June 22, 2010
Zombie Infection is Gameloft‘s take on a 3D third person shooter zombie action (not survival horror) game that launched without much fanfare and is now available in the App Store for just $6.99. But does this infection cause all the right undead flesh-eating symptoms? Or is Zombie Infection a miss diagnosis? To find out check my full in-depth review, after the jump.
Noteworthy Features:
- Un-lockable Survival Mode
- Lots of zombie types, plenty of levels and variety
- impressive 3D graphics, lots of action with decent & standard touch driven controls
Major Complaints:
- Amateurish story, dialog, voice acting and cut scene animations
- Another shameless rip-off
- No multiplayer
In Zombie Infection you play as either Alex Rayne (renown international journalist) or Damien Sharpe (ex military action cameraman), who work together as a famous action news team, but always seem to get separated throughout the whole ordeal. The game starts off with Alex and Damien in transit (via helicopter) for a rendezvous with an anonymous informer to get some dirt on a shady powerful corporation, only to land smack dab in the middle of a developing zombie apocalypse, upon arrival. Matters escalate from there of course, as it becomes an action packed struggle to survive, an adventurous discovery to learn the truth behind the zombie infection, and a bit of personal revenge thrown in randomly for good measure. It all comes across as B-movie status though, due to some cheesy dialog and a mixed bag of amateur voice acting work, but it’s an ambitious and honest effort nonetheless, even if the whole concept is somewhat inspired nay mirroring the Resident Evil franchise.
Gameplay
The gameplay picks up and runs with a lot of elements brought to life from the tenured Resident Evil franchise, specifically the inability to move fluently when aiming your weapon, and a some what limited item management aspect that will have you searching for crates, or crossing your fingers hoping each zombie you take out is kind enough to drop some health packs and/or ammo for you to collect. On the normal difficulty settings I never found myself running completely out of ammo/health for very long, while on the harder difficulty setting though, this tried and true formula becomes very apparent where you really have to make every shot count opting to melee unless you’re completely surrounded or up against a boss.
Zombie Infection is all about shooting zombies and that is most definitely the highlight of the gameplay experience here, with tense bursts of zombie swarms that always seem to try and ambush you as you make your way through the levels. It is clear the gameplay was designed with more of an action oriented approach in mind, as there is tons of zombies to deal with and really no complex puzzles to solve, or multiple pieces of keys to track down, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing in this context.
As always, you start out with the standard handgun and must find an adequate arsenal of weapons, ammo and health packs along the way to stay alive. To help with the zombie assault there is everything from shotguns to submachine guns, even a handy grenade launcher to find as you progress through the game.
If you’re in a pinch or low on ammo you can always bust out some melee attacks (Alex does a roundhouse and Damien does a face punch) to knock back the zombies. Surprisingly, they are incredibly efficient and powerful against the generic horde (unless you’re surrounded), there’s even some instant kill finishing moves to employ as well.
In addition to general zombie slaying, there are a few epic boss fights scattered throughout the game that will have you going up against a huge mutated zombie crocodile on one level, and a dual chainsaw wielding worker zombie (just to name a couple) on another level. Although, most of them don’t have any specific sequence or an inherent strategy to taking them down, aside from one huge boss encounter near the end (which I’m not going to spoil for you) they really just need a lot of lead and patience to get the job done.
If you’re looking for zombies, Zombie Infection has them in spades. There are your typical Resident Evil inspired zombies, plus zombies that shot/throw stuff at you, some zombie dogs, some zombie birds, lions and crocodiles (oh my). A few beefed up 7ft tall zombies, a couple quick and fast zombie types, and of course boss zombies, which are more like mutated monsters if you ask me.
All and all this is a solid single player experience, but it’s nothing new and it’s not going to blow you away. Make no mistake about it, there’s plenty of action to be had here, but you cant help but to think that Gameloft could have done better had they scratched their heads to come up with something original. Overall the game clocks in at a good 3-4 hours of gameplay on medium difficulty (depending on how good you do) with no multiplayer features or any replay value other then the standard difficulty settings to conquer, hidden tokens to find, various in-game achievements to nab if you’re a completist, and a survival mode to unlock once you beat the game. The survival mode will have you going up against wave after wave of zombies, similar to the Mercenary modes of the Resident Evil franchise, all the while competing for top scores on Gameloft‘s very own leader boards.
Presentation
Zombie Infection’s presentation is very much like a complicated love-hate relationship. There’s plenty to love, plenty to hate and plenty left to be desired.
As far as story goes Zombie Infection isn’t going to win any awards, but the plot devices are in order and crafted well enough to propel the player through a world that is at least believable and for the most part compelling enough to keep things mildly interesting, as you barge through level after level of the game. Unfortunately the story is told through dialog that is mostly cheesy though, with some voice acting decent enough to make up for it, while the rest is either barely passable or laughably bad.
The gameplay animations seemed to be decent enough and for the most part and they held up well during the intense bursts of action (aside from some finishing move animations playing out way off). With that said, the cut scene animations (to be completely honest) felt amateurish at best with all sorts of generic situations acted out with stiff movements and rigid camera angles. It’s clear that either the team is inexperienced or this product was just thrown together on a low/limited budget, whatever the case may be, I wasn’t very impressed with the cut scenes.
On the flip side though, the 3D graphics are gorgeous and will definitely get your iDevice running hot while you play the game. Some of the textures don’t hold up well under close scrutiny, and there are a few frame rate drops during some really intense action sequences, which both may be more akin to the limitation of the platform, rather then a flaw to ding the game for.
However where the presentation really shines (in my opinion), is the game’s level design, and how the experience unfolds across each level. It’s amazing work from both an artistic perspective and a gameplay perspective that really deserves some recognition as there is plenty of variety in setting to go around. Including everything from favellas (a nod to the first level of Resident Evil 5), to swamps, zoos, mines, industrial ports, and the like, all of which keep the experience fresh throughout the entire game.
Controls
If you have played a 3D action game on the iDevices before, especially one that utilizes on-screen controls with contextual inputs, it wont take long for you to feel right at home with Zombie Infection since it sticks to the standards that have been established thus far.
That means you will have a virtual joystick bottom left that handles movement, and swiping anywhere on the screen (except where there is an on screen icon of course) controls the camera. So far this set up is the default control scheme standard, but that doesn’t mean it is perfect.
To ready your weapon you simply tap on the weapon icon, which will then un-holster your currently equipped weapon severely limiting your movements with the virtual joystick in the process. When a weapon is readied, you aim by using swipes. Once you have lined up a good shot (aim for the head) simply tap on the weapon icon to fire the weapon. Don’t worry there is a red laser on all your weapons to help with aiming. To holster your weapon you simply tap on the holster icon which appears right above the left virtual joystick when you have a weapon readied, and the weapon will be holstered and you will be free to move at a normal pace.
In addition, there are four more on-screen icons to be aware of: a melee icon, a contextual pop up icon in the bottom right, a weapon icon top right, and the pause/menu icon top left. To do a melee you simply tap on the melee icon near the bottom right and you will do melee attacks. The contextual pop up icon is used when you need to bust open a crate, pick up ammo, do finishing move and all sorts of other contextual inputs. It will appear close to the melee icon when you have an action that can be executed. The weapon icon on the top right is used to show how much ammo you have left in the clip and overall inventory and it’s used for reloading just tap the icon to manually reload. The pause/menu button on the top left is used to pull up the in-game menu which has your inventory where you can switch weapons, and menu options like restart from checkpoint, exit to main menu, and others.
The controls in Zombie Infection felt tight and responsive for the most part and are technically sound. It is after all abiding by the standards set for a 3D action third person shooter thus far and Gameloft generally does very well with their touch screen controls anyways. Although, like I said above that doesn’t mean the standard is perfect, certainly a step in the right direction but with plenty of room left for improvement. Zombie Infection opts to play it safe, and while the developers were under no obligation to push the standard forward (and made no promises to that effect) it still would have been commendable to see them take a risk and come up with some new standards.
Price
Zombie Infection is priced at a cool $6.99, which in my opinion is a reasonable premium price point for a reasonably premium product.
Score 4/5
If you’re itching to pump some lead into zombies, Zombie Infection has you covered as it is more of an action game then a traditional survival horror game.
Just don’t expect to be particularly intrigued by the story enough to actually care about whats going on. It is slightly interesting to say the least, but falters with generic plot twist, and surprises that you can see coming from a mile away. Also, there’s a good possibility that you may actually cringe at times, due to some very cheesy dialog and questionable voice acting, not to mention quite a few awkward cut scene scenarios.
The game has a lot going for it for sure, as the gameplay experience is well crafted and has merit, there’s nothing new or innovative here though, as it’s all elements lifted from other games and gameplay experiences we have seen many times before, but that necessarily isn’t a bad thing either (well depending on if you feel like this is a shameless rip-off of Resident Evil or not). In any case if you can excuse the inspired approach, its lame story, dialog, and cut scenes (all of which is skip-able) you will have a blast shooting zombies, as that is really what this game is all about.
Zombie Infection on the App Store.