Zombieville USA Video Review - I Can Haz Brainz Burgerz?

I always love a good zombie story. The themes of isolation and hopelessness strike a tone with me, as with many others. There is something about planning survival for the Zombie Apocalypse that is just thought provoking. If I was a gambler I’d bet the average person reading this has absolutely no fire escape plan, but if you wake up one morning with the living dead at your doorstep you would have a plan set up to execute with military precision. For those of you still working on your living dead emergency survival kits, we have Zombieland USA.

Zombieville, developed by Mika Mobile, is a zombie survival game. The game takes place in a random town in the U.S. that has been infested with zombies. Your job is to survive as many rounds as possible without getting killed by the hordes of undead. Being an endless survival game there is only one way that the game can end, and it’s not good for you. Though you start out with only a pistol and a bat you receive cash for killing zombies which can be used between rounds to upgrade your existing arsenal or add to it.

Rounds consist of city streets where you walk from one end to the other. Several houses are strewn throughout each level that you can enter to check for ammo and cash to use for upgrades. Houses are also a strategic device to hide from zombies as they walk by. The zombies are broken into three types, green zombies have average speed and health. White zombies are very fast but have low health and dark green zombies are slow, but have tons of health. Which each round you complete the zombies will become stronger and faster until you are over run. For characters you are given a wide array of choices. Each character has different attributes ranging from faster movement, better ammo or cash pickups, to proficiency with various weapons. Game play varies depending on the choice of character and weapon approach.

Unfortunately even with all the various characters Zombieville still has the feeling of a game that wasn’t quite done. After the first five to ten waves of zombies there is a feeling of repetition that is tough to shake for the rest of the experience. Replaying with a new character does give the game a little more life, but I found the game play to be very similar between characters. This mixed with the fact that level design is pretty much the exact same for each round, and that there are only three types of enemies leaves Zombieville a little bit bland.

A redeeming quality for Zombieville is that the controls feel very tight. Many games with touch screen controls can turn out very sloppy, Zombieville is an example of doing it right. The controls are simple and the buttons are big making control mistakes an unlikely cause of premature death.

The graphic style is also eye catching. Mika Mobile sticks with their tried and true design the characters and environments are very cute and cartoony in Zombieville USA. This adds a lighter side to the idea that you are hopelessly fighting to survive. The animation of decapitating your cerebraly starved friends and neighbors is both fun and gruesome which will taunt you to repeat the process.

Zombieville USA is a fun game in small doses. There is some draw to see how many rounds you can defeat, but it wears thin relatively quickly. It’s a solid buy at it’s current price of .99, though I would call this a “play while in line at the store” game rather than a “play on the bus to work” game.