Zombies. What can I say? These mindless, brain-eating freaks have contaminated almost every genre on the App Store, even enough to warrant a separate folder on my iPhone. So after so many zombie predecessors I was surprised at how Zombie Highway manages to create something new and exciting around the over-used undead.

Gameplay 9/10

Imagine this. It’s a zombie apocalypse (how original) and you have just made a daring escape from the crumbling ruins of your home-town and are racing down the main highway, trying to get as far away from the cursed city as possible. You and your friends believe you are away and free from those deadly monster, but you are wrong. Suddenly, you hear a thump on the side of the car your driving. You see where I am heading with this? This is basically the situation you are in, in Zombie Highway.

You are driving a people-carrier along a deserted dusty road, avoiding wrecked cars and debris. But that is by far the least of your worries. Zombies, standing idle at the side of the road leap desperately at your vehicle, attempting to latch on to it. When one does, you have the option to shoot it with whatever weapon you have unlocked. A more effective method might be to scrape the blasted thing off by running close to a wall or trashed car. If you don’t it will try and topple or crash your car by rocking forwards and backward. This may not be a problem with only one zombie, but with four, things aren’t looking so great. The aim of the game is to survive as long as possible without crashing or tipping over. There are supposedly seven different types of zombies (even though I have only come across four) with varying abilities and health. For example the red zombie regenerates health.

Zombie Highway is incredibly fun and captures the pumping adrenaline feeling extremely well. It’s great having three or more zombies clinging onto your car, swerving out of control, trying to scrape them off and shoot them at the same time.

Graphics 5/10

However, despite its great gameplay, Zombie Highway seems rushed and unfinished. The graphics are poor in terms of diversity, especially in the backgrounds and scenery. The car is good with realistic physics, but the whole game is very bland.

Controls 9/10

The controls are tilt based and work extremely well. To fire you tap on the corner of the screen that relates to the monster hanging onto your car. For example, if there is a zombie at the front right window then you must tap on the top right to shoot it.

Sound 4/10

The little sound that there is, is very harsh and unkind to the ears. The screeching and crashing just about makes me want to put my headphones down or lower the volume. Despite its realism, the sound effects aren’t good enough to make for some easy listening, and this might be partly because of the lack of music. I really wish the developers had included some. Do you know what would have been great? ‘Highway to Hell’. OK, no matter what, that song needs to be included as the theme tune for this game. I don’t care if the licensing fees would equal to a fortune, that would just be perfect!

Menus 4/10

The menus are unimaginative and poorly made. The colours clash and it is also quite hard to navigate to get to where you want.

Longevity 3/10

As you already know, Zombie Highway is a high-score game, meaning no matter what, you are going to become brain-soup by the end of it. But what I find astonishing is that there is no online leader-board like OpenFeint. Instead, the developers have gone solely Facebook integration. I would much rather prefer an iDevice specific leader-board because I, and most of you out there, don’t have real mates who have an iDevice and have bought this game. What’s more, the replay value of Zombie Highway is very low. You come to a point where you have got a reasonable score, you have unlocked most of the weapons and you think, why bother? There is nothing that brings you back to the game and after a while you will put it down.

Cost 7/10

$0.99/£0.59 is the right price point for Zombie Highway, but changes are needed before it is a must buy.

Conclusion 41/70 – 3/5

Zombie Highway is far from perfect and seems almost rushed through development. Even though the concept and gameplay is great, the game needs to be improved before I can recommend it fully.

Zombie Highway on the App Store.