His Review with Ian
All Zombies Must Die (AZMD) on the PSN is a little piece of undead gaming pie that is not really suited to the home console experience.
AZMD claims to be an RPG with twin stick shooting possibilities and a fetch and carry experience all thrown together in a big zombie melting pot. Whilst I cannot deny that yes it does technically have all of these ingredients, they do not fuse together well.
There’s a distinct whiff of Tesco value gameness about it. Many times has many things in the game been seen before. Thin, stereotypical characters, poor tongue in cheek self referencing game dialogue, dull cartoony graphics and essentially an average 10 minutes of killing game fun dragged out over a lifetime. The market for miniature zombie killing experiences is saturated with games like Dead Block, Fort Zombie or I Made A Game With Zombies In It and most of these are better than AZMD.
The fetch and carry tasks saw me traipsing from one side of Deadhill to the other, going over the same ground, killing the same undead in the same room where I’d just killed 100 zombies before. But where was the evidence? There were no fried limbs, no brain stains and not even a speckle of blood. The game would then ask you to go back to that part of Deadhill and so on, ad infinitum…There was simply no purpose in this odious repetition other than to progress the game and this is a sure fire way to repel any eager gamer. This is irk inducing. When you die, in single player there’s no revive system and so you have to start the entire quest again. This too is even more irk inducing. In fact I’ve not felt this much rage whilst playing a game since the dreadful Thor which we reviewed last May.
The narrative dialogue and character design was achingly primitive and not in a sophisticated and deliberate way like Southpark. There was crude and misogynistic dialogue which I thought had died a death, but apparently not. Even with a passable control system (which isn’t entirely accurate) and the chance to shotgun or cricket bat your way through a sea of zombies, my fun thermometer failed to raise more than a single degree on this rudimentary game.
However, it might have worked a whole lot better if it had been presented on the i’s and smartphones of the portable gaming world. It could have been framed and packaged for a short tube or bus ride where AZMD recreates a Horde like experience which you can drop in and out of and slaughter scores of the little buggers. This could have been great. But as it stands, this is not great, this is far from great.
Her Review with Tracey
After the relative success of 2009’s Burn Zombie Burn, you’d be forgiven for thinking that developers Double Six were short of ideas as All Zombies Must Die hit the Playstation Network and Xbox360 Live Arcade this month. Square-jawed, quaffed-haired, dim-witted leading man CHECK. Millions of zombies CHECK. Flaming hot weapon CHECK. Fun… Oh.
Yes I get it. The creative team clearly love zombie arcade games and have wrung out every last cliché and stereotypical reference to the genre as they possible can. This time they’ve gone beyond the simple but effectively addictive “blast as many zombies as you can until you die” format, introducing an RPG thread which for me is dated in its attitude and premise whilst being nowhere near as “hilarious” as promised.
Jack “A gamer like you and me” (?) and his trusty shotgun (because we ALL have one of those) is mankind’s only hope against hoards of zombies swarming the white picket fence town of Deadhill. His thrill of finding himself up against the undead, as if he were starring in his own totally awesome video game is lost on me as what he makes up for in quips and enthusiasm, he sadly lacks in charm, imagination or depth. I measure an RPG’s success on how I much I invest in the character, even if it’s just a teensy weensy bit into the ROLE. With predictable, shallow dialogue that failed to raise more than a feeble smile, carried over a range of repetitive tasks, the only character I felt any connection to was Rachel his nagging ex-girlfriend who hates games as much as she hates Jack as he was unable to tear himself away from games long enough to notice her (slow clap for another lame female character). Clearly, RSC levels of emotive depth and motivation isn’t appropriate here but I couldn’t help feeling the whole RPG focus was too over-hyped and hammy to be declared a success. I’m all for self-referential scripts and love baked zombie RPG pie served with a classic sci-fi twist and a dollop of humour for good measure but presuming the entire audience are gonna dig playing a lazy guy who loves telling every talking computer security game device that will listen that it’s just like being in a computer game which he loves more than life quickly became dull. Without some edge or witty, imaginative/innovative story, the jokes and embarrassing nods to the genre feel dryer than a burnt out budgie cage.
Away from the dismal, bobble-headed characters, there are plenty of other role-playing features including search-fetch-carry side quests as well as big ass modified boss zombies. Shooting, whacking or punching my way through non-stop waves of zombies resulted in them dropping food (which replenishes health of course) and weapons. In the early levels, at each security gate, I was given a task to complete (kill X amount of zombies, find an item etc) before being let into another part of town (which is also overrun with zombies, so why have the gates dividing up areas? I digress…). There’s the option of running around the same area ignoring the task with the aim of seeking out bonus items and power-ups in order to smash highscores – the only thing in the world that drives gamers right? As I progressed, the running around the same area seeking items became part of the tasks which stripped the exploratory fun away and made the game more of a chore. Collecting new items to craft new weapons for the most part works well and though I would’ve liked a little more freedom and experimentation, a flaming shotgun put the odds in my favour.
Sadly, my biggest grievance and perhaps the reason why I’ve been so unforgiving of everything else, was with the inaccurate shooting. Crucial to the basic premise – which is the only premise – of killing zombies, too often I felt the direction I was shooting in (or wanting to shoot in) wasn’t and would never be in line with oncoming zombies, making this a game of hit and miss. Conserving ammo became a waste of time as spraying bullets at any old angle was the only way of escape when totally surrounded and this frequently happened as each level increased in difficulty! A few hours single player later and there was no joy to be had trying to rack up a massive score. Cricket bats and old weapons are ineffective unless pimped. Pimping weapons requires running around collecting stuff and shooting zombies with old ineffective weapons - I don't like circles! All Zombies Must Die becomes easier and infinitely more entertaining when you have four players in the mix as you can strategise, help your buddies out or simply plough through the sea of green brain-fanciers in a frantic onscreen mash-up. In the heat of multiplayer mayhem, frustrations about the story, grumbles about characters and whines about weapons melt away as its arcade heart shines through. Why this can only be done locally rather than online when it’s the game’s redeeming feature baffles me and is perhaps indicative that overall, All Zombies Must Die fails to hit the target.
Racking up high scores does give it an arcade feel whilst polished graphics, a bubbling retro 1950s sci-fi movie inspired soundtrack and (if you’ve got friends), the multiplayer elevates the game. Sadly, everything else for me was a swollen tongue-in-cheek and more than I could chew.
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