prevent them from completely destroying your barricades. Failing to do either will result in a ‘game over’. You have limited ammo, but can pick up more in-wave, and as a bonus for scoring the highest in that round. Explosive barrels? Check! It does allow local co-op for up to four, too, but the odds of anyone wrangling enough controllers and gullible players to pull that feat off would be pretty rare.

Gratuitous crotch and ass shots of the female characters? You bet.

You’d get the feeling I’m unnecessarily dumping on the game, but I assure you it is that underwhelming. Sure, the usual ‘indie’ problems surface; the animation is stiff (…um, eh, no pun intended), the solitary arena gets old fast— as does the gameplay— but there’s nothing mechanically ‘wrong’ the game. To its credit, it works as advertised.

There’s just no reason to waste your time here when so many other alternatives exist. Alternatives that are better built, and give you more things to do than mindlessly shoot or ogle at a few pics. Zombie Purge is just that; too little, too late to the table, too simple-minded and too dull to offer up even a modicum of fun.

The protagonist of Bandana Games‘ Dead War ($1.00) is hard to get a read on. She’s on Death Row for murder at the start of the story, saved (ironically) by the onset of a zombie apocalypse. As you venture forth, you learn more about her and her background, shaping the character in subtle ways. Some of those decisions on her personality can be made by you throughout the storyline, choosing when and who to help. It’s nothing groundbreaking, but then again, it’s not often that XBLIG presents semi-complex characters in its games (let alone a zombie title). This was an unexpected surprise.

It could be said that those same ‘lowered expectations’ might apply to the genre itself. Zombies are old hat; mindless fodder led to the slaughter against whatever vast array of weaponry you find and whatever trumped-up reasons you’re given to do so. Thankfully, Dead War trounces some of your preconceived notions about what the game may or may not offer. It is a zombie shooter, but like Survivalist, any comparisons to other games like it on XBLIG end after that.

The game plays from an overhead perspective and controls like a twin-stick shooter, presented across seven fairly-large and varied levels / chapters. These environments take you from the prison you call home to an abandoned hospital, to darkened subway tunnels and a university full of stranded survivors, as well as a few more places in-between. Given its undead denizens and arcade-ish control scheme, you’d expect it to play more action-oriented. To my delight, Dead War focuses more on exploration, driven by bits of story and real objectives, rather than just waves and waves of zombies¹.

And though it borrows a bit from RPGs and squad-based shooters² in the process, I kept coming back to the sense that Dead War felt more like a roguelike in places. You need patience and a steady hand. Little things like a simple map are a luxury you need to earn / find. Rooms and corridors are deliberately kept hidden from view until you open the door / turn the corner, essentially leaving you blind— and on-guard— for most of the game. This cleverly forces you to explore your surroundings carefully, and interact with other characters to advance and fill in the story gaps (and your map).

Even gathering extra ammunition (corpses only yield so much) requires some tact, with boxes locked behind amusing, reflex-heavy minigames. Need money for supplies or a better gun? Civilian entrepreneurs would love to sell them to you, but you’ll have to gamble. You can bet and win money at various kiosks in the world, allowing you to try your hand at Blackjack, play the Slots, or damn the odds and lay down money on horse races³ (see below).

Granted, it’s hardly realistic, but it all makes for a nice change of pace from the standard zombie killing that other titles serve up on repeat. And while nothing here is graphically-intensive, the game works with what it has, making effective use of lighting and claustrophobic rooms to create tension when needed. Dead War‘s locales also contain plenty of optional storyline should you desire it, stored on computers and TV broadcasts scattered around the world, including a few humorous anecdotes about other games and media (there’s riffs on Resident Evil, The Walking Dead, Metal Gear, even Destiny⁴).

Side activities considered, it’s tempting to dismiss the game as ‘easy’, when really it can be quite difficult at times. The game strikes a nice balance between you being well-armed for any situation and encouraging you to conserve ammo⁵. Either way, you’ll want to play smart. In another nod to roguelikes, should you die or fail an objective at any point in the chapter, you’ll have to start the level from scratch. This could potentially wipe out the last half-hour or so of your progress. It’s maddening (Chapter 4 can be an annoying ‘escort’ mission), but it’s also fair. Nothing comes easy. Try to rush through this apocalypse, and Dead War will make you pay for it.

Part of the charm is in that challenge, of course, and it’s that challenge (as well as its well-done ancillary bits and minigames / side missions) that allows the game to rise above its crowded genre. All told, you’ll probably need 5+ hours to see it all the way through. And you totally should. It takes a good amount of convincing— and quality game design— to get me excited about another zombie game. Dead War manages that and then some.